Man, do we miss you. If you’re like us, you’ve tossed nearly “all things 2020” into the proverbial and metaphorical (maybe even metaphysical?) burn barrel, and you’re ready for a fresh start. We were forced to take a year off from building our magical city in the desert, something we never thought we’d have to do. Always a Herculean communal effort, we’ve somehow pulled it off together for the last 30 years.
For all its challenges, its complications, and its highs and lows, 2020 showed us the boundless resilience, interconnectedness, and creativity of our global community.
No physical BRC? Welcome to the Multiverse. You helped create not one, not two, but eight virtual Universes, a memorable Temple experience, and a 24-hour LIVE Burn around the world event. You also found ways to get together (responsibly). In Tahoe, Sacramento, Austria, Romania, and around the planet, these were carefully managed gatherings that proved, on a small scale for now, that Burners know how to create connective experiences the right way.
No income to count on from ticket sales? More than 21,000 of you generously donated over $12 million to keep Burning Man Project rocking, our event alive, and our culture thriving. If you haven’t experienced our fun thank you gift that’s being shared around, check it out here and below.
Hey, I’m Dom, Associate Director of Communications for Burning Man Project. My bio’s at the bottom of this post. I’m happy to be sharing this update with you! Our Communications team works year-round to keep you updated on Black Rock City, and to highlight stories from the global Burning Man community. We’re looking forward to sharing your stories and, hopefully, building some art with you in 2021!
Now pour yourself a beverage, put on your playa goggles, throw a handful of dust in front of a whirling fan, and read on for info about what we’ve been up to. As 2021 kicks off, we wanted to say hello, update you on the biggest things on our minds – Black Rock City, Health & Safety, Sustainability, and Diversity – and plant some seeds for the coming year.
Black Rock City 2021
If it isn’t immediately and fundamentally obvious, let me make it clear as day: There is nothing we want more than to build Black Rock City side-by-side with you again. It’s the holy grail. It’s our north star. Putting up that bright orange trash fence, raising the Man, then watching the string of pearly white headlights drive (at 5 MPH please!) along Gate Road and into the heart of BRC to build the most inspiring place in the world – this is what we fall asleep thinking about and what we wake up every morning planning for. It’s also what you overwhelmingly showed support for through the “Save Black Rock City” campaign.
Predictably, of course, it’s impossible to say right now if Black Rock City can happen in 2021. We want you to know we’re doing everything we can to be ready if the stars align. In fact, we’re trying to help the stars get there. In collaboration with other large-scale outdoor events in Nevada and our permitting agencies, our Government Affairs team is working behind the scenes to support the State of Nevada in their efforts to ensure safe and successful events in 2021. Our COVID-19 Task Force, led by Emergency Services Department Chief Kate Gonnella, is tracking new information every day and helping us understand the science and health implications of virus transmission, treatment, testing, technology, and vaccines. The work we’re doing now will help us move forward safely. Public health and safety is our top priority.
As you know, it takes months of preparation to be able to pull off the event, so we can’t wait too long to decide if we deploy the resources and staffing towards making it happen.
We still have a ways to go before we can determine if it makes sense to proceed with Black Rock City 2021 planning. We will continue to gather info and prepare, and we will share more by the middle of February.
It is, of course, possible that we’ll decide in the spring to move forward, only for it later to be determined that the event can’t actually happen. We hope that won’t be the case. No matter how this all shakes out, we will only inhabit Black Rock City with the appropriate safety protocols and permits in place.
Over the fall and winter we’ve been doing the work to get us to this point, and we’re ready (and eager) to keep it going. Want to be first to know what will happen with 2021? Easy: Sign up for the Jackrabbit Speaks and subscribe to the Burning Man Journal. Theme camps, mutant vehicle owners, and artists have communication channels with their respective departments and will receive info, as necessary.
Coming back responsibly and sustainably
We’ve sharpened our focus on environmental sustainability, and we’re committed to making changes for future iterations of Black Rock City. You could make the cheeky argument that 2020 was our “greenest” year on record, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But there’s still a lot of important work to do, and we’re excited to do it. Over a year ago we launched our 10-year Roadmap and outlined our goals to manage waste sustainably, be ecologically regenerative, and make BRC carbon negative by 2030.
Our Sustainability Team (or sTeam) was created to help Burning Man Project achieve these three overarching goals, and we’re happy to say this work is moving forward with unstoppable momentum (in case you missed it, here’s the year-one progress report we published back in July). sTeam plans to publish detailed plans for each goal in 2021, complete a comprehensive Black Rock City greenhouse gas emissions inventory, and continue leading the charge for how our departments can rethink and revise operations.
Events like Burners Without Borders’ Spring Summit at Fly Ranch (pre-COVID, don’t worry), the July Ecosystem Activation, and the Green Theme Camp Summit aimed to tackle many of our burning environmental questions.
Fly Ranch continues to be a central hub for sustainability innovation and future thinking (check out their newly redesigned homepage for more info). Submission reviews have started for the LAGI 2020 Fly Ranch international design challenge, a project that aims to build the foundational, regenerative, and environmentally sustainable infrastructure of the historic northern Nevada property.
Sustainability isn’t a project we can take on alone. We’re looking to our global community (artists, theme camp organizers, mutant vehicle owners, Regional Event leads, etc.) to get involved. How can your project run more sustainably? How can your camp produce less waste? We’ll be sharing myriad ways you can all contribute to sustainability efforts in 2021, here in the Journal, on Medium, and via the Fly Ranch and BWB newsletters. We’re excited to continue learning together how to become better stewards of our desert home.
Radical Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity – Come along for the R.I.D.E.
As an organization that believes the world’s a better place with Burning Man in it, and one that’s committed to spreading the culture that stems from Black Rock City throughout the world, we are amplifying our focus on diversity. Over the course of 2020, Burning Man Project organized and formalized several workflows to address this important topic.
We formed an internal stewardship group tasked with advancing community engagement, public-facing events, staff trainings, and more. We published a new page on the Burning Man website devoted to Diversity & Radical Inclusion. We expanded the blog series by the same name in 2020. Your very own 24/7 BRC radio station, BMIR, hosted a magnificent audio series during Burn Week about all sorts of topics related to diversity in our community. Our first Diversity Town Hall took place with more than 300 community members participating.
We’ve also assembled an advisory committee of dynamic, experienced community leaders with expertise on racial justice to advise the DE&I stewardship group and review our new content, processes, and systems.
We’ve got big goals for 2021, with a roadmap to achieve those goals nearly ready to be shared wider. We see this not as a project to be completed, but part of our ongoing evolution as a community. If you’d like to get involved or if you have any questions/suggestions, please feel free to email diversity@burningman.org which goes to the stewardship group of seven people.
No matter which way the dust blows…
Regardless of whether BRC happens in 2021, we’re committed to elevating and expanding community engagement in all forms. We have a job to do and we want to do it with you. We know that so many of you have had a rough go of it lately and are longing for that personal connection with your dusty friends. We have a new virtual educational and community-building tool we’re excited to share with you soon. Tap into moments of on- and off-playa magic by following our Instagram feed. Missing gatherings? Register for Kindling and plug into LIVE experiences from across the Burning Man ecosystem.
Oh, what’s that? BRC tickets? We’ll have more on that in less time than it takes to find your bicycle after a deep playa sunrise dance, we promise. Stay tuned.
Thank you for continuing to keep the fire alive, wherever you are. And playa deities willing…the Man burns in 220 days.
Header image art is Stone 27 by Benjamin Langholz, photo from Gurps Chawla.