Burning Man

Burning Man is a global ecosystem of artists, makers, and community organizers who co-create art, events, and local initiatives around the world. Most recognizably, tens of thousands of Burners gather annually to build Black Rock City, a participative temporary metropolis in the Nevada desert.

The nonprofit Burning Man Project produces the annual Burning Man event in Black Rock City, and provides year-round support, connection, education, and grants to an ever-growing network of Regional Burning Man communities in more than 40 US states and 35 countries.

Burning Man is not a festival! It’s a city wherein almost everything that happens is created entirely by its citizens, who are active participants in the experience.

At Burning Man it is impossible to buy anything except ice and coffee. There is a gift economy zone, and all items - food, drinks, or even clothes - can be exchanged. Larry Harvey, one of the event's founders, explained it this way:

"Burning Man is a family picnic. It's not like you're going to sell something to your own, you're just going to share."

Burning Man Project’s mission is to produce the annual event known as Burning Man and to guide, nurture and protect the more permanent community created by its culture. Our intention is to generate society that connects each individual to his or her creative powers, to participation in community, to the larger realm of civic life, and to the even greater world of nature that exists beyond society.

We believe that the experience of Burning Man can produce positive spiritual change in the world. To this end, it is equally important that we communicate with one another, with the citizens of Black Rock City and with the community of Burning Man wherever it may arise. Burning Man is radically inclusive, and its meaning is potentially accessible to anyone.

The touchstone of value in our culture will always be immediacy: experience before theory, moral relationships before politics, survival before services, roles before jobs, embodied support before sponsorship. Finally, in order to accomplish these ends, Burning Man must endure as a self-supporting enterprise that is capable of sustaining the lives of those who dedicate themselves to its work. From this devotion spring those duties that we owe to one another.

1. Radical inclusion.
2. Giving
3. Rejection of entrepreneurship, sponsorship, advertising
4. Radical self-sufficiency
5. Radical self-expression.
6. Community effort
7. Civic responsibility
8. Leave no trace
9. Participation
10. Here and now