Burning Man Festival Analysis
• How would you identify the philosophical background or the intellectual/esthetical/artistic streams that impact the foundation and the organisation of this festival ?
• How would you describe its success ?
• What is your subjective assessment of events such as this one?
• How could this event be introduced to your country - provide a brief outline of a marketing strategy.
Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. On the official webpage it is defined as; an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance. So why does that mean? Why was this phenomena created?
Larry Harvey, who was the founder of the festival, created 10 guiding principles for the regional organizing, and then later this became a universal criterion of the general audience of the multifarious movement. These include ; radical inclusion, gifting, deco modification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.
What is radical inclusion? On the official website there’s an annually update “survival guide”. This was written there;"Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community." Event participants are expected to provide for their own basic needs and follow the guidelines.
The most direct outcome of such widespread participation is the success of the Burning Man festival itself. Each year the cooperation of tens of thousands of volunteers results in the construction of a functional city, creation of participatory artwork, and implementation of community projects. Consensus-building has proven reasonably successful as well. Disagreements are nearly always resolved with unanimous consent, and not a single formal vote was reportedly ever taken