Festival with a Difference! USA
Heard about the burning man? Nope? Well this might just be the alternative trip for you…..
It’s a week long annual art festival held last August / early September (over America’s Labour Day) in the Black Rock Dessert that some 30,000 people attend. It started life on a San Francisco beach in the mid 80’s when Larry Harvey decided to burn a wooden ‘home-made’ statue of a man in allegiance to his father. The festival moved to its current location in 1990 when it had become so popular as to constitute a safety risk, and it became a more ‘formal’ gathering.
Pretty much anything goes in this celebration of ‘radical self expression’ and the festival is hot in more ways than one. Yup, a wooden effigy is still set alight, the temperate can be extreme and people generally ‘do their thing’, whatever that may be. Attendees are encouraged to join in and ‘help’ in any way to make the art theme (which changes each year) and the festival come alive. The organisers describe the event as being ‘radically inclusive’ in that it is potentially accessible to everyone. One of the stated aims is to produce positive spiritual change in the world. Children are welcome and family friendly camps are set up. If you search the net for photo’s you are likley to turn up a wide variety of ‘stuff’ - many looking like scenes from a Mad Max movie.
It’s billed very much as a ‘participative event’ and people dance, sing, paint, sculpt, get naked (optional!), hold ‘events’ and hang out. You must bring your own food, drink and shelter and make sure that you take away with you everything you brought along (including rubbish & ‘waste’) as one of the key principles is to ‘leave no trace’. Many volunteers stay behind to help in the clear up and ensure the dessert is left exactly as it was before the festival started. It’s recommended that you bring a push bike too to help you get around the large temporary community or town that is the burning man!
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