Stevan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bonzaar Podcast, everyone. This episode, we'll look back at Kiwi Burn 2025, get a critical review and talk about what went right and what went wrong. So this is an episode to reflect, learn, raise awareness, educate and archive. For future reference, we're here to discuss the fun and magical moments to ask the theme camps, events, workshops, the burns and the shenanigans, and also the controversial and darker side, some of the unsavory, unsavory behaviors and uncomfortable conversations coming out of Kiwi Burn 2025.

With me, I'm joined by Cherie Lumos, Shelley and Cris. Hey, you guys going?

Cris: Yeah. Awesome, awesome.

Stevan: Now, you guys have been, uh, back, uh, for, you know, a few, a few weeks now. Um, how are things going, uh, in terms of, um, getting back to the default world and, and the burner blues?

Shelley: I really struggled actually. Like I don't normally, but I just, I was just really tired and yeah, I just [00:01:00] couldn't, I wasn't very motivated with work, but I could find that really hard, which is kind of a first for me.

Stevan: Yeah. Do you guys have any tips? I mean, being, being veterans, uh, Lumos, you're a veteran of this, of, of this whole thing. Uh, okay, we burn you guys. You guys got any tips, um, for dealing with this?

Lumos: Um, I live my life, which pretty much in the burner philosophy. So when I come back to this world, um, I don't like to use the world real, um, because they're both pretty real to me.

So I just alternate between one world and another and my burner worlds over the summer festival season just seems to bounce from event to events and the location changes and people fade in and fade out. But a lot of the fun continues and I just keep doing my thing, um, enjoying my life.

Stevan: And you just got back. Recently as well, only a few days ago.

Cherie: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Uh, I had a rough time and had difficulty getting off the paddock this year, and so I had a week less time than I normally would, or I managed to go straight into my real world job where [00:02:00] leading a very big project proposal. And so it is just slammed straight into it.

The rest of my real world life is having other issues happening, interpersonal things in my family and things. So going out of the fire, fire and into something hotter, I feel like, um, is, is is how it's been. I don't know about tips for decompression for people really, it's each to their eye, right? And it's gonna really depend on what kind of bird experience you had.

Like if you had a really rough one, which some of us do sometimes get, you know, and what that looks like will be quite different. But I guess the advice I have for everyone is really leaning into your self care strategies because it will be a period of time where you maybe feel a bit weird, feel a bit depressed, practicing your selfcare strategies.

You were okay. Worth gonna go around you. What? So

Shelley: that's really good advice.

Stevan: And how did you adjust, Cris? You, you went back to to, to Australia?

Cris: I did.

Stevan: Flew back to Australia.

Cris: Yeah. I, uh, flew in, uh, from Wellington to, to Sydney and then [00:03:00] to Canberra on the Tuesday and got home at like day and.

It's been a struggle actually. Like I've been tired and, you know, I, I've just gotta say, I was there as, you know, invited to talk as a part of a panel of people who were in Australia organizing regional burns. So me and from Sydney and Dee from Victoria, um, talked about Underland and burning seed and winter solstice here in Canberra.

And, um, but for the rest of the time I was having fun and, you know, exploring and, and doing various fun things. So it wasn't like, you know, uh, like, um, RI especially, um, had a rough time and, uh, yeah. So, but yeah, coming back to reality was. But be good. It's been kind of like, I find returning to the real world after a burn, you, I love it.

Like it's a chance you step into this burner world and it's like, wow, okay. [00:04:00] It's nice to get away from real life for a while. And I like to step back and look at my life and think, you know, is everything, am I living the way I wanna live? Like, and so when I come back to reality, it's usually a good time for reflection and, and adjustments and planning.

And, you know, I, that's been my burner experience since 2019. It's really made a huge difference in my life that way. So, yeah, I've had a bit of trouble adjusting to reality, but I think in the long run it'll, it'll be good. Yeah.

Stevan: Okay. So today we've got a lot of issues and topics to talk about, but first I'd like to get to, uh, a bit more, uh, background information on what you guys do.

Lumos, Shelley and Cherie, what you guys do in terms of kiwi burn roles. S and you guys, uh, both of you guys are regional contact for New Zealand. Tell us a bit about that. What, what goes on behind that, that, um, responsibilities

Lumos: as a regional contact means I spend a lot of time talking. Um, and I [00:05:00] do a lot of that at the burn.

I cheat at the burn because I happen to have a new dark car with big flames. I park myself somewhere and start setting up some big flames. I get lots of people coming over to talk and I get a lot of newbies coming over talk and we chat about kiwi burn and why it's not just another festival, how to be a part of it and why it's different.

And I really enjoy doing that. And that's, um, that then continues to that when I leave the paddock and go elsewhere, I'm doing the same sort of thing. Just keep talking about, about what's special about the burn and what's different and encouraging people to generally get involved in things like art. Art is the, is the bait we use to catch people.

We do cool stuff and art gets them in, gets them excited, and then we sell 'em on the rest of the packages, which is, it's about changing your life into, um, into a burner life. Which can be a bit different to what you're used to, but I find it's a satisfying life.

Shelley: Yeah, I do, [00:06:00] uh, I do a lot of posting of information from Burning Man on social media.

It's probably, I think Loomis and I play to our strengths pretty well. Uh, we have catch up meetings, uh, well the Loomis has moved out of Auckland now. Uh, but when he was in Auckland, we had face-to-face meetings, like every, I dunno, every few months just to sort of talk about different aspects of the community and Burning Man things.

And, uh, yeah, now he's moved out. We have phone conversations. We had a two hour conversation last week, and we cover a lot of topics. We, we have different burn experiences like everyone does. So we sort of share the different things that we, we came across, the people we met, the things we did, the things we learned.

You know, you're always learning, um, from your community. What's, what's new, what's happening, what's going on. Yeah. So we, we try and keep up to date and, uh, we're organizing in Auckland, we're organizing a, a meetup in a couple of weeks, so it's really nice to get people face to face, but in Auckland it's the [00:07:00] impossible to get the community out, actually.

It's always been really hard. Yeah. And we're, you know, at the moment we're talking about Burning Man to lots of people because tickets are coming up for sale. Uh, so yeah, it's always just, it's. I think as Lu said, it's often a conversation that gets had and just quietly helping build community and we uh, to queries.

We get quite a few queries from the community, people asking us for help or direction and that, so we just help guide people and we, you know, we both long term burners now, but we have a probably a lot of advice we can give people. But we, you know, we dunno. Also like, like to learn from others.

Stevan: And Cherie, your, your role as an art facilitator at Kiwi Burn.

Cherie: Yeah, so, um, I took it on as my first volunteering role in New York. Straight to the top. Why not? Um, I'd been in the scene for a really long time and light had sort of gotten in my way of actually attending the event, um, until bog burn. So that was my first [00:08:00] Kiwi burn. Um, and I went there knowing, knowing that I was going to step up into the facilitator role.

It had been vacant for a very long time and so jumped in, in the deep end in August, right before a burn. Um, and been swam at it ever since. So, uh, the arts facilitator is an ex composition. And so you're there with the management of decision team and governance. And then I am the facilitator over, it was six teams when I picked it up, but it's eight now and it's gonna be nine next year.

Um, it's a very large department. We have the burnable arts, the vehicles, the art installations, the funding for. We have all of the hub teams with me as well, which is the, I guess like sensor camp is what Burning Moon would call our hub. And within the hub we have multiple teams and we're added to it and growing to it and fostering ideas and giving them resources can go out and you want.

So it's quite a lot of people involved. Um, grew it from about [00:09:00] 15 people when I picked up to about 75 people now. And it's, it's exploding really fast and we've had excellent retention, like since I took it on, everybody's staying on and so people are growing into leadership and I'm doing best of the doing and more of the on top level facilitating now, which is, is good because it's manageable when you And I just before we move on, I wanna touch into the regional network folks because, um, what my engagement with, um, Shelly and Pete this year, we did two different things.

We asked them to reach into the network to get invitations for art artery leads from around the world to come to the burn for this panel discussion that, um, has already been mentioned and that was really successful. We got quite a few people over from like Dragon Burn as well. It was, it was really cool.

And then we also reached out through Shelley and Pete. To get documentation from the burnable arts from around the world to look at. We're looking at, um, developing process and policy around our [00:10:00] burnable arts, and we wanted to look at examples of their contracts and examples of their selection criteria and things like that.

And so we've got 'em from quite a lot of places now, um, all archived, uh, for us to use as a resource. And so it's been really, really helpful to have that network there, um, so that we can learn from each other. Right.

Stevan: Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah. I, I like this new, new initiative. So let's get, let's get into the, the actual Kiwi Burn event, Tweny, this year.

Um, overall, how was your experience? Tell us a bit more about what you, what you guys, what you guys thought. How was your burn?

Cherie: I'll go first because mine's the hard one, everybody.

Prearranged this burn really well and have great leads and teams so that I could be off comms and off the clock from Thursday after doing a big build and, you know, all of those things. Um, but we had Disaster City in the art department where we lost a key piece of infrastructure coming into the build.

Half of our BUILD volunteers [00:11:00] had real life, horrible things going on that prevented them from making it. And that was all of our muscle. And we liked to crew half disabled in the hub. And so it was all disabled folks and me. So it was very physical for me. And then a lot was happening, um, across the burn and it was happening at us and coming, you know, like we're there doing our thing, providing services, doing the art thing from all of our department stuff.

Everything we were doing went super well and it's amazing we can talk about later, but I got to see pretty much sequentially and ly all of the worst parts of our community. And that's the cost of leadership, right? I wasn't on a site management shift or an event delivery shift this year. I put a boundary in, um, to take a break from that this year.

But I still did site management and event delivery level work because I was sober the whole time. I was seeing it. It was coming at me and I was calm, right? And so it was a really hard one and I was questioning why the burn was doing this to me. Is it testing my commitments to it? You know, uh, [00:12:00] why is that?

Um, and what I've come away from it is in order to do the work from the leadership seat to make steps toward positive change in these spaces, I have to understand it. Um, and in order to understand it, I have to go through process that exists right now and see the scale and scope of it. And so I'm thanking Kiwi 25 for the relentless shit storm that it was, um, because I can see a lot of pathways for us.

And I'm here for work.

Shelley: Thank you. Amazing. Sorry you had to go through all that.

Cherie: I think most leaders go through at some at at one bit, you know? Oh, totally. And often it's dripped over the time, but you know, I know lots of the leads who had a smashed one like that.

Shelley: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, I've definitely had, when I was comms lead, I, I definitely got let down by my team because they had personal stuff going on.

I know the feeling, it's like, well, it still has to be done, you know who's gonna do it? Oh me, okay. Um, so I totally understand that feeling. [00:13:00] And it's frustrating, but it's also exhausting, you know, and you kind of wanna protect them because they're going through stuff as well. So it's really tricky management.

Cherie: How was your burn, Shelley?

Shelley: Yeah, my burn. My burn was really great. I, I found the energy on the paddock this year, like every day, like the whole paddock for me had a very up energy, like a very sort of happy energy generally. And like last year there was a lot less people last year on the paddock and it had a very sort of mellow energy, like not a bad energy, just, um, not, like, not, not, not like rah rah.

And. This year was just, I don't know, bouncy and fun.

Stevan: Can you talk about the Burnables, art Burnables?

Cherie: I would fucking too,

uh, burnables was a highlight for me. So in my first round I focused on the teams that didn't really have experience in them, right, to get them over the line. I don't have a lot of time.

And there was a very [00:14:00] experienced person in Burnable Arts, um, and it was really just one person on their own, and they were quite burnt out, um, as well. Um, and so this year I focused for this round. I focused on the burnable arts very strongly, and we went from a one person team to monthly meetings with 15 people across engineering, RO technicals, health and safety, treasury liaison work, like everything you could think of.

We had it covered and we had Nico, uh, operating with us in the planning phase. From Mexico. Um, and he has told us how he's done a lot of burns before and he has told us how it was the smoothest burnables process he ever had. And there was not a lot of documentation in, um, the burnable arts and kiwi burn.

Um, some, but not, not a lot. Um, and this year we had a documented build plan, a documented, uh, burn plan, a documented no burn plan for both of the burnable arts. And we operated off a run sheet for the first time in our 21 year [00:15:00] history. And that's why the burn happened on time. That's why the burn happened so smoothly, um, because it had all of that enormous amount of team effort and pre-planning behind it, which really does make the difference.

Um, and it, it shows, uh, this was the, maybe the most ambitious effigy Kiwi has ever had, and Nico did an excellent peel back plan, uh, what it was supposed to have. His vision is extremely grand. Um, and we had a. Fault in one of the mechanisms. And so it just like heads peel it back. Um, which is a shame for those who know about it, but nobody, I always say this to the artists, um, your participants don't actually know your vision and they're gonna think whatever you've done is fucking cool.

Um, so you can feel upset that you didn't meet your vision, but actually what you've done is amazing. So there is that. Um, I, I'd like to talk about Paul's temple because I actually think this is a perfect temple design. I found it perfect. And Paul is somebody who's a, who's a humble, hardworking human, who's been serving the boon forever.

And when he put in the [00:16:00] temple design, we were all gonna pick him. Realized from the get go, it was always gonna be Paul's temple here this year. And when I contacted the other temple people after the process, we helped them develop their ideas, of course, but they were all like, as soon as they heard it was Paul, they were like, makes sense.

We'll put in again next year. You know, like it was, everybody was down to support him because we wouldn't be burning without Paul, which is cool. His, um, design of. Narrow entryways to a center space for me was the perfect way to engage temple. Um, you have spaces where you can be alone. There was a privacy shield and the death door and, but in the center you can be there for support.

And my engagement with the temple was exactly that. Uh, when I needed support, there were two people there. To support me in the temple, in the middle, you know, like absolutely beautiful. And the lighting of it with, with flares was last minute because of the rain. Um, so the charger weren't gonna get it going.

Um, and there was a discussion about how to do it. And in Kiwi burn, we love flame throwers for the effigy. And somebody's like, well, we have a flame [00:17:00] throwers. But then I was like. Flame throw is an act of war. You can't put that on the temple. And then it was Paul rising in his artistry. He decided on the paddock to do the steps, the stairway, to have the higher view.

And he decided on the paddock that the way to light it would be flares with the rescue workers putting them in. And so watching him blossom, because from the beginning he was like, I'm not an artist. Those designs that I beat out were way more beautiful, um, way more, you know, and he's wrong. He's so wrong.

Um, and to see him grow into it, you know, um, it was just absolutely beautiful. And the fact that he was saving somebody's life and that it was delayed by an hour is just perfect. Full circle art. It was an homage to rescue workers. And we needed to wait for a rescue to occur, for an ambulance to come on and off before we could burn it.

And it made sense that the entire community respectfully sat there and waited for them. You know? Um, that's gorgeous art right there. Um, you couldn't have asked for a better set of burnables. Um, you know, like I'm, I'm so proud of all the teams. Um, it was a [00:18:00] huge. Huge effort on, on a lot of people's parts and they're both under budget, so that's a win.

Shelley: That's amazing that they're under budget. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably also a first, the

Cherie: trash fair. So yeah, trash fair. We upcycled materials, almost everything was free. The art department, I haven't crunched all the numbers, but we're looking at eight to under budget because we didn't buy anything impressive.

Wow. Because you shouldn't have to buy anything.

Cris: Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

Lumos: For those who dunno, um, who was the designer? He in, he, the company, he worked his company with medics. Um, providing medical services, provid, and they also, him and his wife are involved in the fire service, so he's been involved since we first gotta North Island seven.

He and his, his wife, family is our multigenerational family there. They're our EMS supporters. They look after our cut feet and our various other problems, as well [00:19:00] as when it came to dealing with the fire department. Um, that handle that. So it was very, um, apt. He's no, no longer just a contractor. He became one of us very early, but now he's in the Kiwi history because he designed and built a temple

Cherie: and did it with his family too.

Yeah. His wife and his son and the other medics that, uh, have been serving the moon for a long time, you know, like the crew was very small. They did a very simple design, but a very effective one. And they were finished early enough that they could add a stairwell and add extra lighting and, you know, develop the art on the paddock, which is.

Impeccable planning. You know, and I would like to say something about Nico as well, because Nico's been delivering art for Burns around the world and significantly to Kiwi burn for a very long time. It was 10 years since he first did an eff g and he was like, time to do another one. He's done a a temple or two in between there, and a lot of Burnable works for BlackRock City, but there is nothing but praise from every single person [00:20:00] who worked with him as a build lead.

He was a fantastic leader. He gives creative license to his build crew. The animals on the effigy were originally New Zealand natives. A mwe, a wetter, a ma, a Maui dolphin, a we and a like kakapo or some kind of parrot. And if you've got a print from the screen printing that they did of the design or a sticker, you can see that those are the animals, but they, they're not the animals we got.

Um, because Nico's not making the animals his crew are. Right. And it's what shapes do you see in this? What animals do you wanna do? Why do you wanna do them? You know? Um, and so he lets creative control of the project go, which is quite rare in the lead. And he was just a solid inspiration to all of them, you know?

And, um, I've been told by site management and NPW that this was the e easiest effigy build that they've participated in as well. So that's the. The lead and the crew. We crewed it with six more people than we have in the past as well. So we gave it a bigger crew. [00:21:00] Um, and they were on since the 5th of January as well, so they got as much time as possible.

Yeah, it was a wonderful burn. And I gotta press the buttons.

Cris: Yay.

Cherie: Well, everybody was feeling sorry for me because my burn was so hard. Um, and so they were like, let's give her something awesome, you know? Um, and so I gotta press the charge buttons. Scotland came running over with the device for me. It was, it was really, really wonderful experience.

I do have something I'd like to say about the burns on a more serious note, but if people wanna do a round of, um, like joyful reflecting, I feel like we've heard from most of us about the burns because of the way we checked in, but, um, I can keep speaking.

Stevan: Keep going. Yeah, keep going.

Cherie: Keep going. Yeah. Cool.

Okay. So, um, I had a great conversation with Sona, who was one of the leads who came from Burn. She was reflecting on her burn experiences, um, and the culture of it, right? And I noticed something she noticed with the effigy as well, which was that a large number of the [00:22:00] participants were anticipating the Naked run more than they were sitting in the moment that the burn was creating for them.

She had people beside her who were already naked, who were just. To get there and it disrupted her participation of the in moment thing that is a burnable artwork. And then as soon as they run the connection with the fire is gone. Right? Like, unless you are running to the fire. And so, you know, like, uh, it's something for people to think about.

I wrote a piece earlier this year and it wasn't well publicized, um, because I didn't wanna spoil the surprises and stuff. But, um, we'll revisit it. And there's more writing to be done about what is burnable art, because a lot of people can see that that's a big fire and that's a big sculpture. And, um, you know, that, that there's a cultural element to it, but the impermanence and the moment in time aspects of the fires actually really matter for the art form.

And it's gonna be what it's gonna be. Everybody's gonna experience it. Some will not be in it, and some will be, and you [00:23:00] know, there's no controlling that. Um, but with a wider understanding of the intention. The art, you might find the participation in it changes, and you could say the same thing about the temple.

So we had a person yell out. Name, call somebody. And that was the first sound, right? Last year's Temple burn was the, the longest it's been quiet for, I reckon, because that beast of a dodecahedron would not fall. But you know, that broke my connection to the temple fire and I was going through something and I'm not the only one who would've felt bad.

Right? Um, and so. The breaking of the moment by putting your shit out into the art form is something that we need to talk about. You could say the same thing about the singing. If I'm not done processing this fire and my moments with it and then you are trying to change the tone of the burn, then you are impacting somebody's experience of the burn and the singing was beautiful.

Don't get me wrong. Absolutely gorgeous. But maybe save the singing [00:24:00] for when the perimeter has dropped and come in and have your wire then. Right? The, I love you when the perimeter's dropping the wire are there all wonderful, beautiful things, but the, especially the temple, but also the, you have, this is your one moment mate in the, for a lot of us in a year or a couple of years, we can't afford to go that often to do that.

And so I'd like to call for the community to raise their education level about where, where, where they're, and what. Are here for as well, um, in, in the community spirit to, to hold respectful spaces when we're doing these things.

Stevan: Yes. So thank you for saying that. It's, it's very important that the community understands and gets, uh, raising the awareness.

There was some confusion also with the nuddie run Pete. Um, some people were running it anticlockwise, some people were running it clockwise. What was the situation there? I think there was also, um, the effigy was a bit smaller this year as well. Was that, did that contribute to the confusion maybe?

Lumos: Okay, so I've been [00:25:00] part of the run for many, many years.

I ran the first couple of years back in oh, weigh oh nine with my clothes on. But since then, Napa, the ladies convinced me to take my clothes off and join them. As far as I'm aware, I know of nobody who was told we're running in a particular direction. As a runner, one of the things you find is you start running in a direction.

Now one side of your body is very hot, the other side of your body, it's cold, and you get to the point where I'm very hot on my right hand side. I have to change directions or run backwards, which is a lot more dangerous to now warm up the cold side and let the hot side cool down a bit. So we have always changed directions.

What did happen this year didn't happen last year, um, but did happen the year before was the fire itself had a fairly small fire footprint, which meant that the size of the perimeter we were running in was fairly small, which meant that anybody who'd been involved in a traffic jam, as soon as the traffic gets heavy, everything slows down and then it stopped.

And [00:26:00] so the runners started off renting nice and fast, and we were running around there flat out, and then we slowed down. Then we walked, and then we had to stop because you couldn't get past the people in front of you. Um, and all you could do was stand there and then turn around, cook the other side because you, you're now stationary and now getting cooked.

For those people caught on the inside, they were getting seriously cooked. So then they have to break out and move into the crowd a bit more to stop getting cooked. The people on the outside, some of them are getting cold and they're trying to get in, so it does get difficult, but I was never aware of any particular plan to run in any particular direction, and I would've told them, well, we can't do that because running backwards is dangerous anyway.

We need to warm the other side of our body.

Stevan: So what are some of the suggestions do you think we could do?

Lumos: Last year we had, sorry,

Cherie: I dropped. Yeah, that's okay. I dropped, I just dropped one in the chat, which is, uh, the idea that you have just stick wielding leaders. You think about like how a marching band has a signaler and the people don't need to be that cognizant of everything, but they can see the signal and they know [00:27:00] what the signal is doing.

Um, and potentially those two could be on radios, you know, two or three of them before across the run, um, on radios, um, to get a coordinated time. Um, but, uh, uh, it doesn't mean that the, the hippies will follow. Um, you know, and so there's that last year, um. Wasn't supposed to be doing it, but the sign was put in my hand and there was no one there.

So I did it. I did a consent walk. The consent club did it this year, um, which is really cool, which is the concept of nudity is not consent to no touching people in the naked run unless you have explicit consent to do so. Like the spanking game, no one's gonna spank your bottom because in the past we've had a lot of problems with that.

Um, and while I was doing the nudity is not consent walk, I helped people identify who their perimeter person was, gave them the instructions to listen to that person and the advice to keep the run in one direction. Um, and that was actually one of the more coordinated runs I've seen. I don't go in the run.

Um, I actually like watching the run. Um, and so, so it's a curio, uh, it's a curious like [00:28:00] hive swarm type behavior. Um, and it's quite interesting to, to watch it go. Do you have a solution, Pete?

Lumos: Um, well, to me the number one solution is don't go for small burn perimeters. We need reasonable side burn perimeters.

We need, I mean. We have to be honest here. Kiwi Burn has a very, very high percentage of participants who partake in the negativity fire run. And as we have a growing population, we have a growing number of negativ hippies who are trying to run. Therefore we need room to be able to run it. So if we can make sure that one way or the other, when the fig on the Saturday is prepared for the burn, then there is enough material further out to make that burn fairly big.

Um, so there's a fairly reasonable size, uh, perimeter for us to run around. Then we'll be able to run around there without having to stop. But when you give us a very small and the, um, the last, the year of, I mean the year of the [00:29:00] thecal with the classic, that was a very, very small perimeter, which meant that, I dunno how many people were running around there, whether it was a thousand or whatever.

That was a lot of people for a very, very small perimeter. So let's try and keep the perimeters as big as we can. So that we've got room to fit in there, because I don't think we wanna discourage people from partaking of the fun, um, and the joy of being able to just take your clothes off, run freely, and then when you're ready, come back, find your clothes.

Stevan: Okay. So apparently, um, this year, this year's Kiwi Burn was known as the Horny Burn. From some of the, uh, post I've read, there has been some, uh, some incidents where, where people were, were very liberal in terms of, uh, their, their, their sexual, um, behaviors on, on the paddock.

Cris: I mean, yeah, I don't know. I, I read, I read something on Facebook about an experience, uh. I didn't see anything myself. I didn't know about that until afterwards. Cherie, did you have anything?

Stevan: There was even suggestions of having like a red light district [00:30:00] kiwi burn.

Cherie: We kind of do, it's called the naughty corner. It's the screened off area where sex positive camps who are gonna host things like orgies or, you know, that kind of thing.

Uh, this year we had a bit of an issue in town planning where a couple of the camp that were hosting R 18 events of this nature were not included in the naughty corner because it's actually too small. It was, you know, the ratio of sex camps to other camps was higher than it has been in the past. Um, which may also explain, may the higher prevalence of the, um, outward sexual activity.

Right. Um, if there's not enough room in the naughty corner, then it might go somewhere else. I think one of the incidents that's being referred to is like, um, masturbation in an open tent in a more area. Right. And you can just see them walking by like this, um, a kink of. Uh, public fornication. And so, yeah, the, the conversation online has been very well engaged.

There's a lot of people discussing it, um, and the why it's happening and the what to do [00:31:00] about it side of things. It's hard to say. I didn't see any public fornication myself. Um, and so, you know, like when you look at social media and what people talk about after the burn, you know, it could be that, um, this, this thing is so.

Prominent to some people and they saw it, and so that it seems like it's larger than it's, um, but I don't wanna minimize the fact that it's happening. Right. It shouldn't be happening at all. And so the work we need to do now is to figure out how to prevent such activity from occurring in the future.

Lumos: Yeah. I think that, uh, the R 18 camps, I have a number of friends who are involved in the R 18 camps, and I wander over into the naughty corner and a few other places to catch up with them. I think those camps actually have their shit together and they do a pretty good job of a screening off their space, and B, when you walk into their space.

You don't actually get very far before somebody comes over to talk to you. So they do a very good job of running things. And personally, I [00:32:00] actually didn't see any public sex take, take part. I think, um, the incidence of, of somebody masturbating, see that? I don't think that, from what I understand, that wasn't happening in the sex positive camp.

That was just somebody sitting there in, in, uh, in their camp deciding to, uh, have their thing off. Um, and so an R 18 corner is not gonna make any difference to that. People having took their story there about people having sex during the, the naked hippy fire run, well, an R 18 corner is not gonna make that any, any different.

I think the key thing we have there is it's an education thing. A lot of the things that we, you look at that are on that Facebook conversation is about education and engaging with our participants to make them understand that there are a lot of things which. Are not generally acceptable to our community.

Uh, radical self-expression, um, doesn't mean you can do anything you want. It means that it has to be within what our community expectations are because there is that, that conflict between radical self-expression and some of the other ones [00:33:00] which like community. So I think we've just gotta work on, um, education more.

There's a part of me wonders. I'm no longer involved with it, but whether or not Rangers were actually having an effect at QE Burn with, uh, dealing with some of those situations, part of their job is to be eyes and ears and to help participants, um, negotiate problems, um, and come up with solutions amongst themselves.

If you don't see something that's, that's acceptable, then help. How do we solve that problem?

Shelley: Yeah, I mean, I saw, I saw a couple having sex under a blanket at, at the back of a theme camp, two, two kiwi burns ago. So it's, it's definitely not a new thing. I didn't see anything this year. Um, you know, friends of mine did, um, the, the masturbation incident was actually in my neighborhood, and so, you know, it, I think Lumos is spot on that you, you know, you, you can sort of get more, more things in place for R 18 camps, but actually they actually have everything all in place and it is about education.

And people, [00:34:00] um, you know, people are like, oh, it's a very permissive community. Uh, but it, but it does have like guidelines as such or just natural. Politeness or, or etiquette or, but you know, people get in the moment and you know, sometimes when people are in the moment, they forget all those things, uh, that they probably shouldn't be doing in someone else's camp.

Cherie: It's an interest, interesting culture and community thing because we like to think of ourselves as anarchistic, but actually what tho those public sex acts and masturbation is illegal and, but we do not allow illegal activity in terms of this. So there's been a, a wide discussion across Kiwi Burn for a couple of years now about whether or not consent should be a principle.

Um, and I don't think it needs to be because at the law, um, and so you know, it's policing this as if this is an illegal act as well. It's not just go give them a don't do that again. It's uh, actually you need to leave the site kind of level strictness about it. And once you start being that hard line about [00:35:00] it, it will decrease in its activity.

Because a people who would've been kicked off site and flagged in. Um, so we can keep our eyes on them with the rangers 'cause they've passed people who have done this before and people will be deterred from coming back if that's what they're here for, right? This like radical self-expression princip, uh, principle does not mean you just can break the law because you want to, right?

Um, so seriously, I also really think Lumos is very right about the education piece and what Shelly's saying as well, it needs to happen both on the paddock and off the paddock. Um, and it needs to be multi multimodal. We have a code of conduct that no one reads, like turns and conditions on a ticket. You know?

Um, you can't just give written information and tell 'em to navigate a difficult to navigate website to go find what they need. This is what you're doing now, podcasts that people can listen to, video information. In person gatherings where this is the thing we're here to talk about. Um, in order to affect changes, it can't just be, we've written a new document, [00:36:00] uh, that has, uh, improved code of conduct and we can't try to think that we can solve this with process on the paddock either.

'cause our process on the paddock is always going to be responding, not prevent. And so it's a complex issue and a challenge. I'm, I'm really grateful that the sponsor podcast wants, wanted to raise this one with us because I think this is a global issue across burns and is also just a global thing in the world that, you know, us as a microcosm of the world, uh, need to be.

Doing our part towards healing.

Cris: I, I found the, um, environment, the experience of being at Kiwi Burn incredibly safe. Like I said, I, I felt pretty comfortable being naked more than I usually do. Um, so I was super impressed by that and I impressed to see the consent monitors, um, the whole shebang. Um, I come from a background of working at university residences, so with undergrads, and so I've [00:37:00] dealt a lot with consent and, and all that sort of stuff.

Um, but also active bystander intervention is a really important thing and I, I think, I'm not sure that really happened with some of the stuff that's been talked about on Facebook and, and fair enough, if people don't feel comfortable to intervene, but maybe we need to have a conversation about that as well.

Like, um,

Cherie: tell a ranger

Cris: Yeah, exactly. And hand it off to them Exactly where were the rangers. Yeah, totally grab a ranger for sure. But yeah, I think people, um, need to be encouraged to be empowered to actually step in and say, Hey, this is not cool. You can't do that.

Shelley: Totally agree.

Cherie: I just have one more thing to say on the, uh, sexual violence thing, um, that we can cut into it.

What I wanna talk about is a lot of people on the Facebook threads are talking about this. This is a big problem. We have massive problem. Right? But then you have the counter of, none of us saw it this time. Right. I think what people should try to acknowledge, and I feel like the people who are currently leading the org are fearless way is [00:38:00] that actually Kiwi burn and all of these regional burns are organically growing things over long periods of time with loads of volunteers coming in and out, all doing work to improve it.

And if you look at kiwi burns from the past and hold it up against trash Renaissance Fair for our ability to handle this, our openness of discussing it afterwards, our, you know, everything we are on a growth pathway and the growth pathway will be. Speed up if we have more people doing the mahi, right? If there are more people who want to work on this education piece, if there are more people who want to work on, on the ground processes, um, we have a limited capacity and we have the key deliverable of an event.

And so the priority order on what you do is what it's, and so I'd like the community to realize that this is a community issue and it actually is community work that needs to happen. It's not a leadership problem.

Lumos: Yeah. I, um, personally I think that one of the things that we're seeing is [00:39:00] that there in, there is, there is possibly not an increase in the number of events.

There is an increase in the awareness that these things are perhaps not acceptable and ability to be able to, to say no, that's not acceptable. So we may have less incidents than we've had in the past, but because we're now less accepting of it. We're saying no. So it shows up as being apparently more incidents where in the past we would just ignore it.

I do know that we have improved talking to some of the, um, I, I, I refer to them as the, the boys because, um, they, the younger men and they're the same age as my kids are even younger, and they, they're growing up, they're becoming a bit more mature in their attitude to women. They're not at the finish line yet, but they are getting better.

And what was acceptable 10, 15 years ago. We all, we agree. Now, a lot of those things are no longer acceptable, so they are getting a [00:40:00] bit better at discipline themselves. And as a group deciding that no, grabbing that, that bum, even if it's acute bu, is not acceptable anymore. Whereas 15 years ago it happened and nobody cared.

Now we're saying, no, that shouldn't happen. So I think that that's the positive side of it, which shows up as being a, as a, as a negative in the short term because we are working towards being less accepting. Unacceptable behavior.

Cherie: It's an excellent point, Lumos. It really is. And it's, that's the showing of the growth that I'm talking about.

If we hadn't grown this way as a community to have these views of it, then we wouldn't have had the reporting and the engagement that we got on Facebook. Right. Um, and so it is a wholly positive way of looking at, at it, but that's without minimizing the extent of harm that happens. Yep. Even if it's one.

Right. And I think, I think it's unrealistic to think that we will ever have a burn where there isn't one, because [00:41:00] we always let new people in. Uh, and the percentage of new people is often quite high. I think this year was high, I should look the numbers up. And so, you know, those people are coming in and they don't understand the culture that they've walked into.

And so it'll continuously be work within our community to hold people accountable for what's they've done and help educate the community. And it will never go away. You can't fix this one.

Lumos: Africa Burn have an 11th principle, which is one of their official ones. Each one teach one, and I think it's been adopted in a couple other places.

If you're responsible for bringing a couple of newbies into the, into our burner community to the event, you accept some responsibility for helping them to understand what is acceptable and what is not. And I just

Cherie: do, do they also hold the person accountable if there's an incident. So like if I'm fostering two friends in and then they do something awful, are all three of us at held to the, to the thing?

You know, like it was my [00:42:00] trusted word that brought a person in that did something really awful. You know? Um, what's the impact on me? Because it's all well and good to talk about it and try to educate people through conversation and activity, but it's the holding accountable side of things that I think

Lumos: I agree with that weak.

Um, education is always a first step, but people have to be more accountable for their actions, um, in many ways.

Cris: Could, could some sort of a solution be to give, um, burgeon a, a different color wristband. And so you just know that's a burgeon. You go talk, you go talk to them, you go,

Cherie: I love that.

Cris: How are you going?

Like, you know, let's talk about how's your burn going and do you, do you know, what do you know about it?

Cherie: Everybody has to be aware of the banding system. So, um, my nephew came this time, um, he was there last time. He's 12. He's got his minor wristband on. Right. Um, but I only knew what the minor wristband looked like because I had a minor, and this minor looks old enough as well.

And he [00:43:00] was offered, you know, like cigarettes and um, alcohol and all kinds of things and he is a good kid. Yeah. And so he was like, I'm a minor, like shaking it at them, you know? Yeah. Um, and so I don't know that we do enough there to let people know that there is actually a way of identifying anyone.

Right. Um, so

Cris: yeah. That's a good conversation to have. Also,

Lumos: I don't think you can, um, segregate whatever virgins, uh, virgins, whatever you wanna call them. I do know, for example, that, um, one of the camps, HBA, they run a a 1 0 1 workshop on the Thursday and I go along there and help, uh, the captain run it and we got 30 odd participants and those people were asking the right kind of question and doing the right kind of things.

Uh, do I, yeah,

Cherie: the kind of people who will show up to that though are the people who want to learn about it. Yeah. Not the people who don't want to learn about it, which is our target audience.

Lumos: And I don't think having a [00:44:00] different color wristband is gonna make much difference. I do admit the, um, the situation with minors is a problem.

I do have a, a young friend of mine, she's. She's very, very pretty. She was very pretty and she certainly didn't look 16. Um, she looked much more than that and she was there a couple of years ago. And one of my friends, um, who's well past 16, um, started chatting to her and I went over and when I saw them and had a chat to him and said, um, you realize how young she isn't?

And he looked at me and I said, she's way too young. I rip your off.

Cris: Look, I, I actually think, you know, as me as a first time burn a kiwi burn, you give me a different colored wrist. I want people to talk to me. You know, like you, I, this is a different experience, a different environment than I've been to before.

Let people know that because I would've loved people to come up to me and say, it's your first burn. I'm like, well, not really, but I'm first Kiwi Burn. I would've loved that chance for people to talk to me. I dunno. So, who knows?

Cherie: It's a good, it's a great community question. Let's [00:45:00] ask our community how they feel about this idea.

And the people who are in our, like Facebook group, for example, we just poll them. Uh, the proportion who've actually been to Kiwi Burn is well. Um, and they're mostly people who haven't been to Kiwi Burn, um, who are engaging in trying to figure out how to come, right. Um, and so you could be asking people who've never been how they feel about being identified, as well as about, um, PE experienced burners about how they feel about the efficacy of doing this.

And so that could be quite, quite an interesting conversation, Nick. Cool. So it kind of segues from this topic into the next one on the list here, um, which is about thefts and damaged property. Um, and so I'll just give a little summary of what we've been seeing on the online discourse. This is the second year in a row that, uh, people's personal property has been stolen because it's a national flag or a flag of significance.

This year, quite a number of Palestinian flags were stolen. Um, and, [00:46:00] uh, also some al Maori, uh, flags were stolen. Um, and there are a lot of people who are pretty upset about that behavior. Um, and I'd say it fits into the same category as damage of property that's not yours, you know? Um, and this is, this is really a consent issue.

Um, you know, not touching something that doesn't belong to you. Uh, theft is obviously illegal as well. It's political in nature. The flags specifically. And so. I suppose the people who are stealing them feel like it's their right to radically self-express a political view by stealing a national flag. Um, and the community is calling for leadership to do something about this.

Anybody got a comment?

Lumos: Yeah. Um, yeah. Okay. So the theft thing, um, if we ignore the flag thing for now. So for years, theft has occurred. Sometimes it's, people in particular camps decide they want to play a game. [00:47:00] So it was popular for many years for one of the camps, two couches in the rug, to have at least one of their, or both of their couches stolen by other camps.

Um, this was non-consensual theft and they were in the past. Some of those things people would play along with it. We do have legitimate games, effectively, of the lack of a better word, capture the flag, which is now actually capture the, the big dick that gives people the opportunity. To do that sort of thing.

And that's done it on a consensual basis. But going back 15 years ago, I've had our camp trampoline stolen by another camp, and we didn't find it until just about everybody had packed up and we found it abandoned in the corner of the field, and then we had to try and move it back, take it down, and store it away.

If we had left, we would've technically been responsible for leaving Moot Behind because somebody stole some of our camp and didn't bother to tell us where it was. They just hit it into place [00:48:00] and we were lucky enough to be able to find it. So theft. These people who do these things think they're playing a cute game, but the reality is they're stealing your shit and you just get pissed off when your shit gets stolen.

And that falls into the same category as the people who think it's fun to break out. As an artist, you put a lot of time and money and sweat and blood into creating something and somebody decides that they wanna radically, um, test it out. And physically break it. And they thought that was cool 'cause they were just interacting with your art piece, even though clearly it was obvious, it was never intended to handle that level of physical violence.

They decide to test it and they don't care. It's not their art piece. Um, as a camp manager and as an artist, you get very upset when these things happen because it's your time and money that they're destroying. Um, you put a lot of love into it and they're just having, having fun with your shit and you don't [00:49:00] Yeah.

Cherie: If we are talking about damaging art, it's not just damaging art, but disrespecting art as well had a report in of somebody having sex in the pur de mo cocoon, um, which is an artwork, not a bed. Um, and, uh. Multiple instances this year of, um, artists reporting disrespect of their artworks as well as the damage, um, reports that we had as well.

Uh, for example, my own artwork, the Anglo Fish, um, I discovered loads of empty ANGs in its mouth when I went to take it down two days after Exodus because somebody thought it was funny to feed the Na Nala fish, some nags, but it had signage on it that was leave no trace and about how it was made of festival litter.

And so it was completely counter to what the artwork is about and also completely counter to what the theme of this event was. Um, and I found it extremely disrespectful. You know, uh, I still have those nangs 'cause I had to take 'em home and, you [00:50:00] know, so there's this, this layering of respect ultimately, um, across all of this, respecting somebody's right to raise their national flag, respecting somebody's right, like artwork that they've put their heart and soul into.

Respecting the theme camp spaces and the hub spaces and not leaving your trash there, you know, um, it, it really is a, um, has disrespect at the heart of it.

Shelley: Yeah. I used to be part of a, a large cell.

Stevan: Yeah. Speaking about trash, there was a high incident of, of mo uh, this year.

Cherie: I just wanna let Shelly say her thing there.

Yeah,

Stevan: yeah, sure.

Shelley: Oh yeah. So, you know, I used to be part of a large sound camp on the paddock and, you know, there's always, there's so much moot left and I saw a lot of moot. Um, yeah. So, you know, a lot of people are disrespecting spaces, artwork generally, like they have been for a while. But I mean, this, this year maybe it's, feels like it amped up a [00:51:00] little bit.

And maybe that's another, you know, education thing. And I don't know how that get, how, I don't know how that plays out. 'cause you know, team camps obviously have a part to play when it's there. Their camp affected very hard when there's loads and loads of people at your camp, people ignoring, you know, walking into a space, it says, take your shoes off and just walk right past it with their shoes on.

Just something as simple as that, which I saw so many times and I'm like, okay, just quietly tell them that, excuse me, this is smoking, you know, smoking, it's

Cherie: smoking in an area that says no smoking. You know, there's loads of options, but like, um, obvious examples of this kind of thing. If things, there's no climbing, you don't climb it, you know, like,

Shelley: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lumos: Personally I'm happy to issue thing,

Shelley: I guess.

Lumos: Yeah. Personally I'm happy to issue tasers to those people who, um, wanna maintain their areas, but

Shelley: Consensual tasering.

Cherie: So I can speak to the Moop issue quite strongly because loss [00:52:00] probably is held in the hub. And so yeah, it's, it's one I know quite a lot about. Last year there was no one there to deal with loss property at all. Um, and two weeks before the event, me and Danny, and it's mostly Danny, who's my sibling, said we could do it out of the hub and we were gonna take a stance like this, valuables go to the depot, right?

Um, so if you've lost your valuables, something is important, uh, you can get get it there. If it's anything else, that's your shit and that's your problem if you've lost it. Oh, no. Poor you, you know, um, as the sort of the attitude we took. So we put boxes out on every paddock that was possibly lost items, possibly lost on the lower paddock, possibly lost, you know, and if you possibly lost your shit on the lower paddock, you could go check those boxes of shit and see if it was there.

And then every day we would bring it back to the hub where it became probably lost. It's probably lost now. Um, and so loss probably sits in the hub all week and people can come and look through it. We'll write down in a book the thing they've lost, and we can try to match the [00:53:00] items towards the end. Um, and then once it leaves site, it has lost property.

It's properly lost now. Um, and we work to reunite people with their items. This year we brought back the lost property from. From the previous year hoping that we could get some of it back to the homes. And we had planned on having lost probably Pirates who were wearing the lost property from the previous year, theatrically going around to the theme camps for Booty and bringing it back to the hub, theatrically going around 'cause I'm the arts and so, and Danny's arts too.

And so we're, if we're gonna take over a side ops thing, we're gonna do it with smart. Um, and unfortunately zero of the lost probably pirate volunteers who we ticketed showed up. And so it was just us at the end with all of the lost property. And it was enormous. It was so much bigger than last year.

'cause we had both and we had the ignition loss property and the last two year plus last year's ignition loss property didn't come close. The clothes line was fully overloaded, plus close on the ground. Piles of shoes. It was ridiculous amount. [00:54:00] And when you have a theme of the trash Renaissance Fair, it was, it felt like a slap in the face.

The amount of trash and moop that we dealt with through the hub the first time I checked my mailbox on the Thursday, I opened it and it was full of trash. Nothing nice in there. Nothing telling me where I should go for an event. Trash, like used baby wipes, level trash. Um, and it broke my heart. I lost my shit on the street because like, what the hell is that?

You know, we put our heart and soul into the service camps and there's loads of volunteers there facilitating community members to do stuff that they can't do 'cause they don't have a space or a resource to do it. And they loved everything we did. We had full houses all the time, uh, across our spaces.

And I'm sure somebody thought it was funny or they didn't think about it and they were like, I've got some trash and there's no bin. I'll just put it in here. Right. But the impact on us was really, really massive. Um, because. It, it just didn't make sense. I went down to the forest on Sunday morning. I must have been one of the first ones to go in there after the night [00:55:00] party of the effigy night.

Um, it was full of trash, hundreds of cans and bits of paper, and so I picked up as much as I could and on my way out I see some good burners in there picking up as well. It was. Disgusting behavior that you would normally see at a commercial event. Um, and so I wonder how many of the percentage of, of new burners there are coming in here expecting it to be just like other festivals, right?

Where there's a crew of people whose job it is to pick up the trash. We don't have that. Or you don't have a crew. You have to. I wanna change radical self-reliance as a, a principle to radical responsibility because you gotta be responsible for yourself. And that's what the self-reliance thing is, right?

Um, you don't, uh, you balance it with communal effort. We help each other out. Right. But you are responsible no matter what. Um, right, right. Surely. Um, and so it was extremely disappointing to see that ex a higher level. You could argue that [00:56:00] we have a larger population than we've ever had, and the, uh, percentage of moop per person is the same, and it just looks like more because there's more people.

Um, but I don't think so. I I really don't. Yeah, it was, it was extremely disappointing.

Shelley: Do you think like, something as simple but annoying as signage leave, no. Trace signage would be helpful.

Cherie: Could be

Shelley: like an educational thing that throughout the, throughout the, on the, on the different, even though, you know, obviously you think, well, why do we need to do this?

But maybe it's, it's something that could help educate.

Cherie: We are gonna be doing a series of drop offs with it. So Danny's gonna take the lost property to the main centers and we'll host. Something. We're talking about hosting an arts decompression round for fundraising, for repairs for the manta ray as well.

Um, and combining them and using, doing the theatrical thing again. Right. Show people the scale of it. Make a huge sculpture out of all the cups that were left over. Um, and if you find your cup, you can Jenga game it to get it out of the thing, you know, like to, to, [00:57:00] to really show the scale of what we're working with.

Danny has a whole storage unit in Martin that is full of it and it took us many loads to get it off the paddock. 'cause there was only two of us in one van.

Shelley: Yeah, it's crazy. I saw her post of the photo.

Cherie: Some of it's high quality stuff too, you know, like high quality stuff. And a lot of people would come to the lost property and then go, I've lost my blah blah thing.

And we're like, we don't care. You lost it. Have a look. You know, like as the attitude we're giving people, um, because it's not our responsibility when you've lost your cup.

Shelley: Yeah, absolutely not. I guess I was meaning more for the, just for the moop, you know, for. The shitty cans and the shitty baby whites.

Like, like is there, you know, would it help to have more signage just generally around the paddock to just remind people that it's leave no trace? No, I don't know. But it might be something worth thinking about

Cris: do is how's the, um, like social media interaction before, like in the lead up toe burn, you know, like is it, [00:58:00] could you kind of feature a video showing someone, you know, unpacking the bag that they take with them every day that has a little Ziploc bag?

You know, just like that basic burner stuff that maybe everybody's not getting that info and this is what you need. You need to look after yourself, you need to be responsible for your shit. Yeah. I mean, I went to one of my first burn. I gave someone a beer, they the bottle and I was like. Maybe it was 'cause it was a bottle, I'm not sure.

But yeah,

Cherie: we also had a lot more glass on the paddock than ever before as well. Um, I feel like the new burners who came in this year didn't get the memo on a lot of stuff. And it could be 'cause they got their ticket last minute. Um, a lot of them did because when the step two cleared, but it could also be like the, the most of this is only contained in our survival guide and the high anxiety neurotic type is gonna read the survival guide.

And the person who's been to tons of other festivals is gonna be like, I know how to do a festival. Right. And they're [00:59:00] not actually gonna read. The differences here. Yeah. So I love the idea of this video thing. Um, and I actually think that could be a really good shared resource for firms across Australia and New Zealand where it's, it's the same information that needs to go to all those places.

Right? Yeah. Um, and I agree with the idea of the comms team releasing this information over the, you know, week two weeks beforehand because they're not listening the way we're doing it now. Yep. Yeah. I think there's many points in, throughout the conversation we've had, which could be included in that for sure.

Shelley: I agree.

Cherie: It's tricky because we, we need to communicate quite a lot of stuff in that lead in as well. Yeah. And so it's a balance of information, uh, and, and things like that. But they, they did a lot of fun stuff this year in the comms team, which it was really well received. Um, you know, some great, great satirical pieces and all these kinds of things, but that post of a satirical piece.

Is coming at the cost of a important [01:00:00] education piece in terms of our ability to consume information that's coming in. Yeah. Um, so it's a balance. But if you can make these things hilarious, which we can, because we're all arty types, right? Like you make it funny, you make it that something that people wanna share with their mates.

'cause it was so funny. Um, then the message will go, right,

Cris: someone dropping.

Lumos: There have been some very good videos we have made in the past, um, covering the 10 principles. Um, and I'm pretty sure we have the rights to, uh, to use them. Um, so there's a thought. The other thing is when you come in, most of, I would assume that many of our newbies are coming in on the first day, which means they're probably gonna be sitting in the traffic for a while.

We used to, in the old days, have signage up on the [01:01:00] approach. Two gates telling you lots of things because you're supposed to be sitting in your car waiting and slowly moving along, waiting and waiting to get to gate through process. There's opportunities there if people are stuck in their car, that they could be signage up reminding them of some of these things, uh, perhaps to make them more interesting.

We interweave them with what used to be some fairly humorous politic sayings that were based on the themes, um, that we used to do. So maybe there's another opportunity to hit people. Education is our number one problem, I think, um, in so many different places.

Shelley: Yeah, I like the, I like the though of doing that, like as people are waiting in their cars.

And, you know, it could, could be a, a little, a poster of like, have you got your moop bag with you? That type of thing. As well as written messages, you know, just, or just texts. But I'm also like Lumos, when I was speaking to you last week, like you commented, uh, on the, the [01:02:00] Virgin Meetup at HBFA, that the show of hands for how many people subscribed to the Kiwi Burn Newsletter was like one or two people outta 30, something like that.

So, you know, there's,

Lumos: yeah, there wasn't many. Yeah. But an education,

Cherie: they're not, they're not all on social media. They're not all. Reading the newsletter, you know, it's how do you get the message across? Yeah. Um, right. Is it, is it, I mean, I know greeters usually they talk about, you know, what's your favorite, uh, principle and have a chat about that.

But do you, do you need to have a few quick dot points in there for the greeters to share? Especially if they're a first time virgin. They're the frontier of education, right? Yeah. Um, and uh, they do it all in different ways and different greeters. We talk about different aspects of it, and it's kind of luck of the draw, which one you get, um, and what your experience is like with them.

And so if we have the virgin identifier, then you can do a, Hey, it's your first burn. Here's a few [01:03:00] things you need to know. Um, you know, uh, it could make this a little bit easier.

Lumos: Yeah. As an ex manager, I went down there times. And I did notice that, for example, some of the greeters process had degenerated into the good old, well, you're gonna get spanked.

Pick the spanking you want and what level you wanted at. And it's like, that's not really getting through an education point of view. One of the best greeters I ever got greeted was that, uh, blazing Swan a few years, a few years ago, and it was a young lady, probably late teens, but she knew stuff. We went through principles.

We even did the drawing line in the sand line, in the sand. And she did a really good job of running through all the principles and she didn't bother to ask me if I wanted to spank because I think sometimes readers get carried away with forgetting about the important shit and they just wanna have fun with you.

Cris: I think the welcome is really important and especially if you are a first time person, [01:04:00] um, it's a really good mix. Good chance to have a mix of welcome, fun. These are really important points you need to remember because this is not the normal kind of festival. Doda.

Cherie: Yeah. So this is, um, highlighting for me a thing that's kind of across the board in Kiwi, and I imagine other regionals as well, is the higher need for training among volunteering teams.

So you could loop this back to our conversation about the rangers and the consent issues and the, uh, conduct issues. Um, ranger training, um, needs to be more than just one on the paddock training session. And same for the greeters, right? And so the greeters, I think traditionally, um, this isn't my team, so I'm not a hundred percent, but they come in the day before and do some training and talking about what it is.

I'm sure they have an online meeting beforehand as well, right? But it's like if they're your key education piece, crewing with the right kinds of people and making sure that those people are trained, um, is pivotal. Is pivotal. And, uh, you could say that across the board for your sanctuary team, your consent club team, your rangers team, all [01:05:00] those wellbeing teams, um, that are there to hold the wellbeing of our space.

So improving training will help improve the presentation. On site will also help improve our further training. Each one, teach one, whatever you wanna call it, of our community and wider community. But it has to start at the people who are providing the information.

Stevan: Yeah. Lumos, you've been to Africa Burn, um, one of the 11th principle.

One of the added principle is the each one, teach one. How has that played out over there?

Lumos: Well, it's not easy, um, trying to get through to people because Africa Burn is a big burn. It's the, the biggest one after the, uh, girl regional. It's, it's tough trying to connect with people. I like the idea. I didn't see many examples of it in action.

Um, I presume some of that is of course, that it should be happening before you get to the paddock. I do know I was in there 2019 and their big push that year was if everybody could just [01:06:00] do one shift, there wouldn't be enough shifts to go around. Which would be a beautiful place to be. That of course never happened.

I did my 15 or so shifts as a rain ju that's what I do. But it's, trying to get through to those people is not easy. But the more, yeah, just trying to push this idea. Education, education, education. We need to keep educating people. And it's mostly, yeah, when you, when you come into this, this burner thing, it's different in the small burns, the way we behave and the way we're educated.

Different, the bigger burns. And there's always that a little bit of cultural stuff that goes on too, because some things may be accept more acceptable in some cultures than others, but it's a constant battle with education. You can never educate them too much

Cherie: because Pete's been talking about doing 15 shifts in health.

Everybody just sort one, wouldn't that be magical? And Kiwi Burn has, um, been thinking about and uh, working towards an all contributors model. Um, and so that's definitely worth discussing. So the idea's been talked about for a long time. Um, I went to my first EXCOM summit [01:07:00] for this round and it was raised at both summit about can we do this?

How do we do this? What does it look like? What are other burns who are operating on this model, doing, you know, things like that. And we came up with the idea to increase the ratio of volunteering tickets to non volunteering tickets this year, and try our best to create roles and get people crewed in and just see how it goes.

And it didn't. It didn't go. So the volunteers who we were recruit, so I created loads of roles in the art department and I'm sure the other facilitators did in theirs as well. And I'd say our year round numbers went up really well. But the total number of volunteering tickets was supposed to be on the order of more than the theme camps.

And it ended up being much less than the lottery. Once again, we weren't able to recruit into the roles 'cause of systems issues in our onsite volunteering processes and it problems that we were having around ticketing. And so it was volunteering, tickets were issued late and when people got the theme camp ticket, they told us they couldn't volunteer anymore 'cause they've committed to a theme camp.

And so we had to [01:08:00] re-recruit again. And then we sold through the step queue because we start releasing the volunteering tickets in a, in the un unspent art ones, the unspent theme camp ones go first and now you've got. 600 more coming out for the step queue and our step queue cleared. And so you could just sign up and get a ticket at the end there.

And what cleared it was us releasing the remaining 200 ish volunteering tickets that we'd not managed to get crew people in because we need to sell the tickets. That's our budget. And so we've gotta let them go. And when we let them go, our volunteers who were getting a step ticket now because it was easy to access, were like, I can't volunteer anymore.

Or I, you know, I'm not volunteering anymore. And we don't, uh, the irony of this, and they don't, they're probably not aware of the impact of this, is that we gave the volunteering tickets to the step queue. So we don't have any more to give out. And now we're short crewed. And we were very short crew this burn, very short crewed across the board.

We were short crewed and we like some pretty key roles. Like we had no site office manager. So that's, [01:09:00] that's not good. Right? Um, and we ended up under crewed from the numbers we were aiming for in the hub, and then half of the ones that said they were coming and had the tickets didn't show. And so we were like quarter accrued and we know that this happens.

And so we try to go for more than we need. And if we have more than we need, great. Let's do some shenanigans or make art or, you know, like, uh, anything but. It was, it was extremely challenging. And we had lead burnout, uh, on the paddock in the hub this year. Like, we just couldn't catch a break. You know, I did shifts for some of my leads because they were burning out.

I was sober and I know what they're up to, you know? Uh, we had to cancel a couple of the events because there was no stage manager who could do the technical 'cause the technical stage person didn't come. You know, it was, it was really challenging. And that's across the board. It's not just the hub, you know, or the arts teams.

Um, and so, uh, the concept of moving towards all contributors is great. Um, and a, a, a fantastic idea. The execution of it is a massive [01:10:00] challenge. In my opinion, I'd say we are, we are three to five years away from being able to move to that model. And we have a discussion channel in our, um, internal Slack where the org volunteers who are year round can speak about it because there are a lot of, um, fears around accessibility as well as nepotism of getting people into the volunteering roles and how do you crew in a fair way, you know?

And the only way to work your way through those problems is through discussion and then also trying things and seeing what work and doesn't work. Right. Um, but us just bulk bulking up, the number of volunteer roles don't work.

Lumos: I found interesting. A number of senior rangers, for example, I talked to, they were declined from being accepted as ranges because they got their, when they put their application in ranges were full and they were told, sorry, we don't need you piss off.

Cherie: And then they drop and then they dropped out and we're not full anymore. But now those guys are under responsibilities. We're doing well. Some like,

Lumos: when you tell me you don't need me, then I don't care. Bye. I'm gonna do something else.

Cherie: And I think that's wrong. I think the answer is we always need, [01:11:00] you and especially seniors, have got the experience, right?

And so that's a little bit on, um, the recruiting leads in each of the teams to assess that. Like look at the ratio of people who have reliable volunteering history, who you've put into your team versus people with no history. And making sure that you've got enough people with reliable volunteering history across your shifts so that if you get issues in the new blood, you can manage.

Um,

Lumos: now I've, I was ranger a lead for a few years there. You can never have too many seniors. Um, you can always find something for, for them to do. You want those people, um, agreed. And you also need them to do some of the not so, so desirable shifts. Not everybody likes doing graveyard shifts. Personally, I love them.

But then, um. They do at Blazing Swan is, we've got two special patches, um, you can work towards as a ranger. One of them is for clocking up enough hours on swing shift and the other is for clocking up enough hours on graveyard shift. And [01:12:00] they're two really cool patches, which are sought after by a number of us.

And I've done enough of those shitty shifts to have earned them, and I'm very proud to, because you couldn't pay me to do those shitty shifts. But if you gimme cool swag. I love it.

Cherie: Volunteer appreciation is something I wanna talk about as well because the swag history of kiwi burners, it used to be hoodies and then it was T-shirts and then it was a patch and then it was a sticker.

Uh, you know, it's a budgeting thing and as you grow and you're more volunteers, it costs more money to do swag. Right. We did art department swag for free 'cause it's a trash rent fit. So upcycled materials and it's just labor, right? Um, to alleviate the budget and swag for people who are doing different things.

But there are more ways than swag to appreciate a volunteer. And something I'd like to do for the Hub next year is actually create a new base there, which is about volunteering. So that during the setup and pick out phases, we're hosting the theme camps team, the art support team, the town planning team, and the safety teams, site safety teams.

And we're operating out of there. Uh, 'cause we all work together. And, uh, the rest [01:13:00] of the time it is a volunteer appreciation space and the departments each get time in there where they're hosting something to appreciate their volunteers. But then also people can come in and meet them and talk to them and ask about what it's like to volunteer in your teams and what do you actually do and you know, those kinds of things.

We can have the org structure diagram there as a decor and we can have the community survey data presented like, who are we, Kiwi burn and, you know, an information station in the hub as a central service around. Volunteering, why it matters and what it is, and to show people that there's actually a ridiculous range of ways in which you can contribute to the burn that aren't necessarily doing shifts on site.

If you can't show up for your shift on site, why don't you come do a little project with us that you can do for a few months at a time that suits you? You know, um, there are loads of ways that volunteering can be accessible and alleviate the load across the many, and it kind of ties in really nicely. To the gravestone work.

[01:14:00] Um, if we wanna segue into there, but

Cris: can I ask what, um, what are the regionals that have a complete, full volunteering, you know, aspect to them that do they work?

Cherie: So I'm aware of, but I haven't spoken to anybody yet, um, free, uh, Celtic Burn has this model in Scotland. And in New Zealand, the Raglin Burn has this Model Ignition tried this model last round, um, as well.

And the Northern Burn is looking at this.

Cris: Oh, cool. And is it, do you know if people don't pull their weight? Is there, is there any kind of an excellent question. Did I go on a list? Oh, you did.

Cherie: So, so feedback processes are really important, right? Because, uh, there's a few things. They could have been a no-show or a horrible person, uh, really hard to deal with or, you know, conduct violating or whatever.

Um, so that would be a red flag to, like, they shouldn't go into any team. And then they could have been a great person who showed up for their shift, but they're actually not right for that team. They'd be better off in a different team, they'll be happier in a different team or they're being more useful [01:15:00] in a different team.

And so for me, that's an orange flag. Great volunteer. Uh, not for us. Um, and also I would give a suggestion of where, 'cause I know the org well, right. And then the third is a green flag. They were awesome and I want them back. Thanks. You know, um, this kind of thing we're working on crew processes. There's a great crew development document that just got released by our new crew crew facilitator about how to get the information to the leads as well.

The volunteering history and the feedback that's come from leads about the volunteers so that you can actually read through that when you're looking at recruiting them. Of course. Yeah. So, uh, these kinds of things, like there should be consequences if you bail on your volunteering without communicating, right?

Um, often there are really good reasons why you need to bail and that's okay, but you need to be, and I'd like to get the message out to everyone that actually this is a co contributed event. You get more out of it, the more you put into it. And so the, not only is it that [01:16:00] we need you to do work for us, but it's also you will learn something.

You will meet people, you will grow. You will feel like you're a part of it because you did something to make it happen. And, and that's the culture we need to grow rather than a, I I have to go do a shift and I have to be sober and I can't go to the event that's on at the same time that I wanna go to, you know, like this attitude.

Cris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. But for me, that's the magic is the, the recipe, the community building, you know, that you come together with a bunch of strangers, you, you contribute, you, um, work towards the shared goal and, you know, three days later you're best friends for life kind of thing. I love that aspect of it and I'm all in.

Lumos: Yeah, and if you're a newbie burner, you have a couple of shifts, for example, on on greeters or gate or whatever, it's, you've now got an instant family. You're part of that crew. As long as they're doing a good job of supporting the people in that crew, I've generally seen that in the past. But yes, so you've now got this immediate [01:17:00] family.

You've got the friend you came with maybe one or maybe 50. You've got this crew that you're crewing with to do these things because that's what had to do to get your ticket. And then you've got this wider population of people, which you start randomly meeting. But I think it's important having that, that extra, you're part of a crew, you're part of a family, and that's important.

Cris: Yeah, totally. Anything else to say on the volunteering front?

Cherie: I absolutely love and adore every single one of the volunteers in the art department. They're all fabulous people. It's been a joy to watch them grow as community leaders themselves. You know, it's, uh, it doesn't happen without all those people.

Um, and they all care so much about it. And to see them on the paddock after we've been working for a year together, um, and celebrate with them, uh, what we see is it's a joy to be around, you know? And I'm sure that's true across the board. The volunteering core crew of Kiwi Burn are all fantastic [01:18:00] humans.

They roots

Cris: awesome. Yeah. And it couldn't happen without them. Yeah,

Cherie: that's right. And they all sacrifice in their lives to do it. Right. That's time where you could be earning money. That's time where you could be spending that with your family. That's time where you could be pursuing other hobbies, passions, you know, these kinds of things.

And so we need to show their appreciation to these people because we're nothing without them. And when people. Leave the feeling unappreciated by the community and the org, you end up with the issues that are being raised around that gravestone. Um, yeah. And so that's sort of the ambition of the New Hub project, right?

Is to provide a space for that face-to-face career appreciation that the teams are doing. So, um, the art department one, we, we not only invite all of the volunteers, but we invite all the artists because they're the beneficiaries of our work. And we wanna celebrate them [01:19:00] and all of their work as well. And we make it public facing and we advertise heaps because people who appreciate the arts would like to come and meet us and say thank you, you know, all of that.

And it's always a great event. Goes for a couple of hours and everybody's talking about everything you know there. And the IT team, they did their one privately. It was just like a internal private one they used for the um, closed spaces at the hub to do it. But the initial ideas we had for them, because IT team did far out solid work for us this year, building a port ticketing portal, incredible pay from them and very stressful for them.

And our original idea that we backed off of, because most of the IT team are very introverted people, was. Shrines gifting shrines for the IT team and a coronation ceremony of regalia that was made from IT waste. So we gave some regalia made of it waste to their, uh, private group, um, to show our internal appreciation for the work that they do.

But I wanted it to be public as a shrine where they don't have to be [01:20:00] engaged in it. So because they're an unseen team, people don't see it, they don't know it, they don't know how hard they work and they, they get thanked by their pe us in the org who see it. Um, you know, but like the community doesn't know.

And so like, uh, I'm hoping that this new hub can help have that outward to the community facing elements of career appreciation so that, you know, anyone who comes in to engage here can share that they really appreciate that people work to make the event.

Cris: Hmm. I love the idea of an appreciation, uh, what did you say?

Um, alter or,

Cherie: yeah, it was shrine or, yeah, it's like a gifting, trying lay a gift there. I love that team. You know, like it's a really great idea.

Stevan: Yeah. There has been talk about, um, adopting gratitude as a, as a, a added principle, as an A level or 12th principle as well. So yeah, it's a good idea. I, I love, um, having, having that, uh, communication of appreciation and gratitude towards others.

'cause it, it is, it is, uh, it is how it works. It is how, how events and [01:21:00] community works.

Cherie: Like, for example, in the social media, a lot of EXCOM has been having a hard time with it this year and we've got some good solutions for this particular problem. But we come out of the burn and a lot of us later, everyone asked and we haven't had time to cook on stuff and with.

The discussions around the heavy discussions around sexual violence, that there's, there's the odd, loud person. They're not a majority of any of our community, but there's not a very loud person who is telling Excon that they need to do better, they're not doing good enough, you know, like this kind of stuff.

Um, and you know, I've been on excom for two burns and not got swag for anything. Um, you know, I've like, uh, there are, the counter argument has come in as well with, um, experienced burners being like, Hey, um, didn't they just do heaps of work to make that awesome event you loved, um, you know, kind of thing.

And so it's across the board. You know, I'd like to do a just leads [01:22:00] appreciation. All the team leads, uh, they're incredibly hardworking, awesome people who, who make it happen. To applaud them in their community. Leadership is something I think the community should do for them.

Cris: And does that again come down to the fact that maybe not a lot of people know about the, the structure of how everything works and the roles and the teams basically?

Yeah. Yeah.

Cherie: Which is why my appreciation space where all the information is and the way to talk to people is, is gonna help us with that education piece. I agree. Yeah. Awesome. To solve the, we are fresh outta the burn and EXCOM can, doesn't like these heavy topics, right? They require care for consideration.

Deep thinking deep. They're emotionally difficult for us as well. And the solution actually came from my sibling, uh, legendary person that they're, they have been talking all year about an a team that they wanna build called the Council of Shit Stirs, um, it's art department, so we're gonna make it art. Um, and uh, the idea is that [01:23:00] there are a lot of people who like stirring up shit and some of the shit they're stirring is very important shit.

And it's really important that you help the community stir the shit and understand the shit that is stirring in the community and that you package that and pass it to the leadership team rather than having the leadership team have to pause through everything to figure out what's the important shit.

And, uh, that team can become live and active straight out of the burn, right where they're there stirring the shit as well, bringing brazing issues as well as moderating what's going on on there with the social media team and, and, and figuring out. Where, where the community priorities are. You can also have somebody put a joke out there about a complaints department.

How we need a complaints department that's a sub-team within the Council of Shitster is they feel the complaints and then they go up there and then the shit gets stir right. Um, and the idea is that the, these people interplay with excom and a cycle that works for excom. We can't stir the shit right now.

We've gotta do incident reports. [01:24:00] Afterburn thinking, you know, like the, the tasks on our plate are here, right? But we have a summit in April where the shit stir is, can do a dial in and they can bring us the summary of what's going on in the community and what are the important pieces of shit that people care about, um, to help people stop being shit.

Um, and so, you know, it's about working with the cycle and not demanding the thing. Um, I want you to look at this now and if you're not, you've gotta be better. It's actually, we do care about these issues and we are working on them, but right now our priority is compiling the incident report and doing our legal obligation around them, compiling our budget and making sure where we are with money.

You know, like it's really important.

Cris: I love that idea of having the Department of Sters to, to deal with that, uh, interim kind of reaction afterwards. Yeah, that sounds brilliant. I think I can see how that would be really give space to everyone to catch their breath and recover and yeah, get to the [01:25:00] summit.

Cherie: And they can have, they can have an onsite complaints desk as well. And you know, like they can make it a horrible, funny bureaucracy to engage with. Yeah. Um, you know, or, or you know, there's loads of great ideas there. Yeah. But it could be a year round team that operates and has an inbox for the complaints as well.

And they will escalate if it needs to go to conduct or escalate if it needs to go to excom. Right. These are trusted leads in the shit stirring who understand how excom into place with their decision making and time.

Cris: Yeah. I love that idea. That's another good one. Me too. Art department's full of I love it.

Yes, I can see that. It's great.

Lumos: Yeah, we just have be really careful that I've come in there, I've got this complaint, and I've got this issue and I'm very passionate about it. And this person behind the desk is just making fun of me. And now I'm getting more distressed and more stressed because they're taking, taking the piss outta my distress.

Um, so we just [01:26:00] have to be really careful how we handle that one. I think

Cris: you would definitely have to read the room and Yeah. If people were not doing okay, it would be pretty obvious. I, I would,

Lumos: well there's some pretty, uh, interesting comments being made. There's a Facebook post about, about this and there's a few people getting somewhat upset that it is, yeah.

Unnecessary shit stirring. And I can, I can see both sides of the picture.

Cherie: So the shit stirs, stirs are there to be that filter, right? Like they decide what to stir and what to not. And the social media team is moderating people who aren't shit in the shit stirring committee. On what they're doing to try to have that layer of safety.

But it's a developing idea and we gotta try it to see. And so hopefully we'll get a team of shitters. We've already got a list of names of people who we know should be in this study.

Cris: I think I would love to be in the Shitster team. I don't know how that would work coming from Australia, but that sounds great.

Cherie: Already when we are recruiting help you an email

Lumos: you, you could be an independent reporter.

Cris: Nice. Yep. [01:27:00] Okay.

Stevan: Uh, shall shall we, um, shall we end with, uh, talking about or continuing on with the theme of appreciation. Shall we end up talking about some of the things that happened, uh, during Kiwi Burn and, and giving out some fake awards, such as, uh, some of the things that you loved about some workshops or something, or, uh, some events, some shenanigans.

Cherie: The only things I participated in other than leadership level horror shows was the art. So let's talk about that. Um, your favorite piece of heart. This was the largest year for art. Most installations, most funded builds, most large art grants as well. The, and the two Burnables sawed, right? We built a new team called Art Support Services this year who had year-round people helping get the health and safety and event guide and, you know, all of these things going on.

Um, and then on the ground we did our first art support services. That wasn't just me running around like a maniac on an e-bike and it went [01:28:00] so well. All the artists loved the services and how much it helps them. And this is counter to bringing art to other festivals. Um, you do not get this kind of support where you go anywhere else.

And that's why we're building it here. 'cause we're trying to lead from the front is really showing in the quality of art as well as the numbers. I'd say this is probably the year with the highest number of first timer artists as well, given that a go and learning hard lessons along the way. But they all did brilliantly and there was incredible execution.

So highlights in the art for me, and I did get around everything. Um, and I, but I didn't engage with everything at night and in day, because that's the beauty of festival art, is that it's actually day night works and they're, and they also evolve and change across the event as well. So what was happening with that artwork they may have added to it across the event.

And you know, like it's a really, um, dynamic experience. Everybody loves the manter ray, right? The galactic manter in the forest. It was their second year here. And that flapping function, which was just so [01:29:00] absolutely beautiful. It is worldclass art. It's an incredible piece to the artist who made it should be, should be very proud.

I also really liked the cosmic pendulum, which was that string of balls. Every time somebody I walked past there and somebody was playing with it, it just drew me right in. Fantastic kinetic art, um, which is a rarer kind of art form as well, um, to see. And, and, and the manter ray is also kinetic, right? Um, in nature.

So people exploring these like engineering challenge modes in their artworks. I also have a gray art story that ties into last year's effigy, and I could hold it if, if we are running short on time and people wanna give more highlight, which was, which is a pretty interesting one and one of my favorites.

Um, we also funded performance artworks for the first time this year. Kiwi Burn on Ice, the musical production that was twice played at Center Camp, uh, hilariously the most incredibly awesome fun stage production [01:30:00] that you could have hoped for. And we resourced them so well with the hub as well. And, um, everybody with Full House, you can.

You can, you can get in there if you weren't half an hour early kind of thing. Like they were amazing. And it was this other really, um, strange one, which was aliens invading, uh, earth Party. And they were like dancers who were taking on alien characters and doing alien stuff all over the paddock. And I've heard loads of stories about how committed they were to that bit and how, um, excellent, uh, their impact was wherever they went.

Um, and so I love the idea that, um, we get beyond the idea that when we do our funding, that it's for building things, um, that sometimes you can need some money to costume, uh, performance or, you know, support musical, um, endeavor as well. And so it's really great to see it expanding. Nice. Shelly, do you pleasure.

Do you have anything, any highlights?

Shelley: Yeah, I actually, just going on from what Sheree said, actually, my, one of my high absolute highlights of Kiwi burn this year was Kiwi Burn on [01:31:00] Ice. It was so funny. It, it was just. Amateur as hell, but so, so much hard work. You could just tell the hard work and the practice that had gone into it and if you've been going to Kiwi Burn for a little bit.

There were a lot of in jokes, which, which were just so funny. Maybe they weren't funny to everyone. Um, even people that didn't know what they're about, because there was a couple of little digs, which were great, but it was just magnificent timing. Like, I don't know everything, the story, they're just brilliant.

I absolutely loved it and I also was lucky to see the Aliens twice and they, they were so in character, they were amazing. And then one of them came up to me and went. Hi, it's me, you know, and said who they were. And I'm like, oh, okay, that's cool. Uh, but they, they were just brilliant. They brought something really special to the paddock and people, 'cause people were like, what the, you know, it's not like one person walking around in an alien suit is like, [01:32:00] oh yeah, it's cute, but when you like, you know, got six or seven or whatever of these people kind of choreographed, I guess it, it was spectacular and unexpected and they were having a lot of fun with it, you know, because there was, that they had the element of surprise for the people that, you know, of the spaces they were walking into.

So they created just something very special and yeah, I, I agree that, um, art should be for, for, you know, it comes in so many different forms, not just physical. So, yeah, it was really good. I, I actually as a, I mean as a general highlight, I thought the theme camps, uh, were incredible. They just looked amazing.

Like people have put so much effort in, I mean, I spent a lot of time at sound camps. Um, 'cause I love music and yeah, the top paddock is the sound, sound paddock. And I spent a lot of time there. And yeah, just like all of them were, were amazing, magnificent, different in their own way, you know, they brought different personalities, um, created [01:33:00] really beautiful spaces, very welcoming spaces, welcom and welcom and very classy o overall.

I, I just feel that the theme camp game kind of goes up every year, just not in any sort of competitive way, but just in a, like, people are like, oh, they see what other people are doing and they go, oh, we could maybe do that. Or when thought of that. And yeah, I just think it's sort of getting more, well, I was gonna say sophisticated, but I don't mean like fancy, just, just really smart and, and welcoming.

Uh, yeah, just, just fantastic offerings and we know. The time, the money and the energy that goes into creating these really, you know, sometimes very large camps and, and just keeping them running and keeping them interesting and offering hilarious things sometimes, uh, which is, yeah. And I, and I do think with art that, I mean, I, I've been to Burning Man a [01:34:00] few times, and then one of, one of the things I took away from the first time I went there was interactive art.

Really, really captures people a lot. So, and it, and it really draws people in. And I think maybe the, you know, having more interactive art, not, obviously not breaking someone's art that shouldn't be played with, but um, yeah, having more interactive art. I don't know, whatever format looks like does really bring a lot as well.

Yeah. And um, lots of great, lots of

Cherie: that interactive effigy. Amazing.

Shelley: Yeah. Right, right. So unexpected and great. And there's that, I think that is kind of almost a burner thing of having that unexpected or slow reveal. So you're like, oh, hey, look what I found. And it's very Nico who, who, um, designed the, the, the effigy.

It's very much him having, you know, understated little Mr. Understated. Uh, but you know, having a, Hey, [01:35:00] try and see what happens here. And yeah, I think so many clever people in our community, it, it's great to be able to harness that and, and support, support people like that. And you know, like you, Sheri you were talking about having the hub business, you know, having all the artists come together.

And I mean, from that, I'm sure over the years there there'll be people chatting and they who end up collaborating and bringing something, you know, combining their talents and just bringing something even more awesome in future years. You know, I totally see that happening.

Cherie: That's exactly what happened from the last year's one to this year.

Shelley: Oh, okay. Right. So I mean, that is, you know, going back to that whole face-to-face thing that, you know, just that whole being there is, um, this, yeah. The, the, um, paddock was just so good this year. It's good to have more people.

Lumos: Yeah. I think both in, in the theme camps and in the art, we have big [01:36:00] a maturity that we've developed over the years, which is why the theme camps not necessarily getting bigger every year, but they're, they're a bit more polished with some of their staff and getting, getting more impressive.

And the art was certainly mind blowing. The manter Ray, um, is, well, the, the creators of the Manta Ray are dear friends of mine, and I spent a lot of time with them last year trying to get it to work, trying to get to fly. It took, it's taken over their life and they, they, um, brought it back with a, a lot of technical change, design changes to, to handle the fact that the, uh, some of the parts weren't up to spec that they were supposed to be.

And they created something beautiful and there was so much amazing art. Um, walking through the, the forest, the art was arranged, arranged nicely in the forest at night, that there was great art to be found. The only thing that pissed me off was the number of times I went down there to enjoy a piece of art, to find that there was a, a bunch of people sitting underneath the art piece who were partaking of substances.

[01:37:00] And it was just like, can you guys just piss off? You just want somewhere with somewhere to do your thing. I wanna actually enjoy this art piece, but I can't because you're sitting there talking about last week and, and partaking of your substances. I'm like, no, please just piss off. But I didn't. I was very well behaved.

I went back again and there was another group there, but eventually I did to get my chance to spend some time lying on the ground, um, looking at some of these art pieces because they look cool at night.

Cherie: We can cut this bit out, but, um, I spent a bit of time by myself in the forest on Sunday morning crying and carrotops here, um, was a very good listener.

Um, he's in the right mood as well for me to talk about everything that was going on. Aw. Um, and as the artist was leaving, uh, she had all these great characters there, right? Like, I am sure you met him, um, if you went down to the end of the forest. Um, but, but I asked her what was the plan for the characters next?

Where are they going? Where can I see him again? I'm bonded to this carrot now, and she gifted them to me. So [01:38:00] he, he there went I need them now. His name's Ox, that's her name for him. So yeah. Pretty good highlight for you, Chris.

Cris: Oh gosh, look, it's a more of an interpersonal one. Uh. And that was the, I was on a dance floor in the closet, uh, theme camp, sound camp, uh, Saturday nights or Sunday morning early.

And, um, having a lovely, amazing time, feeling very connected to the people around me, dancing to this amazing music, an incredible dj. And this short woman came onto the dance floor and stood next to us all and went, come on everybody. Let's go. Come on everybody, let's go. And she just like, everyone was pretty, like, pretty like low key, relaxed.

And then she just got everyone just driving, going crazy. And it was amazing. And then she left, she went, she was like, let's go. And she left. [01:39:00] And it was just a lovely, wonderful moment. It was, it was beautiful. So I just, I love the people, man. You, Kiwis. I did not, uh, meet any kiwi that I did not, uh, like so it was great. I loved it.

Cherie: I think some of the unique things that a kiwi that makes Kiwi burn water is, uh, are worth talking about across the regions. And it's the same for what makes the Australian burns very Australian or these other things. We are a bit silly. Uh, and we don't take ourselves that seriously. Um, you know, it's like fairly lighthearted, shenanigan based kind of stuff.

Um, but whenever I travel the world, people always talk about how New Zealanders a really friendly, like, we'll talk to you. You know, it's that small town vibe, but Totally. You know, uh, it's got that going for it. So yeah. That, that friendly but not too serious. Yeah. Group of people on the paddock.

Cris: Yeah. Yeah.

Um, b from Burning Seed and [01:40:00] I we're having a conversation about the fact that the radical self-expression feels less, uh, exhibitionism and more just authentic being yourself and putting yourself out there. And yeah, like dorky loveliness, it was great. Whereas, you know, at times, uh, the ones in, in Australia be exhibition.

That's what we, we thought may might have been a bit of a difference. Yeah.

Lumos: Could we just ask you Interesting. Yeah. Australians, please don't tell people how wonderful New Zealand was. Remember our number one priority when selecting this site from our old site was it had to be a river or a lake. Number two was not a gang town.

And I forget what number three was, so don't tell 'em about the wonderful river we have. Remember, New Zealand is a disused film set. It doesn't exist on many maps, so don't try and find us.

Cris: No. Yeah. Look, I, I've, I've heard for years that the kiwi burn tickets sell out in a flash and I haven't even bothered to try before because of that.

And, uh,

Cherie: we [01:41:00] did not sell out this year and we did not sell out last year.

Cris: Ah, okay.

Cherie: But it's because of a technical way in which we released the tickets and when. Mm-hmm. So it's a ticketing timeline thing we gotta figure out.

Cris: Right, right. Cool. Cool. But yeah, I had the best time. I, the people were amazing.

Everything was, I just loved it and I wanted to say thank you. Thank you all.

Cherie: The message of the Kiwi burn is just fucking camping is actually kind of an important one, I reckon, because a lot of people tie up their mana and ego and center their lives around the burns, right? And so if you have this big expectation around what the burn is gonna be, or what you're doing at it, or all of these things, it can really hurt you.

A lot of ways. And so this is hilarious reminder that we're just fucking camping on a paddock mate. Uh, we, there, there's some party parties happening, workshops happening, arts there, but really [01:42:00] just bunch of people camping. It's okay. And we do it every year.

Cris: Yeah, that's a, that was an awesome sticker I loved.

I don't think they may have came out on the last day. I'm not sure if they did before, but it was just great to get, I got one of those as well. Loved it. What else were we talking about just then? Sorry?

Cherie: Uh, workshops and other things. That's that theme. Theme camps and,

Cris: yes. Yes. Look, I, I spent a bit of time at, um, the.

Uh, very alternative gathering, um, 18 plus camp and went to a few, uh, workshops of theirs, which were amazing and handled so beautifully. And, um, I just loved the fact that there was 50 people in that camp. I think that's a massive effort and it's a great well set up camp and I think seemed well run to me and yeah, really interesting.

So I I had a great time checking that out. And uh, yeah.

Stevan: And perhaps a, a, a quick shout out to camp. Uh, lemme see. What was the name of the camp? Camp [01:43:00] Nipple? Clamp? Who were the, the victors of this year's adjudication and, uh, mint country club came coming second.

Cherie: I love CNC, I love what they bring. Um, Erin was basically the me of arts a lot a while ago when, uh, remember was a bit smaller and she was leading the artery after she stepped down from this facilitating tech things and.

Um, they every year bring incredibly good content to the paddock, their performance art based, you know, like that's less common on the paddock.

Lumos: That never happens at Kiwi burn.

Stevan: Well, we love, we love MCC here as well, burning seed. So they're in, uh, multinational camp.

Cherie: Yeah. Rhan. And Jamie, who leaded a, a incredibly hardworking humans who put a lot of effort into MCC.

And I guess it's kind of like what Lumos was saying earlier, watching the progression and as they refine things and they come back every year and it's amazing.

Stevan: Any other highlights you wanna mention?

Cherie: I [01:44:00] Any more highlights, shenanigans, silly things. I wanna raise this. We're not being as, uh, hilarious and funny at the end here as we probably, uh, wanted to.

Um. Oh, the Permit Crab was great.

Cris: Permit Crab

Cherie: Permit Crab was great. Yeah. Yeah. Watching the Permit Crab scuttle out and issuing the stage manager at Center camp, a permit for technical stage skills, um, was pretty hilarious.

Cris: I didn't see it, but the, um, the, the stealing of the, the boat, um, yeah.

Cherie: By the pudgy Dragon

Cris: Mink Country Club, I think.

And

Cherie: so that would classify as a non-con consented theft. Right. And everybody loved it and they thought it was funny, but maybe the artist didn't. I haven't spoken to them and I don't know. But then I think they maybe deserve it because they also, unconsented stole a pirate ship artwork from the hub and we had to go get it back as well.

And so I feel like their fair game if they're also stealing from [01:45:00] people and that's the attitude people hold. Right? Right. But like it's not cool to take a camp key piece of infrastructure and move it somewhere else. Mm mm-hmm. Probably was really funny. But there's potential for harm. Mm.

Cris: Yeah. Okay.

Cherie: I did warn everybody that I maybe wasn't gonna be so lighthearted.

So I have a, an idea and it's not just mine 'cause it's a good idea. So it's happening all around. And the idea is to not have a burn in 2026. There is a lot of systems work, this sexual violence area, there's volunteer burnout, thinking there's role creating that needs to happen. All the training that we wanna be giving people, all of that, all of that get bogged down by the key deliverable of the event this year, coming year is an ignition year where we actually lose quite a lot of the core people who do it every year.

Right. The regular volunteering people who choose not to go to Kiwi Burn and volunteer this year because they're doing ignition and they've only got so much volunteering time to give. Right. [01:46:00] And I would like to hold a working bee on site around January 'cause we have the lease of the land where it's not just working the infrastructure, but actually teams of people coming together in person for these conversations because that's where all the magic happened.

And we don't get a lot of time at the burn to do it. And whenever we are there, we're all like, all about it. Right? Um, and so to, um, sacrifice a burn year, um, for the, for the fast development and then continuing the annual year after that, I think is a very worthwhile thing to be doing. Um, and we're at a growth phase here in Kiwi Burn.

We've been trying to raise the population, trying to go to all contributors model, like there's so many things that we wanna do and to signal to the community that we're actually very serious about. All this work is to tell the community we'll not have a burn so that we can do it.

Cris: I think this the idea of being on site and at the time when it would usually be on and having those groups.

Volunteer kind of sessions is a great way to get more people volunteering and get them [01:47:00] enthused and connect them. The community building the whole shebang, like, sounds like a, a good plan for me.

Cherie: Cross department work that you can get done. Yeah. You know, like that you don't actually interact with those other departments.

We're all in a little silos doing our own thing. Yep. You know, the centralizing of things. Getting back to basics as well, you know, like don't over complicate it. Mm. And so I'm gonna pitch it to the community, pitch it to the leadership. We'll discuss it and make a call. Uh, there's obviously a budget question there and you know, there's a few other things, but I think it's probably a good call.

Um, yeah.

Lumos: Personally, I don't like idea, idea. I'm not overly interested in a seven hour drive to get to, um, the paddock to just sit there. And some other people, some people's a long way away. Um, I would much rather have some closer, closer to home meetings. I do

Cherie: Your home though, like it's, uh, we all live, we live all across the country.

Lumos: 11 years ago we had a town hall meeting at [01:48:00] Kiwi Burn. It was our first year on the new site and we turned around to the community and said, you have two choices. We get more people volunteering in the EXCOM and other key positions, or Kiwi burn will only be every two years your choice. And a bunch of people put their hands up and volunteered to make it happen.

So it didn't every two years, but we gave the community. Have was. Um, and basically it's an ultimatum. We haven't got the energy, do it every year with the people we've got. So call and the community stepped up and I was quite happy for well and community. Community, we have tried to grow every, every burn that I've been involved with, um, overseas, uh, with ranges and what have you, Africa, burn, seed, Swan, all those, um, have problems.

As you grow, you might grow by 10% and you get 2% more [01:49:00] volunteers. You might grow by another 20% and you get 2% volunteers. Your growth of people and volunteers starts to level off at some magical number. It might be a thousand people, I dunno, but somewhere around there it starts dropping off dramatically.

In our early years, we were getting 50% growth at Kiwi Burn and we're having no problems with getting enough volunteers, but. We seem to keep feeling that bigger is better, and I don't think that always bigger is better. Having said that, I'm one of the ones that does Kiwi burn and ignition and a bunch of other things because that's how I wanna live my life.

I will go to multiple events and I will put energy into multiple events. I strongly believe that that's what suits me. You've gotta decide what suits you, um, and what works for you. But when, yes, we need to ask the community and we need to push back on the community that it's their choice. If enough people don't put up their hands, then yep.

Yeah, maybe it can't happen. You need to give the community plenty of notice about that and um, [01:50:00] go from there,

Cherie: which is why I am talking about it.

Cris: Yeah, I think we've talked about lots of points that could be, you know, shared, whether it's beforehand in the runup through social media or at the gate by the greeters or whatever.

There are definite points that that need to be shared and talked about and, and get feedback on.

Lumos: And how do we connect with those people who don't use social media big times?

Cris: Yeah, totally.

Lumos: I dunno. Totally.

Stevan: Well, podcasting is 1, 1 1 method. I think this

Cherie: we have the, we have the email addresses through the burner, right?

Cris: That would be the case. Yeah.

Lumos: Yeah. I hope it doesn't go spam.

Cherie: Spam them. Yeah. Let's spam them. Yeah. And we'll spam them in a funny way and we'll do a lot of it. Um, yeah.

Stevan: We can also go knocking as well,

Lumos: whatever in that point needs be a multi-pronged attack to connect with all us, all of those participants out there.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, to educate them and ask them these, some of these important questions.

Stevan: [01:51:00] It's, it's what most cults do. They go door knocking. Door to door, try to get some converts. Yeah.

Cherie: Yeah. And it's like what Shelly was talking about, um, earlier, and we're doing this with the art department as well, is. Local in your region?

Burner events where people come together because we actually all like hanging around each other and it doesn't have to be a party. It can be, you know, like going to the beach together or anything. Right. Um, where it's just somebody's like picked a time and a place and they've made a event and you can share it with your communities and on our pages and, you know, these kinds of things.

Um, coming together in person is really the best way for, um, communicating some of these more tricky issues.

Lumos: Yeah. In Auckland we are pretty shit at doing that. We can't even get together at a pub.

Cherie: The fire and flow community manages us to do it though. Um, so

Lumos: they they are different to the burn. They, yes, they are burn if they're different to your normal burners.

'cause I'm one of both those people, the fire and flow community to come together because we want to [01:52:00] do that. We are very strong in that community word. And we want to, um, have some time together doing cool shit. Learning, learning cool things, seeing cool props, seeing the new tricks that somebody's learned.

And we do that, which is different to the average burner.

Cherie: Yes. So the art department tried for the first time that since I came on, we, last year we did costume making workshops in two, two centers in New Zealand and they were medium attended. And then this year we did trash swap events in two of the centers.

Um, and the Auckland one was pretty well attended. It depends on what it is who you're gonna entice, right? If it's a get together and do crafts together, you might get a hundred people. But if it's go to a bar for a drink, I'm not that interested. Um, and so it's about having a variety of ways of coming together, I think.

Stevan: Mm-hmm. Okay. Let's, uh, let's end this here. Thanks very much for coming together and having a chat. It was, uh, some really good, uh, discussion topics and, um, information sharing there. Appreciate all you coming together. Again, [01:53:00]

Cherie: I wanna say. Yeah, thanks to bonza and Steven and PY here. Um, this is a great platform, um, that you're creating here and, um, sharing with the wider communities.

And so wanna just shout out my appreciation to your mahi that you're doing here, um, because as we were just saying, it needs to be multimodal, um, and. This is a, a really good mode, so happy to come back anytime, um, and talk about any topics you like. Um, yeah.

Lumos: Yeah. And one our physical gathering, um, we'll have an online version of as well.

Um, it's King's birthday weekend this year.

Stevan: Yes,

Cherie: it lines up with the CAT Summit. I think

Lumos: for some of us it lines up with, uh, burning seed being the next week so we can go to ZA and then we're still in Australia, then we go to Burning Seed and then we come home. Um, it wasn't specifically planned that way, it's the way everything fell together, but Bonder is pretty much typically always on that King's birthday weekend and so yeah, be good to see some of you there in person.

Stevan: Yeah, that's right. Looking forward to meeting you in person.

Lumos: I'll be there.

Cris: I'll be there.

Cherie: [01:54:00] I'll try. I'll try. It might be difficult.

Lumos: Yeah, yeah. Come to that and come to see you as well.

Cherie: Yeah. I'll just quit my job and travel the world and yeah. Your job do the regional burns.

Cris: Cool.

Stevan: All right. Thank you very much guys. Appreciate Thanks. Thank you.

Transcripts transcribed by Descript AI