[Will & Kate] (0:05 - 0:26)

Burns of New Zealand, Australia and Asia, Radically making magic on the paddock round the fire, B-O-N-Z-A-A-R, Bonza Podcast.

[Stevan] (0:30 - 1:31)

Bonza, welcome to everyone out there listening. I'm Stevan Lay and on this special conversation episode about the regional Burning Man Network around the world, we have invited a knowledgeable and longtime Burner fan of the show, Jarred Taylor, to talk about their recent think piece titled, Is it time for Burning Man regionals to glow up? This episode will attempt to unpack and do a deep dive into this well-received write-up, chat about the key ideas and themes of the article and take an anthropological look at festival and Burner culture, underlining the scientific, philosophical, behavioral, social, psychological and spiritual aspects of the Burn experience.

Now according to the Burning Man project, there are over 80 official Burning Man regional events each year and if you include the unofficial, that's over 110 events each year, attended by more than 100,000 people and with community in over 70 countries, all created by the community. It is now easier than ever before to burn where you are. Welcome Space Elf, how are you?

[Jarred] (1:31 - 1:35)

Great, thanks Stevan and really appreciate you having me here.

[Stevan] (1:36 - 1:50)

Okay, let's kick off by, my favorite part of the segment is Burner origin stories, getting to know people's, how they got involved into the community, how they found about Burning Man culture. So what was your background, what was your origin story as Space Elf?

[Jarred] (1:50 - 2:53)

Mine was quite similar to probably most people. I got introduced to it by a friend and the first year they suggested I go along. I was kind of keen and expressed that keenness to them but really I was nervous about it because it's not something I had been exposed to before because I hadn't really even really been to a festival of that type ever before going to my first one.

So the first year I suppose you could almost say that I chickened out and it wasn't till the next time that the event came around that I had, over that kind of intervening 12 months, a lot had happened for me personally. I'd spent more time talking with my friends about it and got really super excited. So when the next opportunity came around I sort of jumped in completely.

[Stevan] (2:53 - 2:57)

So what were some of the apprehensions that you had? You said you chickened out. Was it some of the stories you heard?

[Jarred] (2:58 - 3:31)

No, it was more, I felt and of course, I couldn't have known before I went there but I felt like if I go it would change something and I would never be able to look back and I had that sense of that. I didn't know what or why or how that might actually transpire but I had this fear that I was making a decision that would then change the trajectory of the rest of my life and it did.

[Stevan] (3:32 - 3:45)

Yeah, so the change was something that people are not familiar or comfortable with. So how did you discover the burning environment or the burning culture in Australia?

[Jarred] (3:45 - 5:30)

So I've got lots of partial memories of my first event because after the first one, the next couple kind of meld together in a way and it's hard to sometimes now thinking back that far to kind of entirely distinguish what happened that the first one, the second one compared to then the fourth but that I think the first and the second ones were particularly muddled in my mind but one particular memory I have of my very first one is that like I'm probably naturally quite a shy person so being introduced into this very heavily social environment where it seemed to me like lots of people knew each other and because of the size of it at the time that a lot of people probably did know each other and I remember sitting on the sidelines of so many conversations and listening in and to be really honest, they were speaking English but they seemed to be speaking a language that I just couldn't understand what they were talking about. I couldn't fathom half of the conversations.

I just you know, I realized later on that it really showed the incredibly different world that I had been living in from the world of the culture which was you know being germinated within this particular regional event and obviously was happening you know all over the world and had been happening all over the world for a very long time in lots of different ways but for me personally it was like going to a very strange foreign land where you don't speak the language.

[Stevan] (5:30 - 5:40)

Yeah, the burn of vocabulary is quite strange to some people. It's quite weird. Is that also how and why you also started Orphanage, your theme camp?

[Jarred] (5:41 - 7:24)

So I started the theme camp in 2014 because that was in the latter part of 2014. So burning seed at the time would have been happening around September, late September, early October and that particular year because of my experiences with at least two or three burns under my belt, in that year I went to Kiwi burn in January of 2014. I ended up at Korea burn in June of 2014.

Oh yes, I forgot Afrika burn which was in April of 2014 and then I went to Burning Man in August of 2014 and so along the way after you know traveling effectively with just a backpack going to these different burns, I sort of really started to have a deeper appreciation for kind of what's involved in people traveling to burn events and what it's like to go to a burn event for the first time and so I had this idea of having a camp that would focus on being a place for people who it's either maybe their first time coming to a burn or they're coming in from overseas and that we could kind of bring those people together, share a resources and effectively provide a camp so that people felt like that they had this immediate family and that's what I suppose really the basis that the orphanage ran then for probably almost 10 years.

[Stevan] (7:24 - 7:35)

Yeah, continuing on your journey there, you also were heavily involved with volunteering in the community. When did you first start started volunteering? It wasn't the first year was it or second year?

[Jarred] (7:35 - 9:36)

So the first year I went to Burning Seed, I realized that because of my inability to really understand what was going on or the language, one thing I worked out that you could do that seemed to be something that was encouraged was to engage in some form of gifting and so I decided that what I would do on my, I'm pretty sure it was my second burn, I decided what I would do is to bring down a gas-fired pizza oven, pizza dough, pizza toppings and to make pizzas for people and pizzas were something that I already had a great love of making and found that through this act of making pizzas that not only was that something that apparently people really really liked having a pizza, you know, somewhere in the middle of a multi-day event when, you know, pizza is not exactly something that you kind of expect and I didn't necessarily have to talk to a lot of people in setting it up or making it happen but through that process I actually met an incredible number of people and actually then in effect kind of like broached that barrier of how to engage and communicate with people and it was through gifting, it was through food and I think now I reflect, you know, really fondly and enjoy so much the experiences that people offer in and around food and I often wonder whether, you know, they are like me in a way, introverts who have found that food is, you know, their way in to being able to not only be part of the event but a way of actually, you know, engaging in the community and it's also a sort of like a gateway introduction to volunteering.

[Stevan] (9:36 - 9:40)

And what kind of roles in the past have you volunteered with?

[Jarred] (9:40 - 11:52)

So I've ended up doing pretty much everything in one shape or another. There's a few areas where I haven't necessarily specifically been involved in but there's not too many of those anymore and they range from doing these types of roles at both small events and small events are great, right, because there's often a small number of people and so you're having to kind of, you know, do multiple roles whereas as you get, you know, to a much larger event then roles start to become, you know, often quite specialised where you're looking after a particular department. That's one of many departments.

So, you know, I've done everything from working in kitchens to parking cars to working on a gate, to doing ticketing, to being involved with art departments, infrastructure, town planning, theme camps. Yeah, I've had the great opportunity to be involved in a lot of those roles and something which I kind of realised later on was kind of behind it was that I realised that just for me personally, I find it really hard to ask people to do a job that I wouldn't be prepared to do myself and so by having done such a, you know, real array of jobs, many of them, you know, really hard work and not always seen by the people at the event, you know, oftentimes very much behind the scenes, it's really made it much easier for me to know what's involved in such a wide range of roles, the sorts of things that people need, the sorts of issues that come up and if I'm in a situation where I've got a team and have got people to assign to roles, it's very much my position that I wouldn't ask them to do something that I wouldn't do myself.

[Stevan] (11:52 - 12:05)

Yeah, so what kind of, well, what kind of changes or what kind of discoveries have you learned throughout these last, I guess, 10 years? 2014 was a massive year for yourself. What have you, what kind of changes have you seen?

[Jarred] (12:05 - 12:38)

So the changes I've seen can't be explained without reference to the other world events that have unfolded. You could almost argue that sort of peak burning, in a way, happened around 2019 and for those lucky enough into early 2020, almost like a similar period of sort of maybe like the Roaring Twenties, that period of, you know, great...

[Stevan] (12:38 - 12:39)

After the Spanish Flu you're talking about?

[Jarred] (12:40 - 12:41)

Yeah, yeah.

[Stevan] (12:41 - 12:43)

The pandemic, last century's pandemic.

[Jarred] (12:43 - 13:36)

Yeah, so that period in between the pandemic and then what ended up becoming World War II, where the music was on fire, the, you know, culture was changing, social values and attitudes were changing, attitudes towards sex and substances were changing. It was a period that across many cities of the world were some of the most outrageous and, you know, renowned times in their history. And so then came the pandemic, which had a huge impact in ways that I don't think has been really fully talked about and now we're seeing even more substantive impacts on the global stage as well.

[Stevan] (13:37 - 13:56)

And what about our Australasian Burner Community Network? We've seen how Bonza has really strengthened or made it more accessible for other Burners to learn it from each other. You've been also hoping to form all these other networks as well.

How have you seen that growth or that phase of it changing and evolving here?

[Jarred] (13:57 - 15:25)

Yes, I think with Bonza and, you know, I've got to give full credit to people like Justin McGhee and Leanna and many others that have been actively involved from when we first started it. But I think a couple of things were happening. One was that more and more we realised that there were lots of shared resources in terms of people happening across events.

And so as people were increasingly going to multiple events through the year, because it was, you know, possible for people to go to, you know, up to five different Burns without having to leave Australia. And I suppose if you include, you know, New Zealand as also a relatively short distance to travel. And so it made a lot of sense because of also the fact that we were in a relatively contiguous kind of time zone stretching from New Zealand across to Perth, which covers effectively most of Asia as well.

It made real sense to include and expand the range of events that were involved in the discussion and the dialogue and the opportunity to share and to learn from each other to expand to, you know, really as many different groups within that kind of time zone that wanted to be part of it.

[Stevan] (15:26 - 15:44)

I'm interested to get your opinion about some of the taste or flavour of these localised regional Burns that you've been to. So you mentioned Korea Burn, and then you also been to Blazing Swan and then, you know, Kiwi Burn is kind of your home. Tell us a bit about all these different flavours that, you know, that is out there for people to experience.

[Jarred] (15:45 - 17:02)

So one of the reasons why I was interested in going to Burn events outside of New Zealand, sorry, outside of Australia at the time in 2014, was I was curious as to whether they would be the same. And what I found, well, the same as what I had experienced at Burning Seed, because before I left Australia, I hadn't been to any other Burn events apart from Burning Seed. So Burning Seed was my only way of understanding what I thought a Burning Man event was.

And so when I then went to the others, what I was absolutely struck by was that when you were there, you knew that you were at a Burning Man event. They might vary in terms of geography. They might vary in terms of weather or the time of year or the size or the way that perhaps the local culture has its own, you know, creates its own flavour.

But all of those differences just made them really interesting and beautiful and unique. But each of them had this core sense that that made it undeniable that you were at a Burning Man event.

[Stevan] (17:02 - 17:19)

And can you describe what some of these localised events that you went to? Can you distinguish, like Blazing Swan is a dusty, you know, racecourse or Korea Burn is on a beautiful beach or whatever. I'm not particularly familiar with these other ones.

[Jarred] (17:20 - 17:20)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (17:21 - 17:22)

How can you describe them?

[Jarred] (17:23 - 20:44)

So Korea Burn, which I understand hasn't really been able to hold another event for a long time, but it was actually held near a beach. So, you know, a lot of people are used to burns being in inland areas. And so it was quite novel.

It was quite the novelty, really, to be able to have a burn near a beach. It was a tidal beach, so it wasn't what I would kind of, you know, as kind of like being a pristine type of, you know, tropical beach with lapping waves and palm trees. But nonetheless, it was on the coast.

And what made it a really interesting event is that there was a, in South Korea, there's a very, very large American expat population because there's a lot of people there, particularly with military and people doing, involved in teaching, particularly English language teaching. There were a lot of Korean locals that came along, but it was really fascinating, the really large number of people that came who were actually part of the U.S. military and they actually, you know, take leave from their military base and come to this burn. A lot of people had never been to a burn before, but a lot of people, particularly being American, knew somewhat of what to expect because they'd heard of Burning Man, you know, which was for them back home in the U.S. So even though they didn't know exactly what a burn would be, they had, I suppose, that connection with having heard about Burning Man at some point. And Korea burn was beautiful. I think it was somewhere close to about a thousand people. It was really interesting because the majority of people came in on buses.

There was, you know, there's not high levels of car ownership. So yeah, people were coming in by busload. So when the busloads would come in, the population, you know, wouldn't sort of, you know, go up in terms of like carloads.

It would, you know, the population would go up in the size of these extremely large tourist buses coming one after the other, after the other in these waves. So yeah, it was quite hilarious. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you get an event like Africa burn, which was quite deep in the desert.

And a drive north of Cape Town, three or four hours up into the Tangwai Desert with a road that was treacherous. And the road was so bad and so renowned for blowing out tires that they actually had a truck that would go up and down the road. And in the back of the truck was heaps and heaps of car tires so that they could actually help people repair their car tires that would get shredded by the rocks on the road.

And so just Africa burn had the sense that when you arrived, part of the excitement was that arriving at the event and part of the excitement was the fact that your car was still in one piece and that you hadn't died on the way.

[Stevan] (20:45 - 20:52)

Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, that is the second largest burn outside of Burning Man. Attendance wise?

[Jarred] (20:53 - 21:13)

Yeah, it probably is now. I think there was a time there when Midburn in Israel got very large before that also took a break. So Africa burn now, you're quite right, pretty holds the largest population outside of the US.

[Stevan] (21:14 - 21:26)

So your vocabulary must have been deeply expanded after experiencing all these burns. And also your knowledge, but also probably your understanding of, I guess, the importance of these regionals to keep the culture alive.

[Jarred] (21:26 - 22:39)

I'm not too sure that I really realised that at the time. For me, it was more that it was a fantastic thing to have this learning experience of being able to go to lots of these other events in other countries where you could just be so readily accepted. And just by being there was an opportunity to be able to have a conversation with someone.

And so it made it quite unlike other travelling that I've done, whereby people are often very focused on their own journey or they're in their own tour groups. And the opportunity to engage with people is not always that easy when you're travelling. And so the burns really were incredible as a way of being able to meet so many people from so many other countries.

I've not been to an overseas burn where I was like the only person from outside of the country. Already in 2014, these regional events were already getting sizable international populations.

[Stevan] (22:40 - 23:45)

Okay, let's talk about the article that you wrote, Jared. Were there any articles or similar thought process that was around at the time or previously? There was an article by the Y magazine.

I think no one reads magazines anymore, but Y.cob or something. The article was about Burning Man is over, but you can keep the party going year round. And this was written in September 17th, 2024.

The article was kind of saying that if you're not ready to say goodbye to Burning Man vibes, or if you're looking for Burning Man light, you can attend one of the many regional burns around the world. So that was a bit of a way to say that there are other regional burns in the world that's kind of like substitute. You can go there and still experience the Burning Man experience.

So that was one of the articles that I read around, similar to your thought processes. I want to know a bit about the article, about the background. First of all, the title of the article.

Can you explain that a bit more?

[Jarred] (23:45 - 23:49)

Yeah. Are you talking about the glow up reference?

[Stevan] (23:49 - 23:53)

Yeah. What were you trying to mention there? What were you trying to convey there with the titles?

[Jarred] (23:54 - 25:49)

I suppose I was just being a bit silly. I could have said, it's time for Burning Man regionals to grow up, but I didn't like the feel of that. And I felt that if I replaced it with the word glow, it made me sort of feel about how we've got lots of these regional events, 80 odd, I think you mentioned.

And sometimes I think that maybe these regional events on their own don't realise the amazing impact that they're having in a wider global sense. And I don't think that our regionals necessarily need to grow up because I think they already have grown up. I think that's part of the underlying own of the article is that these regionals have grown up.

So they're beyond that. So what can you do once you've already grown up? Well, we could glow up and perhaps glow up could be taken as a reference to how we could perhaps get a lot more fired up about the value of the regionals, the value of the network of these regional events that in many ways already exists.

And that this is sort of a really great opportunity for our regionals to shine. And it might turn out that the past few years we've seen as this real turning point from the regional events kind of being seen as the poor cousins, the thing you go to if you can't get to Burning Man, who now being actually, they may well be the place to be much more in preference to actually going to Burning Man in Nevada.

[Stevan] (25:49 - 26:03)

Yeah, I thought if the title was growing up would have been more clickbaity kind of thing. But yeah, after reading the article, the title makes sense. But did you have alternative titles that you had in mind or other ways to describe what you're thinking?

[Jarred] (26:03 - 27:22)

This article actually started as something else last year, because probably I think it might have been around July, August last year before Burning Man took place last year. There were actually similarly lots of burners writing articles. There was lots of articles in the news media that was in part an ongoing critique of Burning Man, the event in Nevada, rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly.

I wrote an article that I didn't end up publishing because I didn't feel that it was the right time to do it. And it was on a quite different topic, but sort of related. And for me, the beginning of the end in a way of the transition around from the prominence of Burning Man in contrast to the regionals really happened from 2020 onwards.

And it wasn't just about the pandemic, but really two things happened. And Burning Man obviously got cancelled, I think from memory at least a couple of times. So that had a big impact.

[Stevan] (27:22 - 27:24)

There was two renegades in between.

[Jarred] (27:25 - 30:19)

Yeah. And that had a really substantive impact on Burning Man financially. So there's that that happened.

And I'll get back to the renegade events, because what happened was that not only were there renegade regional events around the world, there were also regional events that were able to go ahead because they weren't under the same lockdown issues that existed in other countries. And one really good example of that was that at least in 2020, the pandemic had not yet fully materialised. So KiwiBurn was one of the last burn events that happened in 2020.

And then because of the isolation of New Zealand, then KiwiBurn was able to happen when pretty much no other burn events happened, I think it was in 2021. With some of the years now, isn't it interesting how they sometimes bleed into each other and it's hard to distinguish one from another. There was a KiwiBurn that was cancelled because despite New Zealand's attempt at isolation, eventually quite strict event measures did eventually come into place and it did cause the cancellation of at least one KiwiBurn.

But nonetheless, you had that situation where in some countries events were able to go ahead and then in other countries, people either were able to do renegade type events or they were able to do smaller versions of what they might normally do. So across the regions, the fire was still kept alive and when the Burning Man fire turned off, then lo and behold, this amazing thing happened, which was a renegade event took place with an extremely large population on effectively the same area of the desert that Burning Man would normally take place with all but a very skeleton volunteer framework to help do some form of organization. But essentially, there was no central organization.

It was just this loose connection of different people and there were no tickets. Anyone could go and participate, no ticket required. And so that really changed everything because it reinforced the fact that events can be held with little or no central organization and in the case of renegade burn, without even requiring a ticket.

[Stevan] (30:19 - 30:51)

Yeah, one example I remembered was during Blazing Swan, they had a cancellation and then because the state was closed to everybody, they could have their own kind of events but within the state and then the next year, it was canceled again because it was part of the global pandemic. So that's kind of interesting how, like you were saying, each localized community has its own kind of way to deal with things and doesn't have to succumb to other national or worldwide pressures.

[Jarred] (30:52 - 31:56)

Yeah, and I think one of the things that did was that did lead to lots of community challenges for a whole range of reasons but also it built up immense local capability because people were finding that when there was an opportunity for them to be able to actually run an event, they would work out how to make that happen and they might have been working alongside people that had event experience but there was a lot of people that had never been involved in running an event themselves and so there was an awful large number of people across the globe that got trained up in how to run the renegade events which then created then this capability for that when events were able to go ahead again, we saw so many more new events start to pop up all over the place, whether they be burns or burn adjacent or just generally lots of kind of like micro type festivals emerged.

[Stevan] (31:56 - 32:11)

Yeah, as we all know that Burning Man has been ruined by many occasions, by many times, right? By ravers, by climate change, by influences, by even maybe AI next, but it's not being ruined by regionals, is it?

[Jarred] (32:11 - 33:13)

Well, that's all like, in a way, one of the long-standing jokes is that there are many burners I know that jokingly refer to Burning Man in Nevada as the Gerlach Regional, Gerlach being the smallest little town closest to it and whilst that's been taken somewhat in jest over the years, I think we've reached a point now where perhaps maybe that is truer than that might seem, that Burning Man perhaps now could be just considered as yet one of many of the regional events that you can go to around the world.

It might just be the largest and it's been running for longer, but for all intents and purposes, the value that it can offer to people is no more than the experience that people can gain from any of the other 80 plus events.

[Stevan] (33:13 - 33:36)

Yeah, it'll probably be in 20 years time, Burning Man will probably be known as the OG burn. So let's get, before we do a deep dive into the content of the article, let's talk about the research that you did and well, first of all, who was the audience? Was it written for a friend or was it written for, who was the audience, first of all, the target audience that you thought you'd like to share this with?

[Jarred] (33:36 - 34:44)

My target audience really is any of those 100,000 participants or volunteers and event organizers around the world who are involved in one or more regional events and I wanted it to be a piece that could make people, to be honest, I think most people who are closely involved with regional events and have been involved with regional events for a while would probably read this and go, yes, of course, that's exactly where we're at.

Maybe they hadn't necessarily articulated it in quite the same way, but I think many people would read this and go, yeah, that's exactly where we're at. There are some downstream impacts from the article that I don't think we've hit yet, but I think by and large, most people would read this and go, yeah, our regional is actually really, really cool and there are many people that would much more prefer to go to their regional and other regionals than to go to Burning Man.

[Stevan] (34:44 - 34:50)

Yeah, so some of the research that you did, the background stuff that you did for this article, what can you share with us?

[Jarred] (34:51 - 35:43)

So, a lot of it is drawn from my own personal experience of being involved with regional events and multiple regional events and the fact that we've already got a number of networks that exist that are enabling regional events to meet directly or to have ongoing dialogues and conversations globally and internationally. And really the prompt for this article is the fact that Burning Man is starting to get enveloped increasingly in a number of different issues that are making the global community start to feel quite uncomfortable.

[Stevan] (35:44 - 36:05)

Yes, okay, you talked about that in the article. Let's get into it. So, this topic of festivals as cultural phenomenons and its importance, the Burning Man experience, the counterculture, the experimentation and the personal transformation, you wrote that the offspring has outgrown its parents.

Would you like to talk more about that one?

[Jarred] (36:06 - 39:32)

Yeah, I think that's happened in at least two ways and there's probably a lot of people that would be able to highlight a lot of other really interesting things that I didn't talk about in the article and that maybe I haven't even realized myself. But just the sheer number of events and the sheer number of people now collectively going to those events is now larger than Burning Man itself. And I think that is like something quite significant.

Now, I'm not too sure of the exact breakdown of the population size outside of the U.S. because a large number of the regionals are actually in the U.S. itself. But notwithstanding that, it's definitely true that we've got a large number of events outside of the U.S. and we're looking at populations in terms of tens and tens of thousands. My rough estimate might be that perhaps maybe around 50,000 of that 100,000 is definitely outside of the U.S. So we're talking about a large number of events outside of the U.S. And then many of these events have been running themselves for a very, very long time. And of course, there's always lots of new ones popping up, but there's lots of really well-respected, long-running events out there. KiwiBurn was one of the first outside of the U.S. And then you've got events now in Australia that have been running for almost 15 years. And maybe perhaps the events may have morphed into another event.

But nonetheless, the community that's involved, the community behind them, they may have shifted from one event to another, but there's a continuity there which is really strong and powerful. We're getting regional events that are getting really sophisticated and complex in terms of the volunteer sizes. So I would likely get the numbers wrong because I'm going to give them off the top of my head.

But I don't think it would be a mistake to say that, for example, that something like KiwiBurn has something like over 600 volunteers during the event. At minimum, the art department, which I'm part of, our team size alone is probably around about 50-odd people at least. So we're talking about events that have got quite sophisticated systems.

Some of them have built their own ticketing systems. They've got their own internal technology stacks that they use to help manage the event. So these are events that are becoming institutions in themselves and have got very good financial positions.

Some of them, obviously, because of various events, often outside of their control, they might have some financial stability issues. But we're seeing regional events across the world, buying land. So we're looking at a really, really healthy ecology of regional events outside of the US.

[Stevan] (39:33 - 40:13)

Yes, some of these regionals have their own infrastructure grids, power grids. They're becoming more resilient, more financially stable and culturally embedded as well. You won't find, I guess, much American or international art.

You'll find more localised art, you know, localised flavoured stuff inspired. What about how you said that some of these regionals are at risk, in particular, when an association with Burning Man is also an association with the United States, its cultural exports, its economic power structures, politics and increasingly institutional entanglements? I thought that was interesting.

[Jarred] (40:14 - 42:22)

Yeah, so I must admit, from the early years of being involved with Burns, something that would often come up is people that I might be having a conversation with in terms of the Burn experience and how personally awesome I had found it, that it was quite common to encounter people who, upon realising the connection with Burning Man in the US, that it made people feel uncomfortable with local events that might be perceived as having, I suppose, this kind of franchise sort of effect that they represented, sort of like an export of American culture. And I think it's taken a long time for events to shed off that connection with United States culture and to make their events very much their own labour. And that's also happened because there's been many regionals that have had to reinterpret the ten principles in a language that makes sense for them culturally.

But over the past several years, the connection with the United States is becoming even more difficult, that as the politics there becomes more divided, as American actions both within the United States and outside of the US becomes increasingly difficult for even most regular people to feel comfortable with actions that they're taking morally, ethically, militarily. The connection with the US now has a much more difficult connection associated with the Burning Man brand than probably at any other time in its history.

[Stevan] (42:23 - 42:27)

Yeah. Is it unavoidable, absorbing these kind of symbolic consequences?

[Jarred] (42:28 - 44:01)

I think this is now what presents the challenge, is when do regional events have to start looking at their connections with Burning Man and either, through no fault of their own, that connection with the United States? And when do regional events need to start potentially thinking of themselves as, like they probably already think of themselves very much as their own event. And I'd be surprised if many regional events didn't already have a lot of pride in what they've built themselves without any real help, assistance, or connection with Burning Man.

But what I wanted to get through in the article is that not only are our regional events right, but if our regional events are able to collectively continue to work together really, really closely and to recognize the incredible value that we collectively have as regional events, that we may come to realize that whilst our connection with Burning Man was a starting point for these events, that maintaining that direct connection with Burning Man is not necessarily something that's needed moving forward.

[Stevan] (44:01 - 44:33)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there are at least over 20 to 30 regionals that's unofficial regionals that doesn't have the status or there's no symbolic association. Just using, I guess, the ethos of 10 Principles and other festival culture ethos that's familiar with the community. You also wrote that the living culture is no longer resides primarily at the center.

So it's becoming more decentralized.

[Jarred] (44:34 - 46:23)

Yeah, very much so. And I think there was definitely a time where there were such... One of the things I really loved about when I first went to Burning Man was I was able to experience the real breadth and depth of what a Burning Man event could be like, both in terms of its visual experience, its cultural experience, the full breadth and depth.

And over the years, so effectively over the past 10 to 12 years, so many more people like me have also gone across multiple regionals. People have gone from regionals to Burning Man. People who maybe only ever went to Burning Man have gone to regionals.

And so you've had this massive global cross-pollination of culture that means now that so many more regions now have got a sense of what is possible. And now it's with them as to where they want to take that. But once upon a time, unless you went to Burning Man, you wouldn't have really have understood what the potential looked like.

Now we do. And so now we can become custodians of what we do with the potential of the legacy of Burning Man on one hand, and then the amazing innovation and experiences that we can create in our own local communities and regional events.

[Stevan] (46:23 - 46:31)

Yeah, so the culture resides in the regionals too. It's no longer peripheral. It's infrastructural.

It's one of the points that you made.

[Jarred] (46:31 - 47:40)

Yeah, and it's about scale, right? So when there was just Burning Man, yes, there were for a very long time people from other countries going to Burning Man, but they didn't necessarily have anywhere to take it back to. And so now what we're seeing is a scale of the essence of Burner culture now transplanted across almost every country of the world.

Many countries have got multiple events. And so that's hence we're seeing sort of 80 new bus ways of that Burner culture being played out in different ways and different forms with different people, different cultures, different backgrounds. And just the sheer scale of that alone, Burning Man could never do on its own.

It could never recreate itself in so many different versions as one single event.

[Stevan] (47:40 - 47:53)

You also continue by saying most regional events no longer depend on the Burning Man project for their viability, legitimacy or cultural continuity. So you talk about the differentiation without disintegration.

[Jarred] (47:53 - 49:32)

Yeah, so I think most of the regional events are themselves such that they don't ... like this whole thing about getting what they call regional event status, which is where an event that believes that it is aligned enough to Burning Man can request Burning Man to give it endorsement, which effectively allows the event to publicize their connection with Burning Man. And that has been really effective in the past in helping to kind of place to say, okay, so you're a festival.

No, no, no, we're a Burning Man like event. Ah, okay, I get it, right? So because so many people have heard of Burning Man, it was kind of a shorthand way of saying, well, what sort of event are you?

What are you doing? It's kind of like, well, we're a Burning Man event. Ah, okay, we've got it.

So it was kind of like a quick, quick way of sort of helping people understand what you're doing. And it helped the people running the event understand what they're doing. It's, you know, they're not running some sort of other festival or commercial festival or some other, you know, kind of very bespoke, customized type of event.

They're doing a burn event. But now so many of those events have got such strong communities and followings and have been running for so long that if those events were to no longer seek endorsement from Burning Man to explicitly say that they're a Burning Man regional event, I don't, I'm not too sure many people would notice.

[Stevan] (49:34 - 49:54)

Yeah, let's get into some of the key ideas, the key points and themes that I came out with, some of the takeaways I came out with. Although there was no mention of dogma, the whole thing was trying to say, I guess, I guess, paradoxical. Like, we are, I guess, counterculture, but we still like to keep our traditions.

[Jarred] (49:55 - 51:14)

Yeah, I, yeah, I find that quite, quite funny. And I'm still not really quite too sure what to make of it. But I do find it quite funny that for an event that I think, you know, we want it to be pushing boundaries.

Yeah, for an event that is seeking to push boundaries, to look at the world differently and be, try and understand perhaps what even counterculture even means and what does it mean, you know, in this contemporary culture now, all of those types of things, it's supposed to be something, you know, a different experience from an experience that you might have in everyday life in the general world. And yet at the same time, there's this insistence that people have that urban events are done in a particular way and we should do things in a, you know, in a particular fashion. And people in the community often don't like change.

They like things to be the same. And I find that quite incredibly paradoxical that on one hand, people are going to an event that's all about change and doing things differently. And yet people don't like change and want things to be the same every year.

[Stevan] (51:14 - 51:19)

Yeah, we still need to burn an effigy in a temple in a world where the climate is rapidly changing.

[Jarred] (51:20 - 52:03)

Yeah. And I think, you know, there are definitely regional events that are adapting to that. And already there's a lot of regional events that don't necessarily have a burn at all.

There are definitely some that maybe only have one main burn. There are obviously some that do lots and lots of burning because of the environment they're in. They're able to do that.

I think that's going to be definitely, you know, for events that have been used to burning, I think most of those events are, if they're not already facing the challenge of whether they can or can't from one year to the next, they're going to be hitting it, you know, in the next couple of years for sure.

[Stevan] (52:04 - 52:24)

Yeah, it was interesting, you know, absorbing and analysing after reading it. Yeah, the word dogma kept on popping up in my head for some reason. The other word was gentrification.

Now, you don't really mention that in the piece, but that kind of was in the background of my mind as well. Gentrification. Is this the gentrification of the result of the gentrification of Burning Man?

[Jarred] (52:24 - 55:54)

I have thought about this a lot and I've seen, even with our regional events, that you'll be able to have conversations with people at a regional event that it will sometimes go along the lines of, you know, it was better back in the early days. It was better when it was smaller. It was, you know, really good when this particular group of people were running it and so it's like, you know, the fact that people are having this sort of conversation about Burning Man just sort of shows that it's nothing, you know, particular to do with Burning Man really, that it's, you know, for any event that runs long enough, the same type of conversation is going to come up.

Now, interestingly, what may have happened with the regionals is something which is a little bit kind of similar that happened with Burning Man, that, as you mentioned, there are the official regional events, but there's also a lot of other events that are very Burner-like, very Burner-adjacent, that aren't officially recognised, but that have tremendous and important followings and have relevance for what they do and those events have often been generated because of differences of views and opinions and vision about what they wanted an event to be and then you've had people go off and say, well, we will create an event that reflects what we, you know, that reflects the vision that we would like an event to have and so that hints why we've got, you know, so many regional events and Burner-adjacent events and in the US, I think that's definitely happened that because of the logistics of travel in the US and the cost to get across to Nevada, that setting up a local regional event or Burner-like event was just a much more sensible option for people, say, on the east coast of the US compared to all of the time, cost and travel that it takes to get to Burning Man. You know, that's probably one of the main reasons why I've, you know, tended to focus on the regional events across Australia and New Zealand because I felt that I could get so much more value by supporting our local events than the huge cost of travelling all of the way to the United States and getting to the desert and now we've got these additional issues which, you know, really impacted Burning Man last year with its international participants and I think there'll be yet another more significant hit this year that just the sheer complication of people trying to enter into the US now is just very, very quickly shutting down the ability of people to travel from outside the US to Burning Man and I think that that will only end up benefiting regional events as people go, well, you know what, we're going to focus on what we can build and invest time, energy and money into local events rather than spending it on travel to Burning Man.

[Stevan] (55:54 - 56:07)

Do you have any examples of, like, Burner-adjacent events that you mentioned? Like, would Confest be one of them that's on your mind that you thought that is kind of, like, similar to Burning Seed or Burning Man or other regionals?

[Jarred] (56:08 - 56:27)

What are the Well, Confest was happening much longer than, you know, any regional event in Australia and, in fact, I think Confest may even predate Burning Man itself. I don't know the exact dates but Confest itself has been running for a very long time.

[Stevan] (56:28 - 56:29)

That's 50 years this year.

[Jarred] (56:29 - 58:25)

Yeah, but I think what we saw is probably a few different examples. So, I've seen huge infiltration into other festivals with Burner culture because often what you're seeing is the very capable people that are able to run events and festivals often will kind of do the circuit and get utilised either as volunteers or paid work in other festivals. And so you're getting infiltration from a volunteering perspective.

You also started to see in Australia other festivals that started to sort of, I suppose, adopt the Burner concept of theme camps and so inviting other groups to come in and effectively create their own sort of takeovers or sub-stages or zones, you know, creating zones. So, we've seen this combination of new regional events. We've got these Burner-adjacent, unofficially recognised regional events and, once again, not commercial, like not-for-profit events.

And then you've seen this uptake of Burning Man-style inspiration into pre-existing festivals and also into other new forms of festivals because, obviously, there's a lot of people that are Burners and are volunteers that, you know, need employment and work. And one of the ways that many people have found the way to have a viable living year-round is to start their own festivals so that they can actually get paid to do what they love and then still be able to volunteer and enjoy Burns.

[Stevan] (58:25 - 58:42)

There's also the notion of we've reached an end of an era. So, you talked about how time has passed. It's about evolution.

It's about change. You talked about the end of an era in the piece as well, the notion of that. Would you like to talk more about that?

[Jarred] (58:42 - 1:03:18)

I think it's very easy to say that we're reaching the end of an era. I think, you know, that period of 2019 and 2020, when the pandemic had such global impacts, definitely was, you know, the end of an era. I think what maybe didn't really happen was perhaps the consideration of what the longer-term impacts were.

So, and I get it, for a lot of people, most people couldn't wait but to see the end of any of the restrictions that there were, that were restricting gatherings, that were restricting international travel and, you know, at first the rate of people traveling again was quite slow because it took a long time for airlines to get infrastructure back up and running again and airfares were very expensive. But since the scale has come back up and, you know, the airfares have dropped significantly, you know, we've seen the travel and, of course, there was a bumper crop of festivals that kind of emerged, like even lots of new ones emerged, ones that had just held on through cancellations and so forth, you know, came back with a bit of resurgence.

But we've also been seeing globally an increasing number of festivals not being able to stay viable and across Australia and New Zealand we are definitely, you know, seeing very, very large numbers of events that have either gone bankrupt or they've realized it's not possible for them to continue. Some are this summer doing their last event ever this summer. I've seen saying next summer will be their last.

So there's also been a seismic shift in people going to festivals, just generally speaking. And so I think we're seeing ourselves with lots of things happening at the same time. Burning Man and its accessibility and the whole state of the United States is something that, you know, we've not encountered before.

The real impact on the cost of living globally is hitting every country and is making it really hard for festivals as kind of representing discretionary spend to stay viable. We're also seeing the population, the demographics of many events, including burn events, that are aging. We're not getting a young demographic through at the rate to replace those that have been coming to these events for a long time.

So the age demographic of a lot of burn events and many other festivals is shifting from, you know, once being kind of predominantly people in their 20s and 30s to now being people in their 30s and 40s. And I think we'll continue to see it where, you know, the largest group of people at some festivals will be sort of 30s, 40s, 50s, you know, but it's kind of like, where are the young people? Where are they going?

Where have they gone? One thing that might be able to save regional events is that because they are not-for-profit events and because they don't have the same cost pressures as a commercial event, as these other commercial and very expensive ticketed events start to decrease, I think that people will really start to see not only the beautiful value of the experience, but also the fact that if you can go to a burn event for half or a third or a quarter of the price of another event that you used to go to, then we may well see a resurgence once people kind of realise how affordable and what a great experience regional events and burn adjacent events are.

[Stevan] (1:03:19 - 1:04:03)

Yeah, I think the main point there is that the world is changing, times are changing. Yeah, so the cost of cultures, yeah, that's some of the things that the highlights that I had was you mentioned the symbolic versus the fiscal, so you really talked about the cost of living, stuff like that, but like you said, it is non-profit, so it can sustain in that format, but the symbolic versus the fiscal, would you like to elaborate on that as well? Yeah, explain more.

So, yeah, I mean, the cost of culture is the main highlight there, is that what does it take, or how are the fiscal pressures going to impact on the survival of the culture? So, we were talking about symbolic versus the fiscal aspect of it.

[Jarred] (1:04:03 - 1:11:25)

Yeah, so I suppose, like, on one hand, we probably thought that Burning Man was the key driver of burner culture, probably for much longer than what it actually was doing. I would hazard a guess that I think once we started to see that scale of regional events happening from 2014 onwards, when there were enough regional events around the world for a larger number of people to go and experience, that was probably the tipping point that shows that within those local communities, they were thriving and developing their own interpretation of burner culture, and so they were no longer really reliant on Burning Man, but maybe for a lot longer after 2014, perhaps maybe we still thought that Burning Man was still very, very important in driving the culture, but maybe it was far less than what we thought much earlier, and there is, though, the hard reality of the financial aspect of running an event that will make it increasingly difficult as things like insurance costs go up, that you have some areas where events are run and, for example, police demand these very high payments because the police, you know, demand a presence at the event, and in this increasingly user-paid sort of environment, they say, well, you have to pay for us to be there, and you can't have an event unless we're allowed to be there, and unless we're allowed to be there, then you can't have your own event, so there's kind of like this sort of almost like blackmail happening, and, yeah, it's just there's any number of cost crunches which are happening that's making it really, really difficult for even, you know, a non-profit event to actually run, and so it does raise the question of saying, like, you know, could we really effectively maintain the culture locally if we weren't able to have our large face-to-face gatherings? Now, on the plus side, because different countries, and even within certain countries, there are different pressures applying, so, for example, in Australia, there's maybe pressures in New South Wales and Victoria that maybe aren't the same in WA, and in some states in Australia, it's probably still easier to run an event off scale than in some other states, but whilst there's still regional events, they will, and whilst travel is still available, then obviously you'll still get a good number of people traveling, and so even if people are in an area where they don't have a local regional event or their regional event is maybe not able to continue, that will still be able to have this large kind of global movement of people, and hence the culture is being kept, you know, alive and kept in cultivation. I do think that, like, that we'll have to come to grips with not being able to burn large structures in the way that some events have been able to do.

You know, like, I remember that I had an opportunity back in 2016, and because Burning Man used to organize their own sort of gathering of the regional network of events and people involved in culture, they would organize an annual get-together in San Francisco for people to join and come together globally, and I did go to that quite a few times, and it was quite amazing to be part of this kind of, like, international group.

It's probably another thing that has probably changed my perception of the value of the regionals from those early days, and I had the opportunity in 2016 to give a talk about the effects of climate change on burning, you know, burniculture, burning, you know, large structures with fire. It was so funny because I was very, very enthusiastic about trying to explain to people about, we have to prepare, we have to prepare that in the not-too-distant future we're not going to be able to burn things, and I literally had people looking at me just, like, going, like, what are you talking about? Like, what do you mean?

Like, seriously, people had not even contemplated this. Like, climate change was even, you know, it was still fringe. It was still considered fringe, even in sort of burner communities.

It was, and particularly in the US, in the US, it was just almost like, it was like I was, you know, saying a swear word inside a church, you know, to say that, you know, you might not be able to burn things, but, you know, hence that's happening now, you know, almost 10 years later, it's happening on a regular basis. Some have already not been able to burn. I think maybe now is the time for us to start to give real serious consideration to saying, okay, well, we're having to give consideration to not being able to burn large art structures, or maybe not being able to have fire at all.

Hey, what are we going to do when we're not even being able to be able to have events? What's going to happen when, for whatever reason, we're not allowed to run events? What are we going to do then?

Now, we already had a taste of that because of the pandemic. It was a set of circumstances, but then everyone was kind of like, well, you know, when things improve, everything will go back to normal. But what if we encounter a situation whereby not being able to run events no longer has an end date to it?

And that could happen for a wide variety of reasons. I mentioned, you know, the fact that increasingly there are becoming, you know, local, state, regional, national governments that are becoming very anti-festivals. There are some countries that really don't like, you know, the sorts of events that we do.

And because of changing political situation in different countries, I think it's highly likely that we will start to see not only our events banned, but we may start to see widespread banning of events that aren't considered appropriate by the government. And I think we need to seriously rethink about how we might be able to continue to main out, how we would be able to continue our culture, our connection and connectivity with each other in a situation where we're just simply not allowed to run events.

[Stevan] (1:11:25 - 1:11:41)

The idea of regionals as salvation, are we getting more of a situation where our regionals are becoming more like the case study for burners for, I guess, even some outside institutions to look at?

[Jarred] (1:11:41 - 1:13:19)

I'm not too sure. So one thing I didn't touch on in this article at all, really, but it was in the article last year that I wrote and held back from publishing. And part of it was about asking the question of what's our vision?

So let's say, right, okay, so we've got our regional events, we've got our own culture, we've got our own global burner culture, but like the event that a burn was as it originally started back in the mid 1980s, which is what, 40 years ago and then developed through the 90s. But by and large, we are now running 30 years later on an event format that by and large is the same as what it was 30 years ago. And I would hate to be sitting here in 30 years time saying that we're still running the same events that we were running 60 years ago.

So one way or another, I feel that if we're to be really honest about what we might think these events are about, that they need to undergo a radical change in some way such that the thing that we're running now looks really, really different in 5, 10, 20, 30 years from now.

[Stevan] (1:13:19 - 1:14:05)

Also, the takeaway of decentralization. Now, there was an article from CNN. It talks about what Burning Man can teach you about yourself and the world, even if you never go.

So I guess the idea there is that you can go to these other regional, they still kind of absorb the Burning Man culture. So the article says that the principles of Burning Man, there was a good quote by Marion Goddell. She says that it's an educational system.

The whole process teaches us about ourselves. It teaches us about leadership. It teaches us about how to get along with each other and under really hard circumstances.

So I guess if you go to these regionals, that's what you're going to be learning, not just at the Black Rock Desert, decentralization.

[Jarred] (1:14:06 - 1:22:40)

And some regional events are more innovative than others. So I know that Borderlands has a very decentralized approach to their event than pretty much any other regional event. And each regional event typically has its own unique kind of structure.

But a lot of them, once again, still pretty stock standard, somewhat hierarchical volunteer type organizations that are not too different than the way that many other similar not-for-profit and volunteer-based organizations are run. And hence why I really feel that there's this interesting opportunity that we've got, that now that our regional events can see themselves as very distinct, beautiful entities in their own right, that don't have to maintain any links with Burning Man over and above what they feel is valuable for their event, that provides great scope for events to reimagine what they want their events to be in the future, including the principles.

The principles were developed, I think, around about 2004, so about 22 years ago now. And obviously, there are many cultural institutions and movements that have had values and principles for way longer than that. But my argument would be that for an organization or movement of the countercultural nature that Burning Man kind of was, that for us to have the same principles 22 years later seems actually somewhat counterintuitive to perhaps what we could do.

So I think that this disconnection from Burning Man opens up this whole opportunity for us to truly reimagine the events for our local communities or our visions of the future to reflect on the very different world that we now live in. But in the article, I talk about federation and I talk about that there's a way that, in some fashion already, there's a way that groups almost have their own self-governing metagroups. So there's representatives from lots and lots of different regionals that come together in different federated sense.

And whilst at the moment Burning Man is the one that's holding the keys to the gate for whether events are able to be officially recognized as a Burning Man event or not, it almost is superfluous because whether Burning Man recognized them or not, these existing federated get-togethers of representatives from the various regionals are kind of in their own way already self-governing. I have no doubt that many of these groups would really call out other events, whether official or not, would call them out if these events were no longer representing their Burner communities in a way that's aligned with, for example, the Ten Principles. One thing that does worry me is that it's cool to say that regional events could all go and reimagine the Ten Principles on their own, and I have no problem with that.

But if we think about how we might, for want of a better term, self-regulate good, genuine, bona fide Burner events that we would encourage other people to go and visit and be part of and support and volunteer at, we need some way of being able to say what events can be part of that family and which events are not really considered legitimately able to be part of that family. So at one end of the spectrum, you're going to obviously have private or corporatised event organisers who are doing it for profit. Then you've got this other kind of tier of events whereby they're not buying yachts and islands as a consequence of the profits from their event.

Many of them, they're barely able to pay their own wages from year to year, but they're events that make a profit for the purpose of employing the organisers and being able to have paid people, not just volunteers. Then you get into your more volunteer-based events. So if we don't have the Ten Principles as a marker of saying who's in the family and who's not, then what would be the mechanism that you would be able to say that a rocket burned in Costa Rica, in Central America, is that, yes, that's a bona fide Burner event that you can go to.

Well, how do I know? How is it assessed? How is it judged?

Who's endorsing it? But I think that this is the great opportunity that the existing loose federations that exist have and start to think about. Then the different federations that already exist could really start to look at formalising how they then meet on a regular basis with other federations around the world.

Then we could start to look at saying, oh, well, which regions don't already have an existing federation of event organisers who catch up on a regular basis? Can they join one of the other ones that already exist? Or could we help them?

Is there an area of the world that has got lots of different regional events that don't currently connect on a regular basis? So we could help them formalise that. We could actually potentially look at the concept of an annual Burner regional conference that's actually run by regional events, not actually run by Burning Man.

We could actually then take a look at whether we want to invite Burning Man to be part of the regional network family, or if Burning Man are even interested in being part of our regional network family. But it's about shifting the balance, because at the moment, the initiative of the global network is very much something which is run by Burning Man. But actually, we're already doing it ourselves.

I think the step for the regional network to be running itself and running its own future, that we are just a very, very small number of steps away. And I think no more than 12 to 24 months away from people realising that this is all able to be done without the support of Burning Man. More than happy for Burning Man to be involved and to stay involved.

And maybe that would take the pressure off Burning Man as well, if we're able to organise ourselves locally, regionally, nationally, and in geographic parts of the world, time zones. Have time-zoned based regions.

[Stevan] (1:22:42 - 1:22:58)

The Federation idea, it was well received. I saw online some of the people were very excited chatting about that part. What were some of the other reactions did you see about your piece?

Any criticisms thrown your way?

[Jarred] (1:22:58 - 1:27:26)

Not that I'm aware of. The way I tend to write now is, I really, I used to write quite differently. My approach in writing was often quite maybe judgmental, and maybe had a particular agenda, and was trying to make a point, and I'd be terribly upset if someone didn't agree with my perspective.

Whereas my approach to writing now is so different, particularly over the last few years. And now when I write, I'm quite happy for things to go out there. And many times I don't even read the comments.

I certainly don't really engage with them. For me, I feel like if I've written something with the right intention and the right spirit, that I put it out there, and then it can have a life of its own, and people can take from it what they will. And on one hand, I was still concerned and worried, because I know lots of people that are very close to the Burning Man organization that do an immense amount of incredible work in the past and currently in fostering and nurturing and supporting the regional network.

And probably if I was concerned about anyone, I was most concerned about those involved with Burning Man as it is today, and how this might feel to them of perhaps reading about how the regionals might become their own entity that no longer needs what Burning Man has been affording and offering for a very long time. So I'm conscious and empathetic to how the article might come across for those that have been working to support the regional network. And I certainly don't want the article to be seen as a call to reject Burning Man, but the article is certainly not suggesting that it's inevitable.

So overall, I've not seen any criticism. Most of the comments have been about people recognizing that basically this is exactly the state of play. It may not have been perhaps written about specifically like this or articulated in the way that I've articulated it, but most people were sort of nodding their heads going, yeah, this is actually where we're at.

Perhaps maybe the one thing that maybe people hadn't considered is this growing tension and situation whereby some local communities and regional events may find that it's increasingly difficult to maintain their explicit connection with Burning Man, and that some regional events may choose to distance themselves from Burning Man if they feel that the situation in the United States and the tensions in and around Burning Man and negative news media makes it really, really difficult for them to maintain their own local identity unless they let go of explicit direct connection with Burning Man, which is sad and unfortunate, and I don't know who those local communities might be, but I'd be really surprised if there's not some out there that are really feeling the tension and the pressure of even any association with the United States notwithstanding Burning Man.

[Stevan] (1:27:26 - 1:27:51)

You didn't write this as a cautionary tale of festival culture or Burning Man mythos culture, so yeah, this is not the article. This is more about, yes, the regional network has strengthened, has grown up, but now it's time for these events and organisations to actually continue to do the great work of the Burning Man culture, the Burning Man project.

[Jarred] (1:27:52 - 1:31:34)

Yeah, I think we've now, you know, we're products of the Burning Man project and we seem to have pretty good handle on it, and we seem to have pretty good alignment on it, and it would be really interesting from a Burning Man perspective as to, I suppose, how they might perceive their ongoing role with regional events in a situation where regional events go, you know what, like, we really appreciate what we've learnt and what we've gained, but we're now on our own path, and I think the important thing is, like, in a way, we're unique because there's probably not many other movements or events of this, like, of this type whereby it's spawned so many similar events. Like, you can go to any one of these and you can get the burn experience, and so I don't know if there's necessarily a precedent for, like, what this looks like from 2026 onwards, because I'm not too sure that there's something easily that we can point to and go, oh, well, you know, if you distance yourself from the mother event or if you sort of go off in 80 different tangents that, you know, it will all kind of, like, devolve and, you know, not last and not continue. Like, it's actually now almost impossible to think that even if there were events that didn't continue for some reason, out of those 80-plus events, you would have to think that the large majority of those are going to continue on for a long time yet, and there's still new ones growing, still also very much aligned.

So I can only think that there will continue to be this beautiful growth and this continued organic representation of Burner culture and its 80-plus faces, and that it's just going to continue on. It's just that it's going to continue on without, where Burning Man will sort of be the onlooker in some respects, because it won't be able to have a direct hand in controlling, and nor do I think it wants to control, how 80-plus events continue to develop. I would hope that people are probably really happy to see that what started as one event has now become 80-plus, and it's going to be fascinating to see how that plays out, and that I think that this is more about Burning Man maybe needs to re-evaluate its identity and what it's going to do when its sole focus really is only its own event, because the 80-plus other events are quite happy now looking after themselves and their own future.

[Stevan] (1:31:34 - 1:31:50)

Yeah, my observation, if you look at the Regional Network Burning Man website, they do tell you that it is now easier than ever to burn where you are. So I guess the next interesting question is, what comes next?

[Jarred] (1:31:51 - 1:31:52)

Yeah, I love that question.

[Stevan] (1:31:53 - 1:32:02)

We can't get to a burn so close now, so we'd have to get to the Nevada desert, the Black Rock desert. What comes next?

[Jarred] (1:32:04 - 1:32:46)

Yeah, and I think that there's 80-plus versions of what comes next. I think that's the really incredible situation that we find ourselves in, that this is no longer a question of saying, where does Burning Man go next? This is now a question of, where are 80-plus events?

What's their trajectory into the future now? And that's really incredible and exciting, the scale of possibility of what that looks like, and that any one of them could fail, and yet all of them will continue.

[Stevan] (1:32:48 - 1:33:42)

Very interesting, very fascinating. Okay, now let's change gear a little bit. I've actually written down a little quiz here.

It's Regional's Around the World Quiz or Trivia. The aim of this is, tell me what the name of this burn is, and I have four to five clues I'm going to offer you, and it's not a Bonza burn, so that's a clue there. Okay, let's get into the first one.

This is a Regional. It's been operating since 2014. The date for this year is the 5th to 8th of February 2026, so it's really past.

They already had their burn. The theme is Island of Broken Toys this year. It's an annual beachfront camping event developed by burners for burners hosted in South Florida.

[Jarred] (1:33:43 - 1:33:44)

Ah, Loveburn?

[Stevan] (1:33:44 - 1:33:48)

That's it. Yes, that's right, Loveburn.

What are your thoughts on Loveburn? What do you know about it?

[Jarred] (1:33:50 - 1:34:51)

Only that I don't know what the current situation is, but I know that it's been one of those events where whether it's part of the official regional event family has been somewhat under a cloud, and I think it talks somewhat to some of the challenges both currently across the Burning Man network, but also what the future holds in terms of how do you work out the sorts of events that you would endorse as being part of burner culture if the differences are such that they might not get regional status, but does that mean that they still can't be part of a broader burner network of events?

[Stevan] (1:34:51 - 1:35:59)

Yeah, what's interesting about that burn is that they ask everyone to volunteer at least four hours of shift, which is great. Okay, so the next clue, next burn is this one has been operating since 2011. The date for this year is the 20th to 26th of July 2026, so this is like a summer burn there.

It's in northern, it's in Europe. It welcomes over 4,000. No, no, no, no.

You mentioned this actually before. It welcomes over 4,000 participants yearly. It's memberships, not tickets.

Its home is its magical forest in Alverso, I can't pronounce that, and its unique features include land ownership by the community. It has onsite power grids and portable waterlands. That's right, and it has this dream grant funding, which is very helpful for artists and art.

Yes. What's your understanding of Borderland?

[Jarred] (1:36:00 - 1:37:01)

I've not been, but I know lots of people who have been to it, and everyone I've spoken to speaks very highly of it. At KiwiBurn this year for our pre-event build period, we actually had quite a few people from Denmark, and there was one person there who was there because he'd never been to a burn before. He hadn't even been to Borderlands, but he was with his friends who go to Borderlands.

At KiwiBurn, it's really fascinating the large number of international volunteers that we get of people who, like myself once, were really curious about travelling overseas and going to burns in other countries, and using regionals as an opportunity to travel and experience burns without ever having been to Burning Man itself.

[Stevan] (1:37:02 - 1:37:24)

Interesting. All right, so the next burn, it's been established since 2013. Its date for this year is 18th to 24th of May, 2026.

It's a week of art and play and mischief in a Devon woodland, and it's attended by about 500 people yearly. It's in Devon, England.

[Jarred] (1:37:25 - 1:37:26)

Is that Burning Nest?

[Stevan] (1:37:27 - 1:37:37)

Yes, Burning Nest, yeah. What's your knowledge of Burning Nest? It looks like a wood burn. I didn't think it was that small though. I thought it was more than that, 500 people. Maybe it is.

[Jarred] (1:37:37 - 1:39:33)

Yeah, there's actually a lot more under the radar burns, particularly across the United Kingdom. I know that there is another little one that happens in Wales. There's actually a lot of New Zealanders, because it's been quite the tradition of a lot of New Zealanders spending time living and working in the UK.

There's actually quite a few people that actually found out about burning through these small little micro burn events. Then when they returned back to New Zealand, discovered that there was things like Kiwi burn, and have since got involved with events like Kiwi burn. I think we can never underestimate the power of these small under the radar events, often being the first burn experience that people have, but they have it outside of their own country only to discover that it was happening back in their own country.

It doesn't happen so much now, but I remember going back 10 years ago, and for a long time, coming across people that were going to Burning Man that literally had no idea at all that there were any burns in Australia. I was still finding people with that experience even around 2020, but I think now it's much less likely to find someone that goes to Burning Man from, say, for example, Australia and New Zealand and don't have something claim that there's already events in their own country.

[Stevan] (1:39:33 - 1:40:03)

Okay, so this one is quite recent. It's been established since 2021. This year, it's on the 1st to the 5th of May, 2026.

The theme this year is called Dreams. It's pure volunteer-driven non-profit event based on the African principles of Ubuntu. Respect yourself and nature as one of the principles.

This is in Africa, but it's not Africa burn, and it's recent.

[Jarred] (1:40:04 - 1:40:08)

Could that be the burn in Nairobi?

[Stevan] (1:40:10 - 1:40:12)

Namibia. It's called Namburn.

[Jarred] (1:40:12 - 1:40:12)

Oh, Namibia.

[Stevan] (1:40:13 - 1:40:21)

Yes, the Kalahari Desert. Yes. I actually still saw a YouTube little clip about that burn.

It was fascinating.

[Jarred] (1:40:21 - 1:40:32)

Yeah, I actually know someone that's actually involved with that, and I should link you up to perhaps connect with them and chat to them about it.

[Stevan] (1:40:32 - 1:41:07)

Cool, cool. All right, the next one. I've heard of this one.

This is this fascinating one. It's been burning since 2016. The dates for this year is 18th to 22nd of June, 2026.

It's another European one. Celebration of community that lasts for about four days. It's hosted in various locations, including Apeldoorn.

These are all Dutch words, so it's hard to pronounce. Zeewolde. This is what they claim.

It was the first burning man event outside of the United States, and it's based in Netherlands.

[Jarred] (1:41:09 - 1:41:11)

Definitely got me stumped there.

[Stevan] (1:41:11 - 1:41:15)

There's no burn in the title. A Dutch burn. Have you heard of where the sheep sleeps?

[Jarred] (1:41:16 - 1:41:19)

Ah, yes, I have, actually. Yes, yes.

[Stevan] (1:41:20 - 1:41:47)

Yeah, I find that fascinating burn. Not just the name, but yeah, other aspects of it as well. Yeah, interesting burn.

Okay, so one more. Last one. This one has been doing it since 2004.

The dates for this year is the 7th to 12th of July, 2026. The largest burning man regional event in Europe, attended by over 3,000 people. Held annually in July in the Monegros Desert, located in Aragon in northern eastern Spain.

[Jarred] (1:41:47 - 1:41:55)

Yes, so this is the one that I confused earlier, so definitely nowhere.

[Stevan] (1:41:56 - 1:42:20)

What's your understanding of that one? I've got that here. It says the event features barrios, which are theme camps, where groups share resources and provide activities.

There's also free campers that can also set up independent camps, fostering creative community. You mentioned this earlier, it does not include fire as a key feature of the event, so there's no burn. That's fascinating, isn't it?

[Jarred] (1:42:21 - 1:43:23)

Yeah, so that's probably the ... Once again, I've known so many people that have been to nowhere, and once again, so many people who their first introduction to a burning man event was living and working in Europe and coming across nowhere. So it's definitely been an important event in helping to introduce so many people to burner culture.

I find the fact that they don't burn is fantastic, because it shows that you can actually have a really long-running event, a very impactful event, that doesn't have to rely on burning things as part of its culture. So yeah, I think it's just so good that we've got examples of events that don't fit the same mold.

[Stevan] (1:43:24 - 1:43:57)

Yeah, there's so many of these, and also, without even thinking about the unofficial ones, what are the possibilities of what is even out there, right? I guess one example in Australia is Underland, and also Aurora. There's a few also that's not the official status yet.

Some are receiving it, some are not really bothered, so very interesting. All right, so let's get into the thanks and gratitude, some shoutouts that you want to give out. Any shoutouts, Space Elf?

[Jarred] (1:43:57 - 1:46:21)

Not specifically by name, but I really do want to give a shoutout to all of the amazing volunteers at all of our events. Without our volunteers, we wouldn't be able to run these events. Amongst our volunteers, there are some people that put in an extraordinary amount of their own personal time, effort, and resources to make these events happen, and I think we should all be incredibly thankful to those people who are able to do that, people that have been doing it for a long time.

I just really encourage as many people as possible to find ways to not just volunteer for the shift here and there, but to find ways to, at least for a year or two, depending on your circumstances, find a way to give some extra attention to an event that needs help to start, or that maybe is facing some challenges, or needs people to step up so that some others that have been working for a long time can take a break, and that's how we can continue to be the regional network by having this continual turnover of volunteers and keep it all alive so that hopefully, if we were having this conversation in, say, five years' time, or maybe we should reschedule it for 2030. At 2030, look at the health of the regional network, and I have no doubt it's going to be really, really vibrant, but I do honestly believe that the next four years are going to be incredibly challenging across the world, and it's going to definitely impact our events, and I really hope that the passion that we have for them now can be sustained through all of the challenging times ahead that we're going to face that's going to put all types of gatherings at risk.

[Stevan] (1:46:22 - 1:46:43)

I want to give a shout-out to you, Jarred, for your contributions to the community and progressing the conversations and the thoughts and the ideas of this culture. Thanks for all your inputs. Any last thoughts about your article, about your piece, amendments, anything you want to postscript, anything you want to add?

[Jarred] (1:46:44 - 1:47:49)

Just love people to read it. I'm happy for people to disagree with it, share it, talk about it, see how it might apply to your own regional event, and have those really awesome conversations about how to take your event forward into the future. I don't want to in any way say what this should all look like by 2030, but what would make me really sad is if people just continue to do the same.

What I really want is for people to have really vibrant, challenging conversations about where we take our regional network into the future. For me, that is the really fun, exciting aspect of this is that people have got this opportunity to take it where we can, and so let's do it.

[Stevan] (1:47:50 - 1:48:17)

I'm excited to see where it evolves or what it evolves into. That's the interesting part, fascinating. Thanks for coming on, unpacking all the ideas and thoughts and talking points of your article.

Thanks for sharing it, and we're going to put up a link as well so people can actually go out there and read it and absorb it, analyze it, stuff like that. Thanks very much, Jarred, for coming on. Appreciate you.

[Jarred] (1:48:18 - 1:48:22)

Thanks, Stevan, and we all appreciate what you're doing here with this podcast, so thank you.

[Stevan] (1:48:22 - 1:48:24)

Okay, bye.

Transcripts transcribed by TurboScribe.ai