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

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

Bonzaar Podcast.

[Stevan] (0:31 - 1:13)

Bonzaar, welcome to all, and thanks for tuning in. I'm Stevan Lay, or SilentDisco on Paddock, and you are listening to the Burners of New Zealand, Australia, Asian Regional Podcast, a knowledge-seeking conversation audio pod about Burner culture and its Asia-Pacific communities. For this episode, we will be taking a special look into generational transition in Burner culture and our localised communities and regional events.

This examination was well-received at Bonza this year and created some fascinating discussions and provocations that we've asked the presenter, Jarred Taylor, to come on the podcast and dive deeper into this particular subject matter and content. We're pleased to welcome back Space Elf to the Bonzaar podcast.

[Jarred] (1:13 - 1:14)

Thanks for having me back.

[Stevan] (1:15 - 1:27)

Okay, we have quite a lot of ground to cover, so let's unpack everything and dive straight in. So, first question is, why or how did you select your topic of choice to present Space Elf?

[Jarred] (1:28 - 3:10)

It actually happened around about a year ago, because in the months leading up to Burning Man, there was a lot in the press, and I suppose to some extent, it's almost like an annual kind of thing where there's both positive and negative media reports about Burning Man leading up to it, and then during, and then afterwards. But the flavour of the articles, and there were actually also some quite interesting articles written also by some Burners, that kind of made me think that there was maybe a different, you know, something different in the winds. And so that's what kind of got me thinking about it about a year ago.

And when the most recent Bonza Summit came up, and I was thinking through things to talk about, I was going to go back to this original article that I had written but didn't publish. But since then, other things have changed in the world, and I've had a few more thoughts about it. And then I started to notice that maybe there was something happening that was really almost like a mirror of the changing demographics in the wider world, which is often being talked about.

And I kind of started to wonder, in what way might those changing demographics in general society be perhaps affecting not only Burning Man and regional events, but also just more broadly, festivals?

[Stevan] (3:10 - 3:34)

So one of the first slides, or the first things you talked about was, the future challenge may not be attracting attendees. It might be navigating very different generational paradigms. Future events may depend on adapting stewardship models to navigate incumbent leadership structures and rapidly changing demographics.

So this is the demographic cliff that you mentioned. I find it fascinating and intriguing.

[Jarred] (3:35 - 4:32)

Yeah, so when I sort of started to get into examining the generational aspects, my starting point was not really looking at it through a generational lens. I was initially taking a look at census data and seeing what was happening in terms of what age groups are, you know, well represented or least represented. And then I started looking at it, you know, from, for example, six years earlier and started to notice some quite interesting aspects.

And that's what kind of then led me into realizing that there is perhaps this generational model or framework of looking at this that might be able to provide some interesting insights and some questions to ask.

[Stevan] (4:33 - 4:40)

Yeah, the census data or the data collection aspect of your research, did you find that difficult or is it readily available?

[Jarred] (4:40 - 5:57)

I think like with a lot of data is that information is collected. It's not always easy to access. Different events are collecting somewhat similar data, but, you know, everyone's doing it in slightly different ways.

So there's kind of like not really, you know, an easy single data source that I'm sort of aware of. And even if there was, I think we face a couple of challenges, which I'll also hopefully get into later, which is the questions we ask, who we ask them of, how we ask them, the reliability of the data, how representative it is, all become factors which can make it quite slippery to really understand what might actually be going on. And most of all, I think one of the biggest challenges that perhaps came out of looking at this more closely is that I think one of our biggest challenges is that the data we're not seeing is the data from the people that are not coming.

[Stevan] (5:58 - 6:00)

Yeah, there's no real information on that.

[Jarred] (6:00 - 6:47)

That's right. So, you know, we collect data from people that come to Burning Man, come to Burning Man events. But this research I was doing is sort of asking the question about why people aren't coming.

And so it's quite hard to work with the data we have, which is in respect of the people that are coming. And so obviously it's harder to understand those that aren't coming, which is why I sort of turn to some of the models and frameworks that are out there that talk more generally about intergenerational differences and subtleties and nuances as a way of sort of understanding the gaps in the data that we do have.

[Stevan] (6:47 - 6:54)

So the data that we are collecting in Burner culture, it definitely could be improved. So what other data would you like to see?

[Jarred] (6:55 - 8:33)

Probably two things. One is we don't have data on the people, the younger generations, the Gen Alphas and the Gen Zs that aren't coming. So we don't know much about them.

We don't know much about why it is that perhaps our events are maybe not as attractive in the same numbers for the age groups as you go back, you know, even say 10, 15 years ago. The other aspect is not so much the data, it's how we're collecting it. So some of what the literature around Gen Z and Gen Alpha is telling us is that how we get data from them, the way that we ask the questions is that if we're asking questions from sort of a Gen X or a Gen Y perspective, then the way the questions are framed are not going to perhaps give us the really insightful information that we could otherwise get.

So I think part of this is the way that we're framing the questions. So it's very easy to frame the questions in relation to the answers that you kind of expect or the answers that you want as opposed to framing questions in a genuinely open and inquisitive way to find out what we don't know.

[Stevan] (8:33 - 9:18)

Yeah, so we've got to watch out for those cognitive biases, right? But with data, we also have the issues of privacy and the issues of legality, but that's not something that we want to talk about here. That's a whole different podcast.

But with the current data that is already available out there, there's a great infographics or a great table that you've shared with us, and it's about the different generations, the infographics there by McCrindle. Now, you said that different generations are shaped by different technologies, economic conditions, social norms, and finances. These differences produce measurable changes in participation, volunteering, governance, and community expectations.

I like how you framed that.

[Jarred] (9:19 - 10:57)

Yeah, so one of the things I was conscious of is that – and I think there's definitely some validity to it. There's a danger in painting a group of people in a particular age group at a particular time and sort of painting them or stereotyping them. And what some of the research shows is that if you sort of go past what could be negatively viewed as some form of sort of stereotyping of a particular group of people, is that when you actually look at the sort of substantive conditions in which people are growing up as youngsters when they're going through school, the technology that they're exposed to, the social connections, the family connections, community, institutional, and the economic conditions, that these are all factors that seem to be quite significant in shaping different mindsets of people that were born, say, during World War II in the 1940s through to those in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. All of those decades had quite significant differences which shaped the people growing up as they got older.

[Stevan] (10:57 - 11:19)

Yeah, you're right. The generational analysis is not about reducing individuals to stereotypes or labels. That's kind of counterproductive to view all the generations as essentially the same and overlook the fundamental shifts emerging.

It's not deterministic, you talked about, but large-scale behavioural patterns still materially shape institutions and communities.

[Jarred] (11:19 - 11:59)

Yeah. And on one hand, it's sometimes discussed often in a negative sense of particular generations that hold power in politics, in business, in other aspects of society. And so we give validity to perhaps the negative effects of those in power from certain generations.

So why wouldn't we equally give power to the emerging younger generations and the mindset in which they've been formed?

[Stevan] (11:59 - 12:40)

Yeah, I find it – I mean some people don't subscribe to these models or these graphics, but I find it fascinating and I think we should take some time to unpack some of these, I guess, labels if you want to call it that way. But the one missing, I guess, category that we don't really talk about are the Builders, and these are the people that was born in between the World War I era, right? So they are really ageing.

They're really old people now, these category people. But let's focus on the ones that we do know, which are the baby boomers, the Generation X, the Generation Y, or the millennials, the Gen Z, and the Gen Alpha.

[Jarred] (12:40 - 14:21)

Yeah, and the reason why I felt that those groups are really significant is because for two reasons. First, by and large, Burning Man was started by people of the baby boomer generation, and to some extent what would have been the quite young Gen X at the time, because at the time that Burning Man was starting to go out to the desert, the youngest of the Gen X group would have been at best 18, early 20s at the most. So Burning Man, by and large, was built by the cohort that were in the baby boomer generation.

And, of course, now 40 years plus on, we're now starting to see the – or we will definitely soon. We're seeing them now kind of as teens and young people, but Gen Alpha are going to be turning 18, basically, in the next couple of years. So we're going to start to get Gen Alphas coming to events as they're able to legally come through their own choice legally.

But as it stands, pretty much most of our Burning Man regional events and Burning Man itself have got these five generations of people at the same event. So at the same event, you've got boomers, Gen X, Y, Z, and Alphas.

[Stevan] (14:22 - 15:06)

Yeah, the current Burning Man ecosystem is largely shaped by the boomers. So if you look at it, the co-founders and the founders back in 1986, these generations were largely from the boomers or the early Gen X category. So with the boomers, how would you – I mean, the category that they fit in, I mean, there are certain social markers, a certain technology, there are certain styles of leadership, and the way their influence was quite fascinating.

So boomers, their social markers was the moon landing. That was the most significant event in history that they've experienced personally. They were there.

So that shaped their outlook and their world views.

[Jarred] (15:06 - 15:28)

Yeah, that's right. So each of these generations carry with them the shaping of significant world events. When you look at Gen X, that was probably marked by the stock market upheavals in the late 1980s.

[Stevan] (15:29 - 15:37)

That was an era of where greed is good. Remember Wall Street, Gordon Gekko? Greed is good.

It became a mantra for a lot of Gen X people.

[Jarred] (15:38 - 16:33)

Yeah, and each of these generations, if you look at it from a cultural perspective, each generation always seems to, at some point, I wouldn't call it retaliate, but expresses their understanding of the world and the friction or tension with how they feel about the world and the way that the world is as they are in it and is largely governed and led and directed by those of previous generations. Each generation found its music, its movies, its social kind of culture that, to some extent, was a form of resistance against whatever was at the time.

[Stevan] (16:33 - 17:25)

I've also found it interesting how the leadership styles, the ideal leaders, and the learning styles and the influences, as well as the marketing, kind of really shapes how people perceive the ideals for their generation. So, for example, the baby boomers, they preferred direct leadership, directing, whereas the Gen X was more like coordinating. And their learning style was more structured for the boomers, whereas for the Gen X, it was more like participation.

And I find that with how would you… And the communications styles and communications forms they've adopted for the boomers was more like a broadcast, like a mass communication, the radio and the TV. With the Gen X, it was more like a direct targeted sort of like mailing list, you know, you join an email list or something.

So these are the old generational styles and leadership and technology.

[Jarred] (17:26 - 18:42)

Yeah, and, you know, there's a lot that people are writing about. There's a lot in the media around, you know, these differences and how they're playing out in workplaces and in employment opportunities, which is being, I suppose, to some extent, exasperated by the rise of the use of artificial intelligence. But even before that sort of became a sort of a dominant feature, there was definitely still, you know, lots being noticed and observed about, you know, these kind of like clashes of values between those that were sort of incumbent in organisations from previous generations and finding it really difficult to sort of get their heads around, you know, particularly the Gen X coming into the workforce and having different values and expectations and ways of communicating. And that's definitely, you know, continued to be somewhat of a source of friction and we're definitely seeing, you know, very high unemployment rates amongst Gen Z.

[Stevan] (18:43 - 20:07)

So if we're to balance what we just said about the Gen X as well as the boomers, looking at the millennials and the Gen Z, to balance that, they've had their fair share or they've had their worldviews and outlooks also shaped by other events, by other technologies and leadership and marketing styles too. So with the millennials and the Gen Ys, theirs was September 11th, whereas the Gen Zs were the Global Financial Crisis, the GFC. And what they know, what they understand to be the music choice, I mean, what's prevalent for them is Spotify, is online content, you know, for the Gen Z, whereas the Gen, whereas the millennials, they were in between a pendulum shift between, I guess, the digital as well as the hard copy, the hard, you know, technologies such as the iPod was still, you know, that's what they grew up on.

With the leadership styles and the influences, the millennials prefer more of a peer, like they value peer, they value the friendship, they value the close-knit circles, whereas the Gen Z are more about forums. Yes, it is about peer, it is about group, but it is about the wider group, it's about the wider community. So that was kind of interesting in terms of how they're thinking, their behaviours are also, it is in line, I guess, with the previous generations, but it's also forging their own identity.

[Jarred] (20:08 - 21:55)

Yes, and one of the recurrent themes that comes up, which is not just purely something to consider for Gen Z, but, you know, if we wanted to sort of understand what does it kind of mean for there to be these intergenerational differences, I suppose one aspect is like how does it play out kind of like in a practical aspect, and one of the ways of looking at it is that you take the same set of phenomena and what it means and how different generations interpret it is different, that they look at things through a different lens. And so an example might be that we take, for example, the ten principles, and I think to some extent what we've been seeing is that there was maybe to a degree an alignment when the principles were actually devised by Larry, that there was sort of somewhat of a relatively shared understanding of what those principles meant and how they were sort of embodied.

That was kind of shared between the Burners, Gen X and Gen Y, and I think because the principles now have been around for so long, what we're now seeing is Gen Z engaging with these principles and they're taking something and interpreting them differently from what earlier generations might have.

[Stevan] (21:55 - 22:50)

Yeah, that's right, yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. That's very intriguing.

Now, if we were to break it down even further, I think looking at more closely, let's look at the population of these generations. So Gen Z, they have 23% of the world population, whereas Millennials are 21%. Gen X are 17% and the Burmahs are 13%.

Now, what is fascinating to me is the workforce participation. So the Burmahs are 12% as they gradually get older and in retirement life. Yeah, it's only 12%.

Generation X are 27% and make up quite a large number, but the most you find is the Millennials. They make up 34% of the workforce. And, you know, rising up there is the Gen Z.

They have 27% of the workforce. Now, why is that important? Because if you look at it, it is talking about disposable income and that's something that we can look further into because that affects participation and attendance.

[Jarred] (22:50 - 23:43)

Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, one of the things I noticed in the data in terms of the difference sort of over about a five to six-year period of the participation of Gen Z in Burning Man is that definitely one aspect of the lower participation over time could definitely be related to sort of the changing economic fortunes of the younger generation tied with the rise in the ticket prices, making the attendance of younger generations at Burning Man a more expensive exercise in relative terms than what it had been in previous decades.

[Stevan] (23:43 - 24:53)

Now, if you want to look deeper in relation to the top hopes and fears of each generation, I'll just quickly go through them. So Gen Z, their top hope and fears, well, the top hope is home ownership. They all want to own a house eventually one day.

Financial freedom. Travelling the world. Job satisfaction and life fulfilment.

So when you get to the millennials, their top hopes and fears are also financial freedom. Travel the world and pursue hobbies and interests. Long-term illness and not reaching full potentials are their fears.

And then when you look into the Gen X, financial freedom. Travel the world and pursue hobbies and interests. Long-term illness.

And I guess this is the phase in most Generation X are coming into is what people would call a midlife crisis, I guess. So that was interesting. And for the boomers, their main top hopes and fears are pretty much just to stay alive, I guess.

But this is the golden years, the golden age for the boomers. So it's not about financial freedom anymore. It's not about job satisfaction where a younger person might have.

So these are fascinating. And like you said, the values are pretty much similar.

[Jarred] (24:53 - 26:27)

Yeah. So an example of how this might play out is that just naturally. So there's kind of like two things happening at the same time.

So on one hand, if all things were equal, you would naturally have different outlooks from someone, say, in their early 20s versus someone in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. And it's kind of like that life experience and where someone is at in their life, work they do, their financial resources, their skills, and so forth. Those things are naturally going to be different anyway.

And it's kind of like there's this other layer, there's this formation and shaping layer which further shifts then beyond just what you might normally say is whether it be a 10-year, 20- or 30-year age gap. These generational factors change that further by then changing the outlook on the world. So it's not just someone that's maybe got 20 years' life experience difference.

It's someone with 20 years' life experience difference plus they look at the world as X and then Gen Z is looking at the world as Z.

[Stevan] (26:29 - 26:43)

And I guess with Burning Man, people look at Burning Man as a counterculture, do-it-yourself ethos, radical self-expression and fully immersive participation. But that doesn't mean that that's what the Gen Alphas will see it as, will they?

[Jarred] (26:43 - 27:10)

Yeah, that's right. So even if you take something simple as participation, that even what we mean by participation, what it looks like, how it plays out, how an event might describe participation could be actually at odds with how younger generations perceive it.

[Stevan] (27:10 - 27:31)

Yeah, so the burn culture is experiencing a transition in how people relate to identity, participation, communities and institutions. So emerging generations seek similar human connections but often have very different expectations around participation, volunteering, institutions and communities. I like how you framed that.

[Jarred] (27:31 - 29:22)

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think what I was trying to get at there is that there's elements of the features that you'll see at a festival or Burning Man or a regional event and that there are features which have resonance with us as humans. And so we don't want to sort of suggest that what happens at these events isn't something that can't also be enjoyed by younger generations because we know that it can.

We know that humans have a resonance with fire and so people from thousands of years ago, we're still just as fascinated and engaged with fire as what people have been through the human history that we know of. So this is not to say that there's not features of the events which have got sort of persistent generation-independent appeal and resonance. You know, one of the things that kind of I suppose spawned from realising that Burning Man was created by those from the baby boomer generation and some of those early Gen Xs is that by and large we've been running on a very similar festival kind of model that even dates back to some of the early festivals that came out of the Summer of Love of the 1960s.

[Stevan] (29:22 - 29:24)

Yeah, that's fascinating, yeah.

[Jarred] (29:24 - 31:30)

But I suppose more specifically just to make sure it's kind of clear, so we're working with a Burning Man event model that by and large has not changed much in the last 30 years even though the world has changed significantly and we've got a younger generation that now engage with the world quite differently than earlier generations and so it sort of raises the question of why are we staying with this same model and I think that's one of the kind of core questions is are we staying with the core model because every aspect of it is something that needs to be retained or should we be asking whether the model should be evolving because as you mentioned earlier, you know, when Burning Man sort of came about it, it came about because it was something really weird and different from what most people would have had the opportunity to experience but the experience doesn't seem to feel as different now as maybe what it felt like, you know, definitely 30 years ago. I suppose you could even in some respects argue, you know, sort of like 10, 15 years ago it was still an experience but, you know, experiences like it actually, you know, more and more common, you know, there's lots of different types of festivals, there's some extremely large festivals, ones that are even larger than Burning Man and so these experiences are available in lots of different ways and so, you know, I suppose that the Burning Man experience isn't on the surface at least, on the surface it's maybe not as unique as what it once may have been.

[Stevan] (31:30 - 31:47)

Yeah, the likely scenario or the forecast is that Gen Z becomes the largest attendee by the early 2030s. So this is just only like in five years' time. The key challenge is converting these attendees into long-term stewards.

So the kids are our future.

[Jarred] (31:47 - 36:08)

Yeah, isn't it funny how, you know, you get expressions like that and they maybe just kind of like roll off the tongue but maybe we don't always spend enough time really contemplating and thinking about what they mean and, you know, we know that lots of events are struggling to get volunteers. I think most events manage to get, you know, by and large the volunteers that they need at the event. I think where the real pressure a lot of events are facing is in, you know, the volunteer roles, the capability, the capacity, the commitment required leading up to the event for there to be an event.

And most events are struggling to fill those volunteer roles. There's often quite a bit of turnover and part of the analysis I did seem to suggest that there's a couple of things happening. One is that there's definitely sort of a bit of a consistent drop in the population from around about mid-30s onwards.

The attendance by that group really starts to decline significantly and there's probably lots of sensible good reasons for sort of why that happens. But what it does do then is put a strain on the need that events have for people to, you know, stick around for a while, the people that have got the experience, the people that have got the, you know, knowledge of, you know, the organisation, the event, its history, the continuity that kind of makes running events, you know, much easier. And we're just not seeing in that younger age group, we're not seeing them attend at the same rate to replace the drop-off.

And so this is why even though some events are, you know, potentially growing, it's not as if we're consistently seeing events lose population, although I think there is definitely some evidence that that's happening. I think to some extent we're seeing that with Burning Man because up until kind of, I suppose you could say, pre-COVID Burning Man, you know, tickets were, you know, quite difficult to get hold of. And in the last few years, it seems to have been extremely easy to get hold of a Burning Man ticket.

So you could say that, you know, the rate of growth at Burning Man is maybe starting to reflect demographics in some respects, that the population is perhaps starting to see a long-term decline. And even though regional events might be still sensing growth, what I would be suggesting is take a real close look at the age of your participants. And my best bet is that the growth is not coming from the sort of under 25 age group, that the continued growth and sustaining of the event is coming from that sort of late 20s to mid-30s age group.

So that age group is sort of, that cohort is increasing. And then also in the data, it seems to be that then when people are sort of getting into their sort of mid to late 40s, then they're starting to come back and we're seeing older people who maybe they came when they were younger and they took a break and they're coming back. Some people are discovering it for the first time and they're finding it kind of like quite transformational and life-changing.

And because our events are generally quite inclusive and because it spans so many different generations from the very young, that older people, it's an event that people in their 40s, 50s and 60s and even 70s feel quite comfortable coming to and being part of.

[Stevan] (36:08 - 37:04)

The word that you mentioned, the T word you mentioned, transformational, I think that's a very important word because the way I see it, my hypothesis is that with Burning Man, you don't really get the full experience until maybe once you have more experience, once you have more life experience, I think, because I guess it's a playground for adults, right? It's a playground for people who are in life crisis, whether it's middle-life crisis or you've got to go through these phases to really appreciate it. So that's probably why Burning Man is so impactful for these people, people looking for these kind of changes, these kind of transformational guides to wherever they need to be, wherever they're traveling towards.

So, you know, if you're in your early 20s, you don't have that kind of worldview yet, you don't have that kind of struggles yet, or the, you know, seeking.

[Jarred] (37:04 - 38:59)

Yeah, so this is a good example of how the same phenomena can play out differently for different generations. So using this kind of as an example, that older generations might, for example, use words like, you know, that the experience they have at Burning Man or at a regional event is transformational or it's spiritual or it's a pilgrimage, it's about play or myth. Contrasted to that is that people in, from a sort of a Gen Z perspective, and this is not necessarily what they might say, but this is just to kind of illustrate the different mindset that can be attached to the same experience or the same sort of, yeah, phenomena.

So a Gen Z person might, instead of using terms like transformation or spirituality or, you know, the pilgrimage aspect, they might describe it more like authenticity, connection, nervous system regulation, collective energy, presence, flow. So there's sort of different language, different ways of interpreting. And so, you know, an older Burner might ask a younger person, you know, didn't you find that transformational?

And the younger person at the event might look at them somewhat quizzically and perhaps even with scepticism because Gen Z and Gen Alpha carry with them a different level of scepticism that plays out differently. And this is kind of an example of where perhaps they may be a little bit more sceptical that something can actually be transformational.

[Stevan] (38:59 - 40:28)

Yeah. People go to Burning Man for various, many various reasons, to either lose themselves or to find themselves, yeah, or transformational experiences, life affirming, you know, ideals. Okay.

Let's look into more specific, the Gen Alphas. So the Gen Alphas, they're social markers. The way they see the world is pre-COVID and post-COVID.

So COVID-19 are their social markers. The way they see the world is everything is smart. Smart speakers, smart phones, smart cars, everything is smart.

The way they inspire, the leadership styles they love is co-creation. So co-creating. The ideal types are virtual.

The learning style are chatbots. And the influence advices are more like in time or in situ. So the Gen Alphas, they only make 2% of the world's population at the moment, but it is forecast in 10 years' time, there'll be 16%.

Although zero in the workforce in 2026, in 2036, it's forecast to be 19%. So that's quite a huge jump. So the future forecast is that there's going to be like 2.1 billion Gen Alphas on this planet, which is the largest generation in the history of the world. And most of these are coming from the top three are India, China, and Nigeria are the top countries of birth. So these are statistics and these information I find, you know, really interesting to see how it holds up for our future in terms of the demographic.

[Jarred] (40:28 - 42:55)

Yeah. Gen, in a interesting kind of way, maybe Gen Z have been sort of the transitional generation because Gen Z are the first generation that really grew up with, you know, internet connectivity and devices, like unlike the previous generations. With the previous generations, the, you know, internet connectivity and devices were something which people, you know, sort of encountered, you know, much later in life.

Whereas now Gen Alpha kind of represents the first generation that almost basically from birth, they're engaging with, you know, devices and online activity, which when you combine that with the formative years that many of them would have experienced of, you know, the pandemic times where there were restrictions in terms of mobility and going to school and everything, you know, turned virtual online. They're the generation that kind of, I suppose, once again going to be quite different from Gen Z. And I think there's going to be an even more significant kind of difference in their engagement with the world.

You know, whereas I was saying before that, you know, there seemed to be some sort of like quite interesting overlap and sort of good connection and relationship between boomers, Gen Y and Gen X. Then we start to see this kind of, you know, you could almost call it the murmuring of the discontent amongst Gen Z. But I think, you know, Gen Alpha is where we're going to really start to see a significantly different world outlook where they'll look at the world quite differently from, you know, the previous generations, which is why I say that I think this is going to be a really interesting period from about 2028 onwards that as these Gen Alphas turn 18 and are able to choose to come to these events, you know, themselves, whether they choose Burning Man events or not, it'll be really, really interesting to see what those numbers then look like from about 2028 onwards.

[Stevan] (42:55 - 43:22)

It's also intriguing to, I guess, look into how there is some sort of a resentment between these generations. For example, I guess, with these new social media laws targeting under 16, these are the behaviours of perhaps, I guess, Gen Z. That's kind of enforcing these kind of laws for the Gen Alphas.

So there could be some kind of resentment there, I guess. And I don't know whether you see it that way as well, but that could be the social impact.

[Jarred] (43:22 - 46:39)

Yeah. And what this sort of is interesting, and this has come up quite a few times for me recently in sort of realising this, that, you know, I think once upon a time, you know, Burns and Burner communities were almost like islands unto themselves, where we cultivated a community spirit and a culture that kind of really stood apart from sort of what was happening in the world around us. And what I've really noticed over the last four or five years is how much the factors of the external world are really starting to have a significant and noticeable impact on our events in lots of different ways, but more so than what I had kind of observed in the past.

And I think that once again, you know, the way that the world shapes and experiences the experiences of the younger generations is going to play out in how Burner communities, you know, continue or maybe, you know, don't continue in the same form and shape that they have, because so much of it in the past was still very much based on, you know, face-to-face, you know, direct engagement. Whereas now we've got a generation which is very comfortable and spends a lot of time, you know, living virtually, living digitally. And so it will be really interesting to see what happens when those, you know, kind of like virtual and digital lifelines get cut off through regulation.

Whilst I understand, you know, some of the reasons behind it and where it's coming from, I just feel that not enough is understood about like what happens when you cut off that lifeline and what is that going to mean for the way that young people build and maintain social relationships when they're sort of effectively, you know, cut off from access to those mechanisms that we are all engaging with. And who knows? Like, you know, having said all of this, you know, a weird thing might happen where maybe we might sort of find that, you know, the circumstances of Gen Z maybe led to them perhaps maybe not being as interested in, you know, on the surface, what Burning Man events have to offer.

And maybe ironically, we might find that, you know, out of Gen Alpha pops a group of young people where it all resonates again really strongly. And they actually, you know, find that what, you know, a Burning Man event experience offers is maybe something that weirdly actually resonates with them perhaps stronger than maybe what it has for Gen Z.

[Stevan] (46:39 - 47:20)

There has been some sort of, I guess, a renaissance in terms of film culture, you know, from what I see because these younger generations are probably sick and tired of always online content or streaming. They actually want to go to a theatre and experience, you know, cinema with a bunch of randoms, with a bunch of strangers, the communal experience. And I find that interesting.

But, you know, we all know the words or the phrase, okay, boomer, right? But these are not just, you know, these are not just call outs. These are sentiments.

And, you know, with these emerging generations, they will engage differently and have significantly, I guess, lower appetite for long-term intense leadership roles too, maybe?

[Jarred] (47:20 - 48:44)

Yeah. You know, so that's another example where lots of our event organisations are based on, you know, these older models and frameworks for organising for roles and structure and so forth. And I think we can definitely take a lesson that if we're seeing that workplace environments are finding this kind of culture clash, if they're finding these challenges in the way that young people work and want to work and how they work is different, then it's just, you know, whilst we like to think of our event organisations as kind of being quite different from a workplace environment, the similarities are too great to not think that our event organisation structures and the way that we approach them is not attractive to younger generations. And maybe that's why we're seeing some of the challenges in volunteering.

Because one of the things that sort of popped out in the research is, like, not that younger people don't want to be involved and volunteer, but the model that we're running it, the way we present it, the way we talk about it, the way we try and encourage it, just isn't resonating.

[Stevan] (48:44 - 48:58)

Yeah. And I guess the key tensions there is you get governance fatigue, you get volunteering expectations, you get digital norms, institutional rigidity, you know, the principles changes, the principles are reflected differently.

[Jarred] (48:59 - 51:07)

Yeah, that's right. And it comes back to this point that, like, younger generations are not, for example, collectively saying, we don't want to put in the effort to make the event happen. That's not really the question.

The issue is maybe they're not comfortable with the way that we're wanting it to be done and that we need to listen more, adapt more, and to be brave to realise that if we want to have more participation by younger generations in key roles in event organisation, that, you know, we need to look at adapting and changing. And then we also need to recognise that those that have been in leadership positions for a while, those who are in key roles that are older, we need to recognise that friction may arise in changing and adapting organisation models to a younger generation, that there might then be friction with those of older generations who can't quite understand why it is that needs to be changed because it's been working. They want it to continue to work the way it has been.

And so you end up with this kind of almost sort of catch-22 situation. But, you know, burnout is real. Turnover is real.

The circumstances that make it difficult for people to volunteer are just increasing, you know, financially and time-wise. So I kind of feel like there's kind of like no option but to adapt but then to recognise that adapting will create friction and recognise that and to really be trying to get everyone to work together to look at how we can evolve so that we can continue to, you know, have new people coming in, you know, to fill the gaps.

[Stevan] (51:07 - 52:27)

And how do you see, like, the Burning Man brand or the Burning Man event, how do you see it being in people's public consciousness? Are we doing enough? Is there enough material out there for people to get curious?

I know that the recent HBO docuseries is, you know, creating a lot of talking points. But over in the past, I think, you know, if you look into it, Disney has done their fair share of putting Burning Man out there into people's public consciousness, into the kids' consciousness as well. For example, the recent animation Zootopia 2, I don't know if you saw that, but there was a little scenery, a little scene, if you blink you would have missed it, but a scene where it talks about Burning Man but instead of Burning Man they change it to Burning Mammals.

Also, you know, in Star Wars as well, you know, like 10 years ago, it was featured, although it wasn't labelling it as Burning Man but it was labelling it as, you know, the concept was there is a generational celebration on this planet every 40 years. People come together from, you know, all over the galaxy to have this experience and that was in The Force Awakens. So if you kind of missed that scene, you probably, but overall there has been not many, not much.

What's your take on that?

[Jarred] (52:28 - 54:07)

I think Burning Man has reached a high level of cultural saturation in terms of the Nevada event. So I think if you were to ask, you know, people in the general public have they heard of Burning Man? I think the number of people that have heard of it would be probably higher than ever.

But if you were to ask people, you know, about a particular regional event, people's awareness that, you know, there's a local representation of that, probably the awareness of that is probably quite low. And, you know, I think there's still many people that go to Burning Man and don't realise that, you know, there's actual Burning Man events in their own country. So I think that's still quite common.

I think, you know, the sort of mainstreaming of the awareness, you know, obviously has its, you know, upsides and downsides. And I think the question to ask is, has the mainstreaming of it made more people want to go? And one take on that might be to say, well, hang on, that seems a bit odd that the awareness of Burning Man is probably at its highest ever, and yet we're sort of seeing the demand dropping for tickets, for example.

[Stevan] (54:07 - 55:50)

So I've got a few quotes here, which they are quite fascinating, I think. These are from Gen Z crowd, and they're preconceptions of Burning Man, mainly talking about drugs, but there's also some other aspects. So one of the quotes was about Burning Man is that you can take drugs.

There are no rules and anything goes. That's terrifying for them. Nobody likes Burning Man.

It has a very negative association and is always made fun of. Most memes about it are negative. Burns are cringe and intimidating.

It's a bunch of naked hippies taking drugs and dancing in the dirt. Growing up, the people who were into drugs were not the people you'd want to hang out with. It was always the Bogans and the Eshays.

So Burning is promoted as being about the people, but if the people are all druggy, douchey creeps, then it's not a community. These people want to be part of what it feels. They feel like it's very exclusionary and clicky, like you're left out, and you're not someone who wants to do all the drugs.

So they talk about their drug experiences, and communities are radically inclusive, viewed with suspicion. There's so many dodgy, right-wing grift types. We've grown up online and always on the lookout for those kinds of types of creeps.

They're always looking for ways to infiltrate and take advantage of things like that, so there's no way it would be a safe space. You don't need to change the narrative of what it's about if you want to appeal to young people. Focus on the radical self-expression and deep commodification principles.

Somewhere you can be free to be yourself. Somewhere you don't have to spend any money. The anti-capitalist thing is good, but don't say words like, escape from capitalism for a week.

That sounds like a cult.

[Jarred] (55:51 - 1:00:16)

So I'll pick out a couple of aspects. I think it's important to note, because I know a little bit about the source of those quotes from those young people, and I think it's also interesting to note that Gen Z, which is actually quite a, like most of these generations, whilst there's a grouping of them, Gen Z are those born basically between mid-90s to 2009, and the ones that these quotes came from are what we would kind of call the late Gen Zs. So they're in sort of the group that were born closer to 2009 as opposed to those that were born in the mid-90s.

And that distinction becomes quite important because the way that Gen Z experienced the pandemic, you can almost divide them into two groups. So those that were sort of perhaps already in the workforce when the pandemic hit, as opposed to those that were still in school in and around 2020. And so these types of responses that you are reading are like very, very typical of the sort of way of looking at the world that the research is indicating from the late Gen Zs and now Gen Alphas.

So they're very consistent and very telling of what that outlook looks like. An interesting word that came up, because it is one that sort of is in and around discussions like this, is the word cringe. So prior to Gen Z, cringe typically means something that's kind of embarrassing or socially awkward.

Whereas cringe is kind of taking on a new meaning for Gen Z and it's often a signal of perceived inauthenticity. So it's less about making mistakes and more about appearing to perform, exaggerate, to claim significance or to want something that hasn't been earned. And that sort of resonates through what they were saying.

And so this is not to say that Burning Man has become cringe in the way that perhaps previous generations may have understood cringe, but it's being perceived as cringe from younger generations, but for reasons different from what we might have used the word cringe. And so the sense that we're getting is that the experience is maybe not being perceived as authentic. Now, we might look at the event and go, oh my goodness, it's more authentic than what we experience in the outside world.

But actually, we're seeing a very, very different reaction from younger generations. And this becomes really important because cringe is not something that young people want to be labelled. And so if there's an event that is sort of exhibiting what could be deemed these kind of fringe features, which includes the type of prominent people that go to the events, substance taking and the other things that were mentioned, then yeah, you're starting to look at an event that just isn't carrying the obvious appeal of like, oh, instead of it being, yes, this is an event I really want to go to and engage with, we're seeing a reaction of, oh, I think I'll give that a wide berth.

[Stevan] (1:00:16 - 1:00:49)

Yes, shout out to the Gen Z crowd for giving us those quotes. Those are great quotes. I love them.

Now, the stigma of drugs with Burning Man seems to be, I guess it is part of their psyche. It is in the forefront of their minds going to these events. They see the nudity.

They see the hippie-ish kind of behaviours, being naked. They see the drugs. Yeah, and they'll also see just the decadence, the hedonism, the partying, things like that, which some of them, it doesn't appeal to some of them.

[Jarred] (1:00:50 - 1:02:58)

Yeah, and another aspect that seems to come up quite a bit is talk of safety and feeling safe. And perhaps it could be that previous generations have felt relatively comfortable being in these types of social environments with substances, with alcohol, and perhaps someone from an older generation may well perhaps have an unconscious level of comfort being in those settings, whereas younger people in the same situation might have very, very different reactions around their familiarity and the degree to which they feel safe in those environments.

I think it probably becomes another question of like, so, you know, is it intrinsically unsafe? But there's just those of us that either don't recognise it as unsafe when it actually really is, or that it might seem like it's unsafe, but it's actually safer than it looks. But I suppose when you get down to it, is that if someone is perceiving a situation or an event as unsafe, then that's their feeling of it.

That's their perception of it. And changing those sorts of feelings and reactions, I think can be really, really difficult and really, really challenging to change those perceptions. And I'm not too sure whether, you know, there's a willingness to necessarily radically, you know, change the environment such that, you know, to address those things.

I think lots of good work is being done about, you know, addressing genuine, you know, safety concerns of events, but then I think it becomes a matter of, well, it depends on how you define safe.

[Stevan] (1:02:59 - 1:03:19)

What about the other groups of the younger generation where they do think it's safe, but the Instagram culture really excludes things, really saying, well, it's very clicky, you know. They don't feel like they belong. Although I really want to come to it, it's totally safe.

I just don't feel like I'm part of it, or I don't feel like I'm made to be part of it.

[Jarred] (1:03:19 - 1:06:27)

Yeah. So I think this gets into further bit of thinking and analysis and research that I've been doing that was kind of prompted by a recent article that I read by a burner. And it was like a really good reminder of some of what you might call sort of like the real sort of magic and amazing sort of immersiveness that Burning Man definitely, you know, reaches in the lead up to the man burn by about the Wednesday or the Thursday.

And, you know, lots of regional events similarly, you know, can have that same sort of almost, you know, for want of a better word, the sort of sense of magic, you know. And people even talk about, you know, the magic that happens at the events. And I kind of wonder if we lose sight of that and that we have been putting too much attention or could potentially put too much attention on, you know, the community and the organisation and the running of the event and putting too much kind of focus on the mechanics of it that then makes it very difficult to clearly distinguish the fact that there is some very unique and magical experiences that can be had. And as a consequence, because we can't necessarily easily put our finger on or explain that feeling, that magic, that really unique and interesting aspect of what attracts us, you know, to Burning Man events, has attracted us to them, continues to attract us to them, to go back, that what we're not doing is seeing that younger generations are the ones that we need to enable the handing over of how to continue to create this magic. So sometimes I suspect that we're thinking about it too much in organisational terms of how do we hand over the organisational aspects of running an event, which becomes kind of like almost quite, I can't think of the word, but, you know, like it's a bit boring in some respects and not incredibly attractive. But, you know, if we were to be thinking in terms of like, how do we transition the knowledge and handing over of the magic that can be created at the event, that perhaps we might approach this a little bit differently if we see more clearly the very special and valuable magic that we're looking to have continued and developed and evolved over time in the future.

[Stevan] (1:06:27 - 1:06:42)

Yeah, right. So that, yeah, you're right. I mean, building that year round of community building is more important than just focusing on an event or a burn.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the community building that year round goes a long way.

[Jarred] (1:06:42 - 1:09:24)

Like an example that got shared with me recently is, which I think to some extent kind of works, is that if you think about jazz and maybe jazz improvisation, not that I'm a musician, but I really love jazz. And I particularly, you know, love jazz when it starts to get, you know, really quite edgy and you're seeing, you know, the musicians bounce off each other. And, you know, when you see really good jazz happening on stage, there is something really electrical and magical.

And, you know, that starts to happen between the people on stage and with the audience and the atmosphere is just amazing. And so, you know, you can teach a bunch of people to play piano, saxophone, drums and so forth. But there's something different that needs to be added into the mix in order to get improvisation and to get that type of really, you know, magical atmosphere creating.

And so, you know, one way of looking at it is to say that maybe we've been too focused on getting people to learn instruments and to be on stage and to play jazz, but we haven't been clear about ensuring that the way to create the magic is learned and that, you know, each generation has the opportunity to take the learnings of previous generations in terms of, you know, how far they've got down the track of an understanding of, you know, how these really magical experiences can be created. And rather than saying and just continue to do what we've been doing and you'll, you know, bake the same cake, you know, this is not just about saying here's the recipe for the chocolate cake.

Keep on following this recipe precisely and you'll get an awesome chocolate cake every time. I think what we want to be doing is to say, okay, so we've got this far and we've made a chocolate cake this good so far with this recipe. Now you take it and see what you can create with it because we shouldn't see, you know, making the great chocolate cake that we've made so far the end point in all of this.

The great chocolate cake we've got so far is just, you know, one stage and who knows what the chocolate cake could emerge and transform into, you know, into the future.

[Stevan] (1:09:25 - 1:10:11)

It's fascinating that these generations are also fascinated by the decommodification principle, money exchange. You don't buy things. It's a gifting economy.

And they also have a reflective look at radical inclusion saying, is it really though? Your community is radically inclusive, but is it really there? If we look underneath the bonnet, Burning Man is predominantly a white, the demographics, you know, the makeup of it.

It skewers towards particular age groups, social status types, I guess, education, more intellectuals. So is it really? I think that's an interesting kind of viewpoint of these younger generations too, which I love.

[Jarred] (1:10:12 - 1:11:21)

Yeah, I think the radical inclusion one is an interesting one because once again, we see how different generations have the potential to interpret that differently from, you know, their lived experience. And in some respects from one of those quotes, it's asking a very interesting question that if radical inclusion means that people that are perceived as not positive people, that maybe the way that we understand radical inclusion, you know, needs some thought. If the question is being asked about who's missing, but also of who is there and does that really make sense?

And is that really consistent? And is that perhaps detrimental to the event to, you know, have this everyone and anyone can be there? You know, that's asking the question of, you know, is that really such a great idea?

[Stevan] (1:11:21 - 1:11:45)

So with the changing times, there's also changing behaviours and attitudes. And I find it interesting that the alcohol trend is down. You know, people are more into wellness.

People are more into a more conscientious way of partying. The other thing that with these younger generation is their take up or their usage of communications and technology. And that kind of dictates the way how they behave.

[Jarred] (1:11:45 - 1:12:08)

Yeah, like you were saying earlier, some of the resurgence in the cinema has occurred because it's an opportunity to deliberately have your phone switched off and to be immersed, you know, one of the latest big blockbusters that's out, I think, runs for nearly three hours and it's...

[Stevan] (1:12:08 - 1:12:09)

With no intermissions.

[Jarred] (1:12:10 - 1:12:50)

Yeah, and getting some of the, you know, highest, you know, box office sales than, you know, some movies have had for a while.

So it shows that there's definitely a desire for the sort of ability to switch off. And that is like another example whereby whereas older generations may have approached a Burning Man event in terms of, you know, seeking, you know, transformational experiences, people from a younger generation might be going so that, you know, they can switch off from, you know, a digital diet.

[Stevan] (1:12:51 - 1:12:57)

Yeah, they see it as like a circuit breaker, like a digital detox. There's more demand for low sensory spaces.

[Jarred] (1:12:58 - 1:12:58)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:12:58 - 1:13:31)

Yeah, I think that's the trend. I find that really interesting because how do we cater for these type of generations, these type of people? Should we focus more on wellness?

Do we change in the way how we communicate? How we play out in terms of the communicational channels that we choose? Accessibility.

Some of the programs that we might have, for example, mentorships or shadowing. Do we engage more on Discord or TikTok? People are moving away from Facebook, moving away from these more addictive social media platforms.

[Jarred] (1:13:32 - 1:17:46)

Yeah, and certainly there's a rise in, you know, short-form videos, short-form content. You know, one of the challenges with the communication platforms is that as these platforms kind of go global, if, you know, we wanted to communicate on TikTok about, let's say, a regional event, it becomes really difficult because it's not that straightforward to limit, you know, what audience you're getting. And you could make some really great content and, you know, the large number of people engaging with it, you know, could well be, you know, thousands of kilometres away in far-flung countries.

So that ability to engage with a local audience, you know, becomes quite challenging. But going back to something I said earlier, I think once again this is where, you know, I just don't feel like there's been enough thinking yet or work done on how, you know, these changing social media platforms, changing technologies, changing habits, changing preferences, we just don't know enough about how to take all of that and then go, okay, so how might we do things differently? I think we certainly, this is where we start to hit that problem that there's lots of questions about how younger people might engage with, you know, these events that, you know, we've loved for a while.

I think we need to engage, we need to ask them and we need to involve them in how we might shape and change things. But two things in doing that that we've got to keep in mind. One is, once again, the way and how and where we approach to try and gather this information needs to be really well thought through.

Otherwise, we're going to infuse how we do this, yeah, with our own bias, with our own mindset, where we're potentially going to be thinking it in terms of we have a thing that we do today, we want to change it for younger people. And asking that question might be the wrong kind of approach. We might need to approach it in terms of what does safety mean for you?

What does participation mean for you? The event needs people to, you know, to help make the event happen. What would, you know, make the difference between you feeling comfortable in putting time and energy and helping and, you know, what would make you resistant to that?

And then we face that issue that I raised earlier, is that, like, this is where I find kind of like the burner community, the Burning Man culture, kind of like quite ironic, whereby for an event that's supposed to be about challenging culture, challenging the way that we do things, being experimental, that for a culture that kind of really, you know, loves or seems to love that aspect, we don't seem to like to change.

We seem to like to do things the same way for long periods of time. Like I mentioned earlier, you know, the essence of the Burning Man event model hasn't really changed much in 30 years. So I think we're going to encounter a lot of potential resistance that if we're looking to adapt and shape events for younger generations, we're going to find resistance in those that actually want to keep it the same.

[Stevan] (1:17:47 - 1:18:03)

So is part of the solution having more younger folks input, getting rid of the boomer mentality, the Gen X mentality of the ways we used to do things, adopting an approach which is more future friendly, perhaps?

[Jarred] (1:18:03 - 1:20:58)

Yeah, I often think that making tweaks to what we've already got is not enough. I think it would be amazing to, with particularly Gen Z and the emerging Gen Alphas, I think we should go through an exercise of starting with a blank piece of paper and say, OK, let's forget what the event is that we know today and to say if we were to build an event from scratch, what would that look like? And maybe we might find that there's a way to experiment with a new form of event.

And through that, maybe we might find ways of shifting events from the models that they currently run as and perhaps shift them towards a new structure. I just sort of come back to this thing that originally when Burning Man started, it was a relatively novel, unique and very strange and weird bunch of different groups of people that came together to do a crazy thing in the desert. And I think the time is ripe for us to bring back the notion of radical in terms of novel and to say what sort of event, what might it look like, if we were to be really, really radically novel about what something different could emerge that takes these elements of the features which we know has resonance with humans over very long periods of time through different cultures and history.

So things that we kind of know continue to resonate and perhaps like what Larry effectively did was to take some common elements that have resonated with culture over time and to sort of build on top of those sort of seemingly persistent features. So I think that would be something really exciting to have happen is to have that conversation about how we might design something with what we know, but taking into account the fact that we've got a younger generation of people that now interpret the world differently, it means different things for them, and do it through that approach.

[Stevan] (1:20:59 - 1:21:16)

And with this demographic cliff that we talked about earlier, do you see it as a shallow cliff or a very steep cliff? Is it some kind of a cliff where we can just, where we'll only break our leg or crack our skulls open, or is it a fatal cliff? It's a risk to, it's an existential risk.

[Jarred] (1:21:16 - 1:23:19)

I think it is. I think the first danger is to, I think all events should take some time to, based on the data that they do have, to take a close look at the changing demographics for over time, for as much as what they can, to see what patterns emerge from their community. When I looked at KiwiBurn data and Burning Man data, the thing that I found interesting is that the KiwiBurn demographic data seems to be closely following the Burning Man data.

So I thought that was really fascinating. The difference being that it sort of looked like the KiwiBurn data is where Burning Man was at sort of like five or six years ago. So we're still to kind of catch up, but the data over time looked like it was heading towards where Burning Man is tracking.

And what that data definitely shows is that from about the mid 30s, the participants dropped by about half after age 35, and that's been happening for a little while. So what I think that kind of means in practice is that it starts to put real stress on the knowledge and the experience and the capability of people running the event, and that, you know, those with experience are getting squeezed because, you know, people are kind of coming and going around them and you're sort of getting these kind of smaller core groups, which makes putting on the event, you know, increasingly challenging.

[Stevan] (1:23:19 - 1:23:37)

I want to talk about the live entertainment sector, where it continues to face unprecedented pressures. So between 2020 and mid-2026, over 70 major and independent arts and music festivals have permanently shut down or been placed on indefinite hiatus across Australia and New Zealand.

[Jarred] (1:23:38 - 1:23:40)

Yeah, it's a pretty astounding figure, isn't it?

[Stevan] (1:23:40 - 1:23:42)

What do you think that is? Why do you think that is?

[Jarred] (1:23:42 - 1:26:41)

I think there's a few things going on here. One is that post the pandemic, there did seem to be a sudden significant increase in people wanting to do events, and there was a market for those events. I think people had been kind of not able to attend events for so long that then there was this massive interest, and so people, you know, the base was there, and people were going to, you know, multiple, and remembering that many of these are kind of like summer, you know, spring, early autumn type events, you know, people would go to multiple events, whereas today there's, you know, I talk to a lot of people and people that were going to multiple events per summer, I'm finding now that people are typically, you know, picking one, maybe two, multi-day events that they're going to go to. Another factor seems to be that the economic environment is such that I think it's not affordable for people to go to multiple events like they were.

People don't necessarily have the time to do it. You know, I speak to a lot of people that even if they're employed, they're finding it really challenging to get the time, you know, to meet various other commitments and to go to, you know, multiple events. So I think we had this oversaturation of events post-COVID.

Then you've got these economic conditions. Certainly the ticket prices for these events have been scaling up significantly as well. You know, anywhere up to close to $1,000 for some events, you know, by the time you add in, you know, the extra features which are now included, which is, you know, there's a car pass, then there's a camping pass, and then there's, you know, the food and drink vendors and all these sorts of things.

So some of these events are just becoming, you know, really, really expensive. But then I do believe that regardless of the, I think that the pandemic just created kind of like almost like a deferment of the inevitable because I believe that if we hadn't have had the pandemic, I think that we would have seen the logical end to the number and variety of events anyway because, you know, as we all kind of have been talking about and we'll talk about further, that there's these changing generational and demographic factors which are influencing who is going to events, why they're going and why they're not going.

[Stevan] (1:26:41 - 1:26:57)

Well, there's some pressures being felt with some of these festivals. There are the larger scale models such as Tomorrowland or EDC where they are bucking the trend. They are expanding.

They are forging new territories in different countries.

[Jarred] (1:26:57 - 1:28:57)

Yeah, that's right. And so it seems like that either maybe the story about the festival sector is not quite right. So on one hand, it might suggest, oh, well, actually, maybe we're writing it off too soon.

Maybe it's not really in the decline. But another way of looking at it is that you're just getting certain events that either consciously or unconsciously have developed a model for running their event that does actually resonate with the generational market that they're targeting. And it's probably more likely that their success is really cannibalising attendance from other events and they just happen to be really good at bringing in the audience required to make their events cost effective.

There's probably also some aspects here, and there's probably a story with something like Tomorrowland where you can start to kind of almost make it like McDonald's. You've got a format. I don't know whether people often think about this, but the reason why really good franchises work is because they're able to replicate and duplicate the model so that whether you go to a McDonald's in one part of the country or another part of the country, you're going to have the same experience.

And there's a lot of economies of scale when you can take something that you're really good at and then being able to kind of replicate it. So I think the Tomorrowland one is probably a good example whereby they've got their equivalent of a McDonald's food production model, and they're able to roll that out and leverage obviously their existing festival organisation and experience.

[Stevan] (1:28:57 - 1:29:18)

Yes, so the franchise model is there to expand and also reducing the risk. But in reducing the risk, in diversifying the risk, they're not really diversifying in terms of vertical. They're diversifying in terms of horizontal.

So they're going expanding sideways. They're not really vertically integrating the whole, I guess, the experience or the business model.

[Jarred] (1:29:19 - 1:30:34)

Yes, it's a good example of, and this is maybe where the cannibalisation factor becomes important because if they're cannibalising audiences from smaller boutique events, there's some other interesting articles about how the demise of many of these festivals is actually having a really big impact on musicians and artists and other people that were generating a livelihood from being able to go from festival to festival.

And obviously here we're talking about events which are different from Burning Man events because outside of Burning Man events, most of that festival space enables commercialisation, whether it be in terms of food or market stalls. You've got DJs that are getting paid. You've got musicians that are getting paid.

Artists are getting paid. So, you know, these kind of like large events are possibly going to have the effect of cannibalising the smaller festivals and having a much pretty wider economic impact on local festival culture.

[Stevan] (1:30:34 - 1:31:08)

Yeah, the whole franchising thing is great. I guess you don't have to really go far. You don't have to go to the US to experience McDonald's.

You don't have to go to Belgium to experience Tomorrowland. There's going to be a Tomorrowland in Asia, in Melbourne coming soon. So in that way, the experience is there, but the price is also the same as well, right?

It's still overpriced. So there was an interesting article by The Guardian recently talking about in a world of overpriced and overrated mainstream festivals, tiny events, like tiny events are becoming more common now, like these boutique events that you mentioned.

[Jarred] (1:31:09 - 1:32:12)

Yeah, and I actually thought it was quite interesting reading about how that was happening in the UK. And, you know, without, you know, having looked at it closely, from what I've seen in the Australian and New Zealand sort of festival environment, I'm kind of wondering whether we were doing those types of events for a lot longer than maybe what's been happening in the UK. And so we've actually already hit saturation point with those style of events.

And now we're seeing the decline, whereas it might well be that in the UK, that's still a, you know, kind of like relatively new offering that hasn't maybe been happening at the scale that it was happening in, you know, Australia and New Zealand and other parts of the world. And so it might, you know, be that, you know, the UK is just still not yet a mature market for those experiences and that there's, you know, still growth available in that space over there.

[Stevan] (1:32:13 - 1:32:39)

So would you consider regionals as a franchise? So the Burning Man regionals around the world, I mean, you're going to experience similar to what you would experience at Black Rock City, but on a smaller scale and a much more, I guess, I don't know, a more simplistic scale, a more refined, more personalised or more customised to their own region. So are regionals sort of like the franchises of Burning Man?

[Jarred] (1:32:40 - 1:34:56)

It's interesting because, you know, Larry probably could have created a franchise model and yet he didn't. And my guess might be that setting it up as a franchise model probably would be the antithesis of, you know, the principle of decommodification. But, you know, like, you know, Burning Man could have set up actually a quite interesting, you know, very viable franchise model that could have deliberately, you know, required that, you know, lookalike events, you know, feedback, kind of almost like a licence fee, you know, back to Burning Man itself, you know.

But as it stands, you know, regional events, it costs nothing for an event to be, to become a regional event. Interestingly, other events that for all intents and purposes, you know, could be and are considered, you know, Burner events, but actually have deliberately chosen not to seek, you know, official regional affiliation or status. And that now is becoming really interesting.

You know, I wrote about this recently in an article about how, you know, regional events are probably now more, you know, representative of the sort of heart and soul of, you know, Burner culture globally than Nevada, and that if you were to, you know, expand that to be not just regional events, but very closely aligned adjacent events, then that population of the community is actually quite significant, you know, globally.

But it's kind of a different, you know, I feel that we're entering a different period now, and that it's becoming perhaps uncool to, you know, for want of a better expression, perhaps it's not as cool as maybe what it used to be to explicitly state a connection with Burning Man.

[Stevan] (1:34:56 - 1:35:30)

Yeah, just going back on the Tiny Festivals article, these secret smaller gatherings seems to be more popular. People are more in tune or more, there's a preference for these festivals because there's more connection that can be experienced in these smaller festivals rather than the larger scale ones. And I guess with these smaller events, would they be more able to withstand some of these headwinds or turbulence that these large scale events are facing with overpricing and oversaturation and cannibalising their own market?

[Jarred] (1:35:30 - 1:37:54)

Yeah, like each event is really going to have a different story. And I think it would be very difficult to apply a particular model to say overall all of these types of events are going to be sustainable and are able to continue. I think we would end up seeing, you know, within a couple of years a story that, you know, there'd probably be a lot of them pop up, now probably even more, but then it will, you know, go into decline again for a number of factors.

One is that it's difficult to find, you know, the right locations to hold these events. Insurance is becoming increasingly expensive. Extreme weather events, you know, are becoming more uncertain and having impacts depending on what the financial model is of how the event runs means that they're going to be subject to, you know, different pressures.

You know, a volunteer run event is going to face very different pressures as opposed to an event whereby they need to pay people to make the event happen. We know that there's significant, there's a significant volunteer crisis across most of our events and I don't see that improving in the future. So, yeah, all of these events are really going to, you know, have their own story.

They're going to follow their own paths. You know, some will have communities that, you know, really rally around to support them and continue of them. And, you know, I think there'll be somewhat of a bit of a sliding scale of, you know, those that are the most opportunistic and really just trying to make a quick buck would probably be the first ones to possibly fold.

And then as you get down more into the community space, ironically the ones that are probably more community orientated will then, you know, run into, you know, the same issues that most community events face, which is, you know, internal community challenges and criticisms and groups having issues with each other and they kind of almost sort of, you know, break apart, you know, themselves, you know, through those social challenges.

[Stevan] (1:37:54 - 1:38:26)

Yeah, what some of these smaller, some of these boutique festivals actually have really rad stories. So, for example, Gem Fest was, it started as a 21st birthday party for someone called Gemma and now it's like an 8,000 capacity festival. With these smaller community gatherings, I guess it could be more experimental as well as educational as well because, you know, if you see someone littering or notice that the toilet rolls has run out, you do something about it because these are more community based, right?

You're a participant, not just a consumer.

[Jarred] (1:38:27 - 1:39:21)

Yeah, it very much depends on, you know, the ethos of the event and the community they build. And those, you know, those are really important factors like, you know, a couple of years ago I went to around about 10 festivals over one summer and it was really interesting the diversity of the vibe of each one and I certainly found that the events that had the greatest level of participant engagement, you know, that the extent to which the event was built by the people that went there definitely had a very different feel from the events whereby people were very much paying to consume and experience.

[Stevan] (1:39:21 - 1:39:54)

So we spoke about the live entertainment sector continues to face unprecedented pressures. I want to spend a bit more time examining this trend or at least look into the festivals that's been expanding. So if you do a quick internet research, if you do a quick internet search and you want to ask what type of EDM or music festivals, the top ranked, so the top five ranked music EDM festival cultures, and this has to be like a multi-day camping event, what would be the top five or the top ranked events do you think they are?

[Jarred] (1:39:55 - 1:40:06)

At a guess, I would suggest that events like Tomorrowland, Coachella might be in there.

[Stevan] (1:40:06 - 1:40:13)

EDC, Electric Daisy Carnival, which is in Vegas, they've expanded as well. So they're an EDM festival. And the other one is Glastonbury.

[Jarred] (1:40:14 - 1:40:18)

Yes, yes, of course, which interestingly has taken a year off.

[Stevan] (1:40:19 - 1:44:31)

Yeah, yeah. So Glastonbury is interesting because they have a story like history as well. So they've got their own humble beginnings.

It started in 1970. Yeah, it started exactly in 1970. So just after Woodstock.

It attracts about 200,000 people. So the breakdown of that is predominantly white. 77% are white, 11% are Asian.

It's five days and the ticket price is about £380. Tomorrowland, they started in 2005. So it's about 21 years this year.

Their demographics is said to be between 18 and 35 years. They attract about 400,000 people over two massive weekends. And there's about 200 plus countries represented.

It's a three-day weekend and the average prices are €365. So Coachella started in 1999. This is like the same year or just after Woodstock 99.

Their age group is about 33 to 34 years. That's the median age of the participants. It's predominantly millennials and Gen Z audience.

And it's also predominantly Hispanic or Latinos. 96% actually. It's a three-day weekend.

It attracts about 750,000 people, which is quite a lot. And the average ticket there is about US$600. And the other one is EDC.

Started in 1991. Their age group is similar to Coachella. 18 to 34 years or similar to Tomorrowland.

They get about 500 to half a million people packed over those weekends. And their festival is a different concept. It is more a dusk to dawn carnival.

And you're paying about US$340 for that experience. So with Burning Man, it started in 1986. The median age is 37 years old.

Predominantly white, 69%. With Hispanics or Latinos, 7%. Asians make up 6%.

Middle Eastern or North American is 4%. And blacks or African American is only 1%. Now 16% of these attendees reported incomes of US$300,000 or plus.

So it is well educated with many holding advanced degrees. 43% of those attendees are women. And 55% are men.

Though there has been a slight increase in non-binary participants over the years. So the attendees in their 30s accounted for 41. Followed by 24% in their 40s.

14% is only in their 50s. And 9% are over 60 years old. Only 1% were younger than 20 years old.

That's the stats there. So there has been a significant drop between the 20 and 29 years old since 2014. While there has been an increase between the 40 and 49 year old age group.

And where people come from, mostly are Californian based. The Canadians only make up 2%. And usually every year there is about 20 to 30% who are first time burners.

Who are virgins. And 16% of those are second time burners. While 33% had attended 4 or more burns.

And only 6% are reported to be 20 years plus veterans. So this is an 8 day, week long, 70,000 attendees at Black Rock City. And the average ticket price you'll pay for that experience is about $550 USD to $780 USD.

And this is not including the auxiliary features that you might get. Such as camping car passes and camp dues and stuff like that. And what is interesting is that 2025 was the first year it hasn't been sold out since 2011.

And I'm not sure what the breakdown of that is in terms of the other minority ethnic groups as well. That's a really interesting stats there with Burning Man. So what are your thoughts there with these breakdowns and the demographics?

It seems to be working really well for the events of Tomorrowland or the EDM festivals. Targeting the younger crowds, the younger generations.

[Jarred] (1:44:32 - 1:49:40)

Yeah, so this is where we get into that aspect. That on one hand it could seem like there's a pattern of what we might call decline or change. Because we need to look at those events against the backdrop that we're also seeing a lot of music and arts festivals.

And general venues in cities and towns closing down. There's that number that I think since about 2020 there's been something like 70 plus music and arts festivals and events that have either shut down or taking a bit of hiatus. 70, that's a lot over the past six years.

And then on the other hand we're seeing growth in some areas. So what that sort of suggests is that one thing that could be happening is that perhaps we're seeing somewhat of a shift from transformational type festivals, co-created sort of transformational festivals. And that we're seeing this shift towards events where they've really mastered the art of creating the magic that is possible.

But they curate it, they orchestrate it. Whereas Burning Man is an event whereby effectively you need to sort of be part of the co-creation of the event. For these other events like Tomorrowland, you pay your ticket price and the magic's created for you.

All you need to do is kind of like insert yourself in. And the storytelling, the curation of the music and the incredible stage design and the attention to detail of the curating of the spaces gives people, I suppose, somewhat of the similar experience. But it doesn't require the same level of co-creation in the creation of it.

It comes with the ticket. And it would be interesting to see what the figures are overall. So we definitely are seeing declines in some areas.

We're seeing some events continue to expand and to grow. It would be interesting to sort of see, but is the demand overall for festivals, when you count them all up, is the overall demand increasing or decreasing? That would be kind of interesting to kind of see.

My guess is that whilst some regional events do sell out and that there's high demand, I think we're seeing signs that it's losing a level of consistency. You're always probably going to get a situation whereby if you've got a very large number of people that are interested to go to a particular event, particularly within a sort of a localised area, and so if you've got a strong number of people that potentially could go and you've got an event that's small, then it's only natural that some of the numbers are going to work out, that it becomes very, very hard to get a ticket for a particular regional event, let's say.

But the fact that we're seeing across Australia and New Zealand different events closing down, but overall, and a lot of that was due to reducing demand, I think it does bring us back to the shifting nature of what younger generations are looking for, what they're seeking out. And it may well be that these other events just happen to be really good at resonating with the audience that they're targeting. Now, obviously, we would never want to say we want to redesign events because I think our Burning Man events are unique.

There is something incredibly special about an event where you are part of the creation of the event. But I think it does need us to seriously look at if we're seeing declining numbers of young people coming to our events, then I think we do need to be very careful about the long-term sustainability.

[Stevan] (1:49:40 - 1:50:20)

Can we do like a quick thought experiment there? So which of those festivals would appeal to you, knowing what is under the hood? So as I was saying, for me, I would happily go to Glaxonbury because Asian people are represented at a higher number than most festivals.

I would be happy to go to Burning Man because of the older age group. I would happily go to Coachella if all my Hispanic friends are there. And also, I would want to go to a festival that is not that expensive, that is economical, that doesn't fleece me for a $10 water bottle, something like that.

So these are the considerations that a younger audience has to think about too.

[Jarred] (1:50:20 - 1:51:42)

Yeah, another number that I think would be really interesting to see is how many events people are going to. So I have a sense that when ticket prices were lower, people would potentially... So once again, I think we're dealing with sort of like the pre-COVID time and sort of the post-COVID time.

So I think in the years leading up to COVID, my guess would be that people were potentially going to multiple events over summer. From talking to lots of different people in the last couple of years, some people are really only sort of budgeting to go to one or two events and some none at all over summer. So I think the number of people going to multiple events is decreasing, that's my guess.

And so I think what we're seeing is that as events close down, there's probably a smaller... So I get this. It would be interesting to understand, is the pie overall getting bigger or smaller?

And if it's getting smaller, then it seems that there's some events that are carving out a large part of the pie, of the smaller pie for themselves. And that's why they're kind of doing quite well.

[Stevan] (1:51:42 - 1:53:13)

Could it also come down to the storytelling aspect of an event, of a brand, of a festival? Because for one example is Tomorrowland. I think they've done really well in the way how they've portrayed their humble beginnings.

So it started in 2005 with only 10,000 people. And so they've got also a story history as well. So 2009 was when they started with a theme, with holding the event as a theme, with a theme with it and building a main stage.

And that was a sellout year. 2011 was when they got voted as the best EDM event on the planet. And between 2013 and 2015 is when they stretched out and added another brand, which is called Tomorrow World in the US.

2017 was when they started splitting things up into... Because it's so popular, so much demand, they split it up to two weekends. 2019 was when they ventured out into a different format, a winter format.

So it wasn't just about the summer festivals. It was called Tomorrowland Winter. And 2025, or actually it's this year, 2026, is when they actually went into Southeast Asia and Tomorrowland Thailand.

And this year they've also announced Tomorrowland Melbourne, the core stages. So the festival is particularly popular amongst younger adults, predominantly 18 to 35. If you're born, you've got to be born before 2008 to go to these events.

And last year was infamous for its main stage getting caught on fire. Do you remember hearing that?

[Jarred] (1:53:13 - 1:53:14)

Yeah.

Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:53:14 - 1:53:56)

So Tomorrowland's ability to attract such a varied demographic is a testament to its status as a cultural phenomenon, where music and community converge to create unforgettable experiences. Tomorrowland attracts international attendees by creating a unique and immersive festival experience that emphasizes themes of unity and love alongside a strong marketing strategy that includes cinematic aftermovies and year-round digital content.

This approach fosters a sense of community and aspiration, encouraging people from around the world to participate. So that seems like a success story. And they're expanding and they see the pie as a bigger pie, something that they can really cater for.

[Jarred] (1:53:56 - 1:54:18)

Yeah. And it would be, you know, Thailand and Melbourne are two really interesting locations. Thailand, I think, is interesting because to my knowledge, like, there probably aren't really a lot of existing festivals like that.

So there's probably somewhat of a, you know, what you might call an untapped market.

[Stevan] (1:54:19 - 1:54:27)

A full moon party, which is, you know, it is synonymous with the Thailand scene. If you go to Thailand, you got to go to one of these full moon parties.

[Jarred] (1:54:27 - 1:55:46)

Yeah. And I suppose also the aspect of Thailand is that, you know, in that Southeast Asian area, you've got a lot of increasing wealth, a lot of high mobility, a lot of very well-connected airports. Flights are relatively cheap.

So by holding it in Thailand, it's not really, you know, just an event for Thai people. I would imagine that the bulk of their audience is probably, you know, going to be international visitors. Melbourne's an interesting one because if we're seeing a decline, then one or two things could be happening.

One, it could be that they're filling a gap that's been created by other events that are not continuing. Or what we might see is that it kind of cannibalises the local market there. And it might actually put stress on existing similar events that have been running.

And it might actually, you know, cause the closure of, you know, some further festivals as people, you know, make choices around. Am I going to go to this particular existing EDM festival or am I going to go to the Wow Tomorrowland?

[Stevan] (1:55:46 - 1:56:14)

I think with the storytelling aspect is key because it appeals to a lot of people and it inspires people to come from all walks of life in all different countries. So with the Burning Man culture, it doesn't really have that kind of the same exposure in terms of our storytelling in our history. That could be the way to attract new people, new attendees to the culture, to the community, perhaps.

[Jarred] (1:56:14 - 2:00:24)

Yeah. And I think for me, one aspect of that story is that element that I mentioned earlier, that I think a lot of us would attest to the fact that there is something really magical and special that occurs at the event. And it's not that easy or straightforward to explain what it is or how it happens.

And I think that maybe it's that aspect of the unique nature of the event that somehow generates that type of experience. I think that perhaps that's one of the things that we're not talking enough about. And maybe it's because it is something that is challenging to articulate and that lots of people experience it or would describe it in different types of ways and explain it through a lot of different mechanisms.

And maybe that's where the challenge is, is that we've got so many different stories that, you know, whereas an organisation like Tomorrowland can kind of curate a story to engage people to come, I think our story is lots and lots of stories and so many stories that it becomes kind of challenging to tap into it in a way that, you know, like, I suppose we're also a culture and a community that because of that sort of friction with commodifying experiences and our resistance to marketing and branding that, you know, maybe we've sort of shied away from getting on top of what is, you know, the story to tell about the magic of the event.

And then I think we've got this extra problem now that whereas we may have been able to somewhat explain it to people in the past from, you know, that's what I think maybe happened, you know, from that baby boomer generation that sort of the story, however you want to define it, the story seemed to be able to be transmitted and interpreted and the meaning of it sort of embodied relatively well across the baby boomer generation, Gen X and Gen Y. And now I think we've reached this problem that the story that we have had, whatever that might be, that whatever was resonating with Gen X and Gen Y is not resonating as well with Gen Z.

And I think it's going to be even more difficult. So that's where I feel that because of these changing generations and how they are in the world, I do feel that we need to take a look at, you know, what is the core essence of the experience? What is that magical, unique thing?

What are the things that seem to contribute to that? And to work with younger generations to understand what that story might mean for them and how we can maybe adapt what we've experienced, but through their eyes, through their lens. And I think we will be able to find a way to share and communicate what the possibilities are.

But there's still no guarantee because it might be that they might go, ah, right. Okay, we get it. We understand.

Yes. Okay. Yep.

We get it. But we still don't feel like we need to go.

[Stevan] (2:00:24 - 2:00:56)

The similarities between Burning Man and Tomorrowland are the stages. The main stages for Tomorrowland and the Temple and Effigy for Burning Man. And these are markings.

These are landmarks that shows all the different years and iterations and chapters of the history of these events. But yeah, I find that the storytelling aspect of Burning Man is missing there. And we need to promote it more, to talk about it more.

And I think these younger generations will be fascinated by the story, by the history.

[Jarred] (2:00:57 - 2:02:25)

Yeah. Just taking that kind of silly example of like, you know, if we've got like the best recipe that we've got so far for making a chocolate cake. I think what we don't want to be doing is to be telling a story about the best chocolate cake recipe. I think what we want to do is to tell a story about how we got to the best chocolate recipe so far, and that we've learned some stuff that might help future generations perfect it even better, to take it even further, to develop it into something else.

And so I think maybe the story that we need to tell is the story of we've kind of encountered something, we've worked something out to this point, and we would really love to see what future generations can do with it next. I think the story that we want to avoid telling is we've built something really fantastic, and we don't want it to change.

[Stevan] (2:02:25 - 2:04:00)

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like the Woodstock 99 story. So there are two other festivals locally in Australia that we can talk about, Rainbow Serpent and Confest.

So Rainbow Serpent, they're able to attract Indigenous people, the Taungurung and the Wadawurrung people. They're also really responsive to attracting the LGBTQ plus segment and disabled people. So participants being the younger adults, particularly those in their 20s and 30s, is what the attraction of Rainbow is, the demographics of Rainbow.

And that was a big festival. It was like 15,000 people in its heyday in 2019. It's a four-day camping event, but it was also a bit pricey as well.

The other one was Confest. This started in 1976 by a former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, and it was intended to bring together the various subcultures of the alternative movement. And it was branded as an exploration of alternatives.

It had workshops, and the main thing is that there's no amplified music. There's no documentation in terms of demographics, in terms of who they attracted, but it is more like an older crowd, like a Burning Man crowd, so 40s plus. And this year, it was its 50th year.

About 7,000 people participated, and it's a five-day camping event. So Confest and Rainbow Serpent both have really strong and storied histories as well. And they also appeal to various, you know, they attracted different people from all walks of life.

Have you been to any of those two, Space Elf?

[Jarred] (2:04:00 - 2:08:03)

I haven't actually, for various reasons. But interestingly enough, you know, I know a large number of people, very large number of people that have been to both. I think at the time when I was in Australia, you know, I was so focused on Burning Man events, you know, both in Australia and internationally, that I didn't sort of have a lot of, you know, kind of time and space to really engage with, you know, a lot of the other great festivals that happened there.

Recently, not last summer, but the summer previous, I actually over summer went to about 10 different festivals over summer, you know, ranging from sort of three to five days. And I came away with, and there were very diverse types of events ranging from kind of very much your sort of workshoppy wellness, bit of music, bit of art type festival, right through to your very highly curated, you know, music festivals that, you know, are quite pricey. You know, you're looking at, you know, getting towards for some of the premium tickets, you know, around about $1,000, you know, per person for a weekend.

I didn't pay that. I was volunteering in the kitchen for that particular one. And one of the things I noticed, and they range from being, you know, very much like I would say commercial, but like not commercial on a large scale, but commercial in their own right at one extreme, you know, through to an event like Kiwi Burn at the other end of the spectrum of fully volunteer run, fully community based.

And the interesting thing I found with all of these festivals is that you could plot, you could plot them on a spectrum. And one of the measures I used was just kind of roughly how did the event feel? Like, what was the vibe?

What were the people like? How friendly were they? How readily would they engage in conversation?

And just, you know, did it feel like a warm, welcoming kind of environment or otherwise? And I was able to sort of find like a roughly kind of like clean line that, you know, the more curated the event, the higher the ticket price, the more that the experience was made for the participants, the less friendly the event was. And the friendlier the events were, were the ones that were most driven by volunteer co-creative effort.

And there was definitely a very different vibe depending on the amount of effort that people at the event put in to help create the experience. And I suspect that not all events are going to necessarily follow that sort of formula, but I think it might resonate with a lot of people that there is something that is really different about events that we create together as opposed to events where you buy a ticket to be entertained. But that's not to say that, you know, large events like Tomorrowland might not be capable of creating really magical experiences because it is, I think, still feasible for those kind of like highly consumable sort of experiences.

I think it is still possible that, you know, the curators and designers and creators of those events can still generate those, you know, the conditions for people to have quite, you know, transformational, magical experiences.

[Stevan] (2:08:03 - 2:08:45)

Yeah, the pressures being felt in the music industry is essentially a crisis of confidence. They were saying, you know, you've got higher overheads, you've got slower sales, you've got the youth avoidance, they're looking at alternatives, you know, because of the higher ticket prices. There's also a consolidation of taste.

So yeah, so with these cancellations, we've had quite a few here in Australia, for example, Grooving the Moo, Splendour in the Grass, Blues Fest, The Big Red Bash, Good Life and Listen Out. And the last two are catered more for the youth attendees, Listen Out and Good Life. And these are folding.

So we have essentially a crisis of confidence. Would you agree on that?

[Jarred] (2:08:46 - 2:11:15)

So this is where, you know, there's definitely layers of challenges facing events. What I didn't mention earlier is that, so obviously during, you know, the period of the pandemic, a lot of, you know, pretty much all events kind of shut down. And, you know, there was, you know, really people were either in lockdown situations or, you know, heavily restricted, you know, social settings and numbers and all of those types of things.

And then we saw a really like big, like there was lots of new events and festivals that happened after the pandemic, but then in a way kind of reality caught up. So some events never recovered from, you know, the losses and impacts during the pandemic period. Then we saw prices rise significantly in the years after the pandemic.

And then, you know, a lot of these new events and festivals, which sort of started then, you know, many of them quickly then, you know, ceased because it wasn't viable. I think, you know, we're going to continue to see economic pressures. You know, one thing I've noticed also is the large increase in people being able to buy their tickets through services, which allows you to pay it off in installments, I think.

So it's kind of interesting that that sort of like that app-based way of buy now, pay later has probably saved a number of events because it's enabled. It might even be a slightly more dire situation if, you know, young people were not able to sort of go, right, OK, so I will go to this event, but I don't have the money. And so, you know, and that becomes really important for events because, you know, with the need for cash flow for pre-event expenses, it becomes pretty like ticket sales beforehand become kind of pretty important.

And unless you're an event that kind of has a high level of confidence, you know, that you're a sellout and that people are going to buy their tickets early, then, you know, events face significant risk in people not buying sufficient tickets up front for them to cover their expenses leading up to the event.

[Stevan] (2:11:15 - 2:11:28)

Now, we don't have such a thing as a crystal ball. And I know that your presentation or your talk was about providing solutions or answers. But do you have any other thoughts or ideas on how we can avoid some of this demographic cliff?

[Jarred] (2:11:28 - 2:13:34)

So I think we need to face the reality that the conditions of running events are going to continue to get challenging on multiple levels. Obviously, extreme weather events are something that we haven't really touched on. And that's an increasing risk for events.

That also has flow on impacts into things like the cost of insurance. And just once again, just people just sort of going, well, you know, like, I don't want to spend all that money and for it to get rained out. Or the other end of that spectrum is, you know, almost unfathomable, you know, kind of like heat conditions as well to potentially deal with the weather conditions.

Then there's all of the financial conditions, costs, you know, uncertainty around ticket sales. I think also we'll start to see the interesting political conditions, which may start to impact the ability for events to run in the locations where they run. An interesting and a new one that I suppose has kind of really come up this year is the cost of fuel.

And if we really start to see, you know, the genuine price impacts of fuel, both in terms of local transportation and people that travel internationally to events, I think that's really going to start to impact. It's going to be really interesting to see if we're able to get data from Burning Man around the impact to their international population, both in terms of, you know, to some extent, travel costs. But certainly, you know, I think a lot of people are not going to Burning Man from outside of the US because of the risks of traveling through the border with the current US focus on people coming into the country.

[Stevan] (2:13:35 - 2:13:45)

This geopolitical climate doesn't really, it doesn't really appeal to anybody. People are having second thoughts because of this geopolitical climate that we're facing right now.

[Jarred] (2:13:45 - 2:14:07)

And I just think we're starting to see the tip of the iceberg in terms of how changing geopolitical circumstances are going to impact the running of events, people going to the events and the, I suppose, existential nature of communities that maybe start to turn against events.

[Stevan] (2:14:07 - 2:14:22)

Yeah, it's also an illustration of how intertwined or globalisation has impacted Burning Man because people are questioning, is it still Burning Man without the international burners? Well, I guess it is. It's just, a Gerlach regional, that's the joke.

[Jarred] (2:14:23 - 2:15:01)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Which is, you know, what, why I, you know, wrote a little while ago about how I really feel like, you know, the regional events, which in attendance actually are collectively now larger than Burning Man itself. How there's, you know, a lot of potential future in regional events taking up, I suppose, the story of Burning Man and reflecting their own, you know, beliefs and vision around, you know, what that burner culture and community kind of means for them locally.

[Stevan] (2:15:01 - 2:15:19)

And it's interesting with regionals that we're not immune to these impacts, world events impacts as well, right? For example, the fuel, the geopolitical risk, the uncertainty. Yeah, we're not immune.

We also face these challenges too. It's very turbulent.

[Jarred] (2:15:19 - 2:16:15)

Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, one aspect which is still favourable for regional events is that, you know, because by and large, you know, these are events that are run by the community, by volunteers, and that we don't have paid staff, we're not paying DJs, we're not paying big name artists to come along. Like, the relative cost of attending a regional event is now probably even more favourable compared to, you know, the cost of other, you know, commercial events.

So there's definitely a strong attractive factor for regional events like, you know, for an event like KiwiBurn, sort of the next closest type of event is, you know, almost double, you know, Okay, now here's a fun question for you.

[Stevan] (2:16:15 - 2:16:44)

So if you were to invest in any of these events or organisations, looking at it from a stock trader or a charter's point of view, you have the moving averages, the convergence and the divergence of attendees, of ticket sales, and all these other elements, there seems to be like a convergence and divergence here. So the question is, would you be shorting Burning Man? Would you be shorting Good Life?

Would you be hodling Confest or Glastonbury? Would you be starting to accumulate Tomorrowland?

[Jarred] (2:16:45 - 2:16:57)

That's a great question. And it's kind of like, it would be it would be great if you had a panel right now, because then I wouldn't feel so kind of isolated. So I'll take a stab at it.

[Stevan] (2:16:57 - 2:16:59)

Well, this is not financial advice space elf.

[Jarred] (2:16:59 - 2:20:08)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Definitely not.

So if you could, you know, as bizarre as it feels to even contemplate the notion of it, but if there was a sector of the stock market of festival stocks, I would have sold all my Burning Man stock when they had the Renegade burn. When I started hearing the reports coming out of how successful that had been, that for me would have been, you know, a strong sell indicator. I think Tomorrowland would be a buy, reluctantly, but I'd have to say it would be a buy.

Glastonbury is an interesting one. To be honest, I would probably be looking to invest in probably what might be some of the smaller emerging events that are coming up. I actually think that the problem that festivals in the UK might face could be related to some of the growing kind of geopolitical issues emerging in that part of the world.

So from a, you know, whereas Glastonbury might be sort of like a, I would say would be sort of more like a hold. And I would sell Glastonbury stock if the geopolitical issues in Europe, you know, deteriorate. I don't think I would hold any Confest stock, but I tell you what I would be really interested in is, you know, I would be really fascinated in kind of like new festival startups.

I'd be really keen to be looking to invest in groups that kind of like take all of the sorts of challenges and issues and the knowledge of, you know, the beautiful history of many of these festivals and to sort of go right. Okay. So, you know, with some of them, you know, hitting their 50 year mark with Burning Man being in that, you know, 30, you know, three decade plus, you know, four decade sort of zone, we've been doing this model of festival now.

Like you say, Tomorrowland has been running since 2005. So, you know, 22 decades. I would be really interested in investing in festival startups that take all of that and looking at what is, what's the novel view on what festival culture and festival design could look like that might take us into the next 10 years.

Because, you know, that's where I think the, you know, sort of real interesting future kind of lies is to take that blank sheet of paper and start to really look at, you know, designing something that I don't think we sort of have at the moment.

[Stevan] (2:20:08 - 2:21:10)

Yeah. If these events or these organizations are publicly traded entities, it'll be interesting to look inside their books and see how they future proof, you know, the events, right? Because, you know, like we've been talking about, we want to see that Burning Man or Tomorrowland is actually engaged so they don't fall off this demographic cliff.

I ask because this whole thing about contagion, where you talk about the industry, it's not just affecting live music, it's also affecting tourism, hospitality, event management, transportation, logistics, food and beverage, you know, community services. So if you were going to sell the industry, I think back during a pandemic, everybody's selling because you wouldn't think that, you know, coming into contact with another human, you know, would be a thing anymore. So, yeah, you definitely wanted to sell back then, but you look at the stocks of Netflix or something that has gone through the roof because of the pandemic.

So it was interesting. So for me, I would hodl Burning Man because I think it's still good value, but definitely buy Burning Man regionals.

[Jarred] (2:21:10 - 2:22:33)

Yeah, you know, I would be probably cautious on that. You know, there's so many different events that are all, you know, unique and special. I still hold AfrikaBurn in, you know, very high regard.

So I would definitely, you know, sort of look at regionals on a sort of a case by case basis. But whichever way you go, I think the thing that we need to be cautious about is what we've seen in other sort of sectors. So, you know, like we know well stories of like Kodak, Nokia, BlackBerry, companies that were industry leading, high value, top of the market for long periods of time, you know, that either don't exist anymore or barely exist or, you know, almost just shells of what they sort of once were.

And I think it's easy to forget, even if, you know, a particular event is doing well today, that it doesn't take much for particular ways of running things to become obsolete super quickly.

[Stevan] (2:22:34 - 2:22:50)

OK, let's end this chat with looking at the burner calendar for the rest of this year, 2026. We still have a few to go and some more coming up. So KiwiBurn recently announced their theme Moss and Microchips.

What are your thoughts about that one? I love it. I think it's cool.

[Jarred] (2:22:50 - 2:23:31)

Yeah, I think it's a fabulous theme. I think it really shows the tension that we're facing between, you know, whilst it doesn't explicitly talk about AI, it certainly is highlighting the fact that, you know, we're living in this highly digital world. And yet we also, you know, increasingly aware of the precariousness of our natural environment.

So I think it's a theme that's going to generate some really interesting art, some really interesting discussion and looking forward to that one in January.

[Stevan] (2:23:31 - 2:23:55)

And for Burning Man this year, it's 40th year, Axis Mundi, third degree has Ether or Fifth Element, Underland is Threshold, Modifyre, which is happening very soon, is Transformation and Burning Japan, which is an interesting one. Senki Yago, which is literal translation is Parade of a Thousand Ghosts. And that's on 8th to the 12th of October this year.

Yeah. What do you think about those ones?

[Jarred] (2:23:56 - 2:25:44)

I love the theme for Japan. That sounds fantastic. I don't know so much about Japanese culture, but maybe there is some significance there because the number 1000 holds prominence in Chinese culture.

So, you know, these large numbers, you know, we're back in times where, you know, we're now probably more comfortable with, you know, talking about numbers in terms of like, you know, even to say a million now sounds too small. So, you know, we talk in terms of billions and trillions, but, you know, in older cultures, you know, the mention of a thousand or ten thousand, you know, those numbers, you know, meant something, they resonated, you know, in an impact. So, yeah, I really love genuinely creative and thoughtful themes.

We try and make a point at KiwiBurn to really encourage our artists to embody the theme in the concept for their art. And so we try as much as possible to have a theme that isn't so nebulous that it can't be articulated into some sort of like recognisable concept. But then you don't want to use something which is so defined that, you know, for example, if you came up with a theme that was maybe something like, you know, a thousand mushrooms, whilst it might sound cool, you know, you don't want every other art piece that you look at, you know, to have mushrooms in it, because, you know, that's a lot of mushrooms.

[Stevan] (2:25:45 - 2:25:50)

I like how they added this supernatural to the theme, which is rare. I don't really see that.

[Jarred] (2:25:50 - 2:26:57)

Yeah, I think one thing which I feel from more that sort of white Western perspective, something that I don't feel that we do enough is that there is like incredibly deep and rich culture and history and magic and stories and myths and legends just within our own, you know, sort of like wide variety of sort of, you know, different Anglo-Saxon European sorts of cultures. Obviously, you know, some countries have got clearly the benefit that they're able to dig into, you know, their own very deep, rich cultural histories. And I think there's, you know, many, many more, you know, culturally appropriate and ways that we can bring out the richness of our own cultures that just don't feature very prominently in our day to day lives like it does, you know, for many other countries.

[Stevan] (2:26:57 - 2:27:12)

All right, cool. So thanks very much for this chat. It has been very enlightening and it's provoked some more thoughts and ideas and discussion points in my head now.

Any last words about your presentation, about your topics that you want to add before we leave?

[Jarred] (2:27:12 - 2:28:24)

Only that, you know, it's an ongoing and developing piece of work. I would really love for, you know, if there was to emerge a group of people that were really interested in, you know, researching this, you know, properly and, you know, collect data with events and for events to see this as an opportunity to potentially tackle some of the challenges that they might be facing around volunteering. I think there's, you know, there's some really deep questions here.

There's some long term questions, but I also feel that there's some simple things that events could do that could really make a difference in how they resonate with particularly their younger communities to improve, you know, volunteering and engagement and participation. And most of all, you know, I would, you know, really love to hear from the people that, you know, resonate with the idea of, you know, starting with a blank piece of paper and seeing what radical novel sorts of events we could design for the future.

[Stevan] (2:28:24 - 2:28:44)

Yes, we'll definitely add a link to your talk. It's up online. It's available online.

So we'll definitely add a link. Unfortunately, with that presentation, with that video, with that talk that you had, we missed the first few minutes of it. So, but we got most of the content.

So it's up there and we'll put a link to it so people can listen to it.

[Jarred] (2:28:44 - 2:28:45)

Awesome. Thank you so much.

[Stevan] (2:28:45 - 2:28:56)

Thank you, Jared. Thank you, Space Elf, for all your thoughts and contributions and also talking about the youth. I think that's very important.

Our younger generations.

[Jarred] (2:28:56 - 2:28:56)

Definitely.

[Stevan] (2:28:57 - 2:28:57)

All right.

Thank you.

Transcripts transcribed by TurboScribe.ai