Burning Man Regional Network Forum 2021

The Regional Network Team welcomed community leaders across the global Burning Man community to the virtual Burning Man Regional Network Forum: Emerging, Wayfinding, Igniting on June 5, 2021 to reconnect with peers and re-ignite inspiration through discussion of how our local gatherings, spaces and projects can be more inclusive, environmentally sustainable and meaningfully connected. Videos from the Regional Network Forum will be posted in July 2021.

Read about Forum theme Emerging, Wayfinding, Igniting 

As we emerge and adapt to the new normal of this moment, we have to first admit that not everyone is in the same “place” and the world around us feels different. 

This year’s Burning Man theme, The Great Unknown, still has relevance as we reenter the world anew. It remains a time of great loss, but also of rare opportunity: a chance to reevaluate, reconnect, and return to the values that brought us together in the first place. But now we must ask how they serve us in the world we now share? What if anything has changed? And how might we change for the better? What really matters and how can the work we do in the world create inspiration and positive social impact? 

Our 2020 European Leadership Summit theme, Human Being: Being Human, raised questions about what it means to be a fully embodied person in relationship to oneself, society and the natural world. It delved deeply into the principle of Immediacy. Little did we know how relevant that thematic embarkation would be and the journey we would go on individually and collectively as a result of a global pandemic. Never has the connection between aloneness and togetherness been so real and poignant. We are still in this moment, still finding our way through it and back together. Some are emerging from isolation, as if grateful butterflies from a cautious cocoon. Others are still sheltering and healing; others struggling with the balance between personal wellbeing and collective community needs. So, we want to provide a forum to regather that can be flexible and meet one another where we are. 

This Regional Network Forum is a regathering and a potential jumping off point. We will provide a welcoming space for community leaders from around the world to meet one another and take away from this experience what they need most. Some may be preparing to gather their local community in person after a year of cancelled Regional Events. Others may be continuing to create COVID-safe interactive art experiences on their city streets. Recognizing that our global community may be in different places of our journey, we will offer a flexible program and lots of time and space to socialize as you want. 

We’re excited to share the content for the 2021 Regional Network Forum. We’ll look at where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we’re headed, including preparing psychologically to re-gather, creating inclusive and environmentally sustainable spaces and events, the value of developing codes of conduct and processes built from them to support healthy communities, learning from others who are already burning on the other side of the pandemic, and we’ll examine what it means to be a Burner today.

 

Art and photo credits:

  1. Installation from “Public Display of Awareness” series by Olivia Steele. Photo by Philippe Glade, 2017.
  2. R-Evolution by Marcho Cochrane. Photo by John Chandler, 2015.
  3. The Procession of the Ceremonial Flame. Photo by EspressoBuzz@Gmail.com, 2019