Miami Regional questioned on cultural direction

[some seeing eye]

Burning Man has regionals in 34 countries, and those have over 100 events a year. The culture is always evolving, there are monies and LLC/corporations to hold the regionals, buy insurance, and the like.

The Burning Man community went through a heavy navel gaze as a result of ePlaya's own Jackass calling out concierge camps. That resulted in OSS and high rent camp changes, and some camp ejections.

Regional issues are more surfaced by complaints. It may be time for one to become the for-profit festival it wants to be outside the Burning Man umbrella. That's fine, LIB and other for-profit festivals have been started by burners.

TL:DR continuously examine and debate regional event and organization values and actions.

October 2, 2024

Dear Burners and Participants of Love Burn,

As ticket sales to Love Burn are beginning, we feel a responsibility to advise you that Burning Man’s Regional Network Committee is in conversation with the sole owner of Love Burn about whether or not Burning Man will continue to recognize Love Burn as an official Burning Man Regional Event. Burning Man is taking this step in response to numerous and ongoing community concerns and seeking to hold Love Burn to the same standard as other official Burning Man Regional Events around the world. We know official recognition is important to many of you who seek and expect culturally aligned experiences and we encourage producing organizations to inform and collaborate with community members to uphold cultural standards.

In recognizing official Burning Man Regional Events, Burning Man relies heavily on the community to let us know if an event is embodying the Principles and conducting itself in a manner consistent with Burning Man’s 10 Guiding Principles and official Regional Event criteria.

Over the years we have heard many and repeated expressions of discontentment about 1) the way the Love Burn entity is set up as a solely owned corporation–which does not adequately protect community assets and means it could legally be sold for profit to a larger production company at the owner’s discretion; 2) financial reporting/integrity; and 3) the Love Burn event not fully embodying the 10 Principles as expected of a camp-out burn.

Love Burn leadership declined our many requests over years to take adequate steps to protect community assets and to at least create a board with suitable bylaws, if not consider a non-profit ownership structure. They have not taken simple steps they could take to better align with the 10 Principles, such as prohibiting convenient outside food delivery to campers, and modifying in/out policy to discourage convenience culture and instead encourage greater self-reliance and communal effort. As a result, community trust has suffered.

Burning Man gave official recognition to Love Burn for 3 years on a conditional/probationary basis with the request that Love Burn’s owner and leadership take steps to address community concerns. We are discussing these things with Love Burn’s leadership again right now and requesting a timeline to resolve the issues. Depending on their response in the next few days, we may revoke official recognition or offer probational recognition for the fourth year.

This message is to keep our community informed. We will continue working with the sole owner of Love Burn and its leadership team to hopefully address these issues. Rest assured we take your concerns seriously and are responding. We sincerely hope the Love Burn owner and leadership will address the issues and uphold our community cultural standards.

If you have feedback or questions, you can send it to [email protected].

Sincerely,

Steven Raspa On behalf of the Regional Network Committee Burning Man Project