Two more cents, we'll get to that 10% yet, maga sculpture is a really expensive endeavor not only producing it but transporting it and if you have to use heavy equipment to assemble it that could run really big bucks in the middle of nowhere. A part of the petition is about placement and equipment help provided by DPW . That said if grants were only to aid in transportation and installation expenses it would be a whole different thing than completely funding a piece or even providing seed money like was done with the temple of gravity.
The thing is the expanse of the Playa really calls for large sculpture, having people around it demands it's engineered and constructed solidly. The size of really impressive sculpture on the playa means your aunt Tilley isn't going to buy one for her garden and there aren't that many places that are going to buy a huge fire sculpture. A labor of love will only get you so far when your talking about tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and only a few individuals could afford to do it, grants could let people who would never be able to make large sculpture have an opportunity they never would get otherwise.
I'm just saying it's not as cut and dried as it would seem at first blush.
We petitioners request attention to these very reasonable demands or we commit to STOP CONTRIBUTING our art to Burning Man. Repeated discussions over many years have failed to result in meaningful change, so now we are resorting to more extreme measures.
I don't know what the ship yard has contributed in the past, but if they and many others hold to their threat to stop contributing it could mean a really different event.