The 10 Principles of Burning Man
Playa Del Fuego is Regional Burning Man event.
Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the Ten Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception.
Radical Inclusion - Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
Gifting - Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification - In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-reliance - Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise, and rely on his or her inner resources.
Radical Self-Expression - Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort - Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote, and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility - We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state, and federal laws.
Leaving No Trace - Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.
Participation - Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
Immediacy - Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.
from the burningman.org website’s 10 Principles page
Playa Del Fuego Principles
Because PDF predates the creation of the 10 Principles, our community had created its own set of Principles in addition to BM’s 10:
Consent – Our events foster an environment of consent. While consent is generally spoken about in terms of sexual activity, it extends beyond this at PDF; we apply the same guidelines to taking pictures of others, hugging, entering a camp’s private space, &c. Consent is an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon activity. The consent has to be ongoing throughout any encounter, and enthusiastic consent is best!
Self-Expression – Our events foster an environment of creative self-expression, where participants feel supported to honestly express their inner selves through artistic creation, performance, and in their social interactions.
Self-Organization – Our events foster an environment of self-organization. The event is 100% volunteer-run. No one gets comp tickets. Everyone is invited to plan. Everyone is invited to play. Everyone is invited to work. The Planning Meetings and Planning Committee are open to everyone to attend.
Accountability – Our events foster an environment of personal accountability, where we hold ourselves responsible for our own actions, and take personal responsibility for meeting our own needs, for the event itself, and for the event’s impact on the world at large.
Cooperation – Our events foster an environment of cooperation, where participants work together to resolve potential conflicts respectfully, to help mediate conflicts between others, and to create art, performance, and social space on a larger scale than one person could alone. Additionally, participants seek to keep events sustainable by volunteering, cleaning up after themselves, and assuming personal responsibility for conducting themselves in accordance with local, state, and federal laws.
