Burning Man inspiring the Gathering of Tribes

I attended BurningMan in 1999, 2000 and 2004 it has been hugely impactful on my life. It showed me there is a huge amount of crazilly creative people like me in the world, it made me crave community in my daily life, to live surrounded by people like this.

However most importantly BurningMan made me realise what amazing an amazing festivcal can be created when you invite a bunch of amazing people and let them get on with it. The ethos of no-spectators, an invitation to all participants to unleash their deepest creativity has completely permeated my thinking for how to create a great festival. This urge to unleash creativity is a core spirit of the Gathering of Tribes regenerative festival I’m helping launch this year.

With healthy growth comes maturity, these days, I hear, Burning Man is much less anarchistic, more organised, much higher budget. Makes for an amazing event, but I am inspired by it’s early days — all festivals need to start somewhere it’s impossible to start with tens of thousands of people so for a new festival the early days of BurningMan are more instructive than it’s 30 year mature form today.

Being fortunate to be friends with Satya Anurodh who was there at the start I wanted to ask their impression of how they remember those early days, how the seeds were laid for the amazing event and culture that BurningMan has become.

⇒ Read the conversation: BurningMan the first years — a conversation with Satya Anurodh

Join us at the Gathering of Tribes to co-create a new kind of festival for the regenerative era!