While most festivals in the UK involve sitting in a field, sipping cider and watching a heap of bands (probably while it rains), America’s Burning Man opts for a slightly different approach as it dips into a hedonistic world of the weird and wonderful.
For a start, Burning Man takes place in the depths of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert on 5 ½ square miles of land which is turned into an oval-shaped blank canvas of a city, ready for revellers to create their own metropolis where community, art, self-expression and self-reliance are at the core of everything that goes on.
Also there are no bands at Burning Man (not officially anyway, you may come across the odd performance on your travels), instead the land is filled with hundreds of workshops and events to try out – these can range from arty sideshows to crafts areas to DJs blasting through sound systems. There’ll always be something to keep you occupied.
There’s no use in trying to get by with money at Burning Man either, the festival is free from commercialism, sponsorship, branding and even trading stalls – no money changes hands (except for coffee and tea in a small central cafe). So with that in mind, be sure to take everything with you that you could possibly need, and yes, you’re in the middle of a desert so unfortunately that will include water.
The pinnacle of the week long soirée takes place on the final Saturday night, and as the festival's name may suggest it involves burning a giant wooden man who looms over the site up until his timely incineration. The Man does vary his states over time, last year’s Man was a huge alien and spaceship, which just adds to the epic surrealism of the whole escapade.
The Burning Man website suggests that ‘trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular colour looks like to someone who is blind’, so sadly this blog can only skim the surface of what a truly amazing experience the festival is.
And with that in mind we’ll let the accompanying pictures speak their thousand words, and if you want to find out more about Burning Man, you can do here.
