"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."โ from the 10 Principles of Burning Man, written by Larry Harvey (2004)
What it means
Big things get built by many hands: the city, the art, the camps, the culture.
Cooperation over competition. Your camp's success helps the whole city.
Shared infrastructure โ from street signs to shade โ exists because people pitched in.
๐ข How the Turtles live it
A 52ร52 ft Aluminet shell doesn't raise itself โ build week is 10 turtles, sledgehammers, and 80 concrete stakes of pure communal effort. Every camper has a domain and a shift. And by open-sourcing Turtle Ops we extend communal effort to camps we'll never even meet.
First-burn tips
Join build or strike crew if you can โ it's where the deepest friendships form.
See someone struggling with a shade structure? That's your invitation.
The magic ratio: put in a bit more than you take out, and the whole city runs on surplus.