Bonnaroo, Baby!

Burning Man is headed to the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee next week to participate in the 7-year old event as Bring It! an amalgamation of Burners Without Borders, Burning Man Regional Network, Black Rock Solar, Burning Man Earth Guardians, and the Black Rock Arts Foundation. The rock-star fusion of outreach organizations and non-profits is aimed at urging Bonnaroo attendees to get involved by bringing their talent, ideas, and resources to the world at large and especially to their own communities.

Our group is 23 strong and we’ll be on site for the duration of the festival talking to people about things like building community, advancing the arts, gifting alternative energy, aiding disaster relief, and greening the planet.  We’ll be asking about their ideas as well and finding out what makes them tick.  There will be 80,000 to 90,000 people at Bonnaroo, and most of them will never make it to Black Rock City, so we’re going to bring Burning Man culture to them.

One of our goals is to expose Bonnaroo attendees to new ideas about radical self-reliance, uncompromising self-expression, immediate participation, and unlimited inclusion.  Whether it’s conservation, adaptation, experimentation, or transformation, individuals have what it takes to Bring It! and we want to inspire them at Bonnaroo to be their badass selves like we’ve all been inspired at Burning Man.

*** June 21^st and 22^nd 2008 is the worldwide Bring It! Weekend.  Regional groups and individuals around the world will be working in their communities for a day of giving back to an organization or area that could use some TLC. Take the initiative here: http://www.burnerswithoutborders.org/bwb-call-to-community-action

– Marnee Benson