Burning Seed 2025 date choices

The ins, outs and roundabouts

On Sept 16th we (Burning Seed Town Council) announced the dates for the first Burning Seed event since it became a member-owned organisation. While some welcomed this as a triumphant return after years of struggle, some strong opinions and discussions followed on social media by members and past participants. We would like to offer further insight into the decision-making process. We have also started thinking about how engagement with the Burning Seed community can be refined moving forward. We want every participant to come on this journey back to Red Earth City with a clear heart and a better understanding of the challenges that we are yet to overcome.

Our vision:

To facilitate a safe burn in 2025 that restores the community’s faith in Burning Seed by unifying the participants through Communal Effort and Civic Responsibility.

About The Town Council:

Just like you, the four volunteers on TC all live and love to burn. We firmly believe in the power of creativity, ingenuity, community, respect and love, and live our daily lives practising the 10 Principles of Burning Man and the 11th Principle of Deep Consent.

Australia’s largest regional burn has had its wings clipped for long enough and it is our intention as new leaders to unify the community and rebuild our magical city.

While we are experienced burners, builders, dreamers and doers, we are directors of a new company charged with the task of building the container which facilitates the event we all love so much. We have what it takes to play the hundreds of different strings to get our mutant machine moving again. But we need your support, patience and participation for the symphony to be harmonious. We humbly ask that you grant us that grace, at least in this acceleration stage.

The pressure points or “Why the hell did they pick a date without broad consultation?”

In the past, the dates were set collectively at Summit by the crew present. In recent times they were set by the Town Council as Summit was a very different affair for Rekindle; most of the crew were inexperienced and not close enough to the many details of the Seed operation to make a risk-informed decision as a group. This is entirely appropriate given the liability carried by the Directors but is likely to be approached differently for future dates with more time for community consultation. We are committed to listening to the community that builds the city in the container we manage and would like to offer some details for your consideration.

1 - Time pressure - Burning Seed is a very large-scale volunteer-run event. Getting it coordinated requires not only an incredible amount of energy from our volunteers but also going through several layers of bureaucracy to secure Matong State forest, fire permits, liaise with our stakeholders, organise city services and every bit of administration and infrastructure that must be ready before we hit the Paddock. This means the date choice has to be made nearly a year in advance to execute the necessary steps to build the city we love.

2 - Long Weekends - Including a public holiday in the event vastly improves accessibility to people who can’t afford to take unpaid leave. It also upgrades the event from a weekend half consumed by driving to an actual multi-day event.

3 - Effigy and Temple Burn & Flame Effects Art Safety - We made the decision to avoid the risk of producing another no-fire burn. This felt like too big a deviation from the cultural practices of Burning Seed to make without extensive consultation, for which we do not have time at this juncture. We understand that “to burn or not to burn” is a salient conversation in the global burner community. We made a call in the best interest of rebuilding Burning Seed and we stand by our decision.

What we were striving very hard to achieve:

Safety third FIRST - Conducting safe large-scale burns is paramount. We can not afford mistakes when it comes to burning. Burning Seed happens in the middle of a forest and running an exceedingly risky burn is non-negotiable.

Given this, we had to go through a process of elimination to secure a date that would provide us with the most favourable conditions for a safe burn.

The process had to be informed and supported by:

1 - Historical meteorological data sets local weather patterns informed by ecological experts, fuel loads informed by fire experts and future outlooks on climatic events such as La Nina, El Nino and Indian Ocean Dipole.

2 - Forestry NSW and RFS as the local fire authorities

3 - Local Aboriginal understanding of the 6 annual seasons of our site, including the windy season

4 - Red Earth Ecology due their long history, knowledge and association with the natural conditions and the site itself as a stakeholder

5 - Fire Art Response Team (FART) and their immense amount of tactical knowledge relating to fire management and our unique activities.

6 - External fire specialists.

7 - The dates of other events close to our community

4 - The financial pressure; stuff we know and stuff we are still figuring out - As a newly registered community-owned organisation, established to coordinate and facilitate all the operations that make Burning Seed viable, there is still a lot we don’t know. The event landscape generally has changed radically since 2019 when Seed “as we knew it“ last ran. There is a lot of work we need to do to adapt processes, create new and enhanced workflows, rebuild a capable crew and establish mechanisms that clarify how SBE and SBA interact, communicate and coordinate. All of this needs to happen at the same time while we push forward and if every opinion was considered we may still be searching for a perfect date in ten years' time. We do not have the luxury of resources to let this happen.

We have assumed responsibility for costs associated with keeping operational legacy systems live. Getting the event running as soon as possible is critical to the financial viability of the member-owned company.

5 - Mitigating flood risks - Red Earth City is located in the Matong riverine bowl on the aptly named Deepwater Road. It is a literal floodplain. Over the past decade, we’ve invested a huge amount of resources in the roads on site, however, there are still vulnerable stretches that can turn into vehicle-eating mud traps. This is relevant for the obvious convenience reasons (actually being able to get on site), but also for emergencies such as ambulance access, or full evacuation.

6 - Avoid clashing with other burns in our region…an increasingly impossible ask - The Australasian burner community is growing and thriving and we love that. While new burn-adjacent and official regional events have popped onto the calendar as Seed restructured, we serve our members, and the interests of their company (and the broader community through their charity) by putting Seed first in our deliberations. Ultimately we are all working for the same thing - to proliferate the joys of the Burning Man Project and to provide people with the largest possible opportunity to be included. We are trying to be courteous but inevitably there will be clashes between events, and we encourage participants to burn where they feel happiest co-creating. We are legally obliged to do what is in the best interest of our members and recognise that other orgs must do the same.

7 - Other weather and climate considerations - There is a local, non-western perspective on seasons, and this factored into our modelling for the on-site comfort factor. This includes things like daylight, temperature, rain, and wind. Wind in particular is relevant to a number of quality-of-life factors (dust) but also directly feeds into fire safety and structure safety. Historical weather data places the average high and low temperatures closer to the usual dates than you’d expect. On a site visit in June this year, the weather was exceptional, the site was beautiful and the temperature was comfortable.

8 - The land as a stakeholder - Red Earth City, located in Matong State Forest, aims to Leave No Trace but acknowledges its impact on the environment. Noise disturbs wildlife, occasional food dropped on the floor disrupts the ecosystem, and our presence can impact the fragile cryptogamic crusts. Event timing must consider the forest's dynamic ecosystem, as we strive to be responsible neighbors to the local human, animal, and plant communities.

What happened then?

Town Council has met regularly since forming in July 2024 with our priority set on determining a date. Many meetings with ecological experts, fire experts, and the forestry council alongside high-quality climate data and the dates of other events in our communities left us with a very small range of options for dates. It was a hard choice. We acknowledge that some may feel disappointed and perhaps even fearful of the June temperatures. We trust that the population of Red Earth City will do what it always does and will bring creativity, ingenuity and care for each other and ourselves to the Paddock. We pledge to support everyone’s best efforts for this new set of conditions to the best of our ability.

What now or “How the fuck will I not freeze”?

The Survival Guide will be prepared and released early with the season in mind and your concerns with the cold weather are valid. We will be providing extra guidance and services in the event of a particularly cold burn. Keep in mind that climate change is already here and the beginning of June temperatures nowadays feel a lot like the temperatures we can experience in September in that part of the world. The perceived edge of the cold is not necessarily there anymore. Together, we have the ingenuity, the creativity, the fur jackets, the hot teas, the cuddle puddles, the civic responsibility and the heart it takes to prepare for the cold if it happens. For those who have been to the Nevada Regional, you will likely have some pro-hacks to share in the lead-up to Seed.

WHAT IS NEXT and will SEED forever be a June event?

1 - The date has been decided only for the 2025 event. For 2026 we will revisit all of the above.

2 - Live Q&A to address concerns - If there is enough interest we will set up a live conversation in the form of an online Town Hall to hear feedback and address questions, This will also be an opportunity to identify opportunities for you to crew in areas of your greatest concern.

3 - Function leads recruitment - SEED NEEDS YOU - In October we will launch a process for expressions of interest for crew leadership roles. A dedicated crew is an existential need.

4 - Volunteering recruitment, population size and TICKET SALES - Once you and your highly capable comrades have been appointed to the team leadership hot seats, we will start a conversation around population size that reflects the volunteer base. There is a lot to this, and we expect to make some long-overdue changes to promote volunteering uptake. This is at the core of our culture and without YOU we CANNOT make it work. It is still early to get into the weeds around this but rest assured we will be here with you to support the changes and address concerns.

5 - ALL HANDS ON DECK - NOW is when it all starts happening. We will endeavour to provide clear and adequately detailed communication moving forward.

We look forward to hearing your questions at the online Town Hall in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for your support as we grow into our roles as your representatives.

BURN BRIGHT!

Sun Burnt Events Town Council:

Felipe Aires

Sam Carman

Ariane Blanch