Ever wondered why AfrikaBurn is more than just a festival? Our volunteer crew made a podcast to answer just that! This podcast is a call to action and hopes to inspire you to become more involved! Moving away from commercial spectatorship and towards participation … that is the very magic that creates AfrikaBurn from a blank canvas.

The podcast debunks the notion that AfrikaBurn is “just a week in the desert” and reveals that the organisation is deeply participatory year-round. It touches on how we, as a community, choose to move away from a plug-and-play culture by embodying our principles, as they are our core community agreements that we centre ourselves around. 

Featuring the AfrikaBurn Volunteer Portfolio Lead, Director of Culture, Director of Development, Development Administrator, and Manager for the Development Portfolio, we unravel the mechanisms that enable people to access and contribute to the community, along with the opportunities to participate. 

Touching on subjects such as AfrikaBurn Outreach, Hammerschool, the Spark Grants and other areas where funds from the main event ticket sales contribute towards year-round projects. This momentum is what initially attracted 1,500 people to the first official AfrikaBurn in 2007. “The key to its acceleration has been the depth of its participation and engagement by the community”. Now, as it matures and begins to develop its shape, it needs to be reinvigorated and questioned to maintain that depth and once again “dig a little deeper”. 

We touch on topics like land custodianship and the spring hosting season, invested care and eco-restoration, and how artists and crews are invited to spend time on the land in ways that inspire them. We ask ourselves, “Who am I when I have my fullest permission to be my fullest self – or someone else?” Bringing light to how everything that goes towards the event is service-driven and voluntarily given, is participation-based, and fosters a purposefully engaged culture. “The community is bigger than the event, and the culture is not time-bound or finite as the event is.”