The plan was to shift our process and update our guidelines to better sustain the culture and growing global community we all love. In 2019 we were also deep in the Cultural Direction Setting work that brought together theme camp leaders, staff across Black Rock City, and the Placement team to set a 10-year Cultural Vision for Residential BRC, address pinch-points in the placement process, and revise expectations of theme camps. The freedom, serendipity and interdependence that are facilitated by open camping have real value that we need to maintain. The demand for placement stressed our ability to maintain space for Burners who prefer finding a spot on their own. That year, approximately 90% of BRC’s city blocks were reserved for placed camps, leaving only the last two blocks free for open camping. When we all last built Black Rock City in 2019, placement had reached a saturation point, with the highest number of theme camps seeking placement in the event’s history. Adapt to the increasing demand for placement and Directed Group Sales (DGS) for theme camps and villages.Support resource sharing among camps to improve our collective impact on the environment.

Offer a higher touch by the Placement team to better understand each of BRC’s 1,200+ theme camps.Emphasize Decommodification within theme camps and villages.Make placement decisions earlier with more transparency.This piece summarizes what you can expect from Placement this year. We’ve spent time over the past two years rethinking and fine-tuning how to improve what we do, and we’ll begin rolling out some changes in 2022 that will impact the shape of things to come.

The Placement team faces the annual challenge of balancing old with new, big with small, and weaving together the technicolor quilt that is Black Rock City. This post about Black Rock City’s 2022 Placement Process is coming earlier in the event-planning cycle because it’s going to take more time and effort to get our band back together again. But this is no typical year as we slowly thaw from a two-year freeze brought on by the global pandemic.

In a typical year, many theme camps go quiet and hibernate in November.

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