The concept originates from cultural and performance studies and gives access to the relationship between place, space, experiences and knowledge. To further the idea of knowledge in co-creation discussion the concept of choreography is used as an analytical framework. In this study, event and festival environments are understood as co-creational arenas where actors practice their knowledge. Co-creation discussion, originating from services marketing, relies heavily on the concept of knowledge in explaining value-creation for different offerings. The research task is tackled by using the concept of co-creation to examine the event context. This research focuses on volunteer knowledge and its role in the implementation of events. Volunteers have mostly been considered as manageable objects, and the group’s knowledge and agency have been excluded. The significance of the group has been recognised in event (management) literature, but little attention has been paid to the group’s knowledge and its role in event creation. Volunteers are often a significant social and economic interest group in the creation of events and festivals. They are used to make different places and spaces more visitable and to market places, products and services. Part of a larger project addressing the transformative innovation of Burning Man, the multi-methodological investigation of this event culture focuses on the principles of Gifting and Leaving No Trace highlighted in German Burner initiatives.Įvents are an ever-growing phenomenon in contemporary society. As this chapter illustrates, the performative/transformative logic of Black Rock City, the complexity of which is mirrored and mutated in progeny events, inheres in an ethos known as the Ten Principles. By addressing Burner values and motivations, we discuss the appeal of burns, notably their multiplex potential for personal and cultural innovation.
We recognise burns-Black Rock City and its worldwide progeny events-as experimental heterotopia, or “counter spaces,” that enable a proliferation of ritualesque and carnivalesque performance modes.
Conveying qualitative findings from surveys targeted at European Burning Man participants (or “Burners”) and triangulating these findings with ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in Germany, the chapter explores the complexities of Burning Man’s stature as a transformational event prototype. Also known as Black Rock City, it has spawned a global movement with over 100 “regional events” (or “burns”) worldwide. Burning Man is an annual participatory arts event and temporary city co-created in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada.