1. Preamble
2. We are unable to split our village up this year. What should we do?
3. Do I submit as a village or a theme camp in the Statement of Intent?
4. We want to form a hub, but we’re concerned about how the camps will be placed in relation to each other.
5. Why are you doing this? Why are you forcing us to divide our community?

1. Preamble

While villages have been an important part of Burning Man’s growth and history, we are adapting to meet today’s operational needs as an event. Placement and other Burning Man departments require a stronger relationship and understanding of each of the camps within a village, and as such, we are removing villages as a placed camp type in 2024.

All current camps within villages will need to establish a direct relationship with Placement by following all parts of the Placement process. In anticipation that this change will require time to sort out within the village's communities we are offering options that are sensitive to the impacts of transitioning listed below.

1. Villages may retain their existing name and merge with any number of camps within the village, but would be considered an individual theme camp in 2024 rather than a collection of camps.
2. In 2024, village mayors will serve the same role as they have in the past - being responsible for Stewards Sale ticket distribution by completing Placement’s Statement of Intent (SOI). Camps in villages should not complete their own SOI, and should get tickets from their village mayor.
3. Camps in villages not merging with the village must complete their own independent Placed Camp Questionnaires so they can begin their direct relationship with Placement for space, interactivity, and Work Access Passes.
4. In 2024, villages will be allowed to consider a majority of their population as part of their individual theme camp, though we do highly encourage all camps in a village to complete their own Placed Camp Questionnaire to begin their direct relationship with Placement and to be considered a returning camp in future years. 
5. Humans Uniting for Better Sustainability (HUBS) allows camps to stay adjacent. See details below for more information.

The timeline for the transition of villages is as follows:

• January 2024 - Statement of Intent: Villages can still select the “village” designation if any of the camps within the village are not prepared to complete the SOI. Village mayors will complete a SOI for the entire village and distribute and allocate Stewards Sale tickets to the theme camps that were in their village.
• March 2024 - Placed Camp Questionnaire: The village and camp within a village designation will not be available as choices within the Placed Camp Questionnaire. Villages must decide if they are remaining a single large theme camp, or forming a hub as multiple separate camps.
• January 2025 - Statement of Intent: Each theme camp will be now responsible for completing the SOI for their own camp and tickets will be allocated directly to the camp lead. Camps that have not previously filled out a Placed Camp Questionnaire will be considered a new theme camp and subject to any limitations we place on new theme camps including limiting their size to no more than 100’x100’.

How villages camps can stay connected: HUBS

In 2022, we introduced a new system called Humans Uniting for Better Sustainability (HUBS), which also accomplishes the ability to connect camps physically to help achieve Burning Man’s 2030 Sustainability Goals. In the past 2 years, this has been a successful way for camps to be mapped together and focus on sharing resources.

Placement has historically worked directly with village mayors to determine the resources to support the village including overall dimensions, Stewards Sale ticket access, and Work Access Passes. By discontinuing villages as a camp type, we are seeking a direct relationship with camps in villages as stand-alone camps. We believe most villages will be able to transition to a hub if your collection of camps wish to remain adjacent to one another.

2. We are unable to split our village up this year. What should we do?

You have a couple options if you want to stay intact:

1. Option A: You can join together as one large theme camp with whoever was in your previous village. You can still function as you always have, but we’re going to classify that as a “theme camp” in the Placed Camp Questionnaire. Only one person (perhaps your village mayor) will fill out the Placed Camp Questionnaire on behalf of the entire camp and subcamps (camps in villages) do not need to fill out their own questionnaire. You can even still have the word “village” in your name. This scenario keeps everything running as it always has, with the change being largely administrative so that we consider your former village a single theme camp. Many camps designated as theme camps already function the same way with subgroups within them.
2. Option B: While all camps may not be able to split, those that can should each complete a Placed Camp Questionnaire as their own theme camp. The collection of camps that have completed their own questionnaires (even if it’s just 2) should also apply as being a part of the HUBS Program. One HUBS Liaison should be picked from the camps in your hub and should submit a layout showing the preferred adjacencies of all camps within the hub. Any camps that are not able to split can remain together and should fill out a questionnaire as their own entity similar to what’s stated in Option A above.

3. Do I submit as a village or a theme camp in the Statement of Intent?

If you are planning to form a hub this year, you have two options:

1. The village mayor submits a single Statement of Intent and selects “village” as the camp category. No individual theme camps should fill out the SOI and the mayor will be allocated all tickets to distribute to the camps.
2. All theme camps from the village submit individual Statements of Intent and select “theme camp” as the camp category, and must state the name of the village they were once a part of. The village mayor does not submit a Statement of Intent for the village as a whole. All camps will be allocated tickets directly instead of through the mayor.

4. We want to form a hub, but we’re concerned about how the camps will be placed in relation to each other.

The HUBS Liaison will submit a hub layout that will be reviewed by Placement’s Mapping Support team. If there are issues with the layout, they’ll reach out to you well before we begin mapping the city. As long as you indicate the necessary adjacencies on your hub layout, the Placers will map your hub in as closely as they can to your submitted hub layout. If there is wiggle room in how your hub is mapped, we’ll assume this if adjacencies have not been indicated in the hub layout.

Please be aware that every placed camp must have at least 50’ of border along a street or avenue. We will not place a camp buried in the middle of a hub with no access to a street. If an existing camp in a village wants to be independent but is not able to have their own street frontage, that camp should be absorbed into another camp.

5. Why are you doing this? Why are you forcing us to divide our community?

Villages in BRC have always been defined as multiple unique but united groups of people under one umbrella identity as a “village”. You do not need to arbitrarily divide up your community if there aren’t clear and obvious ways to do so. We want to understand and have direct engagement with the different groups (if they exist) and see this as mostly an administrative change.

If your village truly is one entity that cannot be divided, we have provided options for you to stay intact (see option Option A mentioned above) which would functionally keep your existing campers whole. If your village is one entity that cannot be divided, it would be considered by Placement to be a single theme camp rather than a collection of camps within a village umbrella.

Villages have been an administrative challenge for Placement and instituting this change allows us to better administer the Placement process in Black Rock City. By having direct relationships with Camps in Villages, we will be able to better understand their offerings and interactivity, better assess their experience, and be better able to provide support where needed. Logistically, campers and camps in villages have been difficult to find by important services like Rangers, Emergency Services, and the PETROL Fuel Program. Maps are not readily available to locate them and often individual campers from one camp in a village are not familiar with the other camps in villages or the campers within them when approached on playa.

Having direct relationships and allocation of space, tickets, and Work Access Passes allows us to better serve camps. By treating camps in villages on par with other theme camps, we can map them in, find them easily, know their interactivity, and build a direct relationship with that group rather than working through the village mayor who in some cases attempts to represent over 400 people.