Fly Ranch — a new year-round home for the Burning Man community
Role: Experience Design Consultant
Client: Burning Man Project
When: April 2018 - Present
Areas: Design research, user experience and communications design
In 2016, Burning Man Project acquired Fly Ranch. The 3,800 acre parcel in northern Nevada is home to dozens of hot and cold pools, three geysers, wetlands, a playa, an old farmhouse, dozens of animal species, and more than 100 identified types of plants. It can serve as an incubator for the Burning Man community to take ideas from our temporary city and give them a real-world testing ground. The project is in progress - visit the website.
Project overview
Working in collaboration with the leadership team, I'm helping design a global platform and design challenge that will enable Burning Man Project to facilitate on-the ground conversations to shape the future of the Fly Ranch initiative.
“You can’t download culture, you need to be immersed in it—to experience it and share it.”
The first initiative is the LAGI2020 x Fly Ranch Design Challenge which seeks to inspires the global community to co-create regenerative and functional art for the foundations of Fly Ranch. With radical inclusion as one of the core values, I'm leading a team to conduct design research to understand the organization's unique internal culture and global community to ensure our designs meet these diverse needs.
Those who have been deeply affected by a Burning Man event or experience have often asked..
“How can we bring this beyond the event?”
“How can we make this really matter?”
“What would it mean to have a year-round location beyond the playa?
What if we had a place to experiment with and apply the Ten Principles 365 days a year, in addition to the one-week event?”
Enter Fly Ranch.
Fly Ranch has the potential to expand Burning Man Project’s activities and existing programs, as well as amplify Burning Man’s cultural impact into the wider world beyond Black Rock City.
