I'd like Celtic Burn to not have kids. Just as a personal preference. I think kids are fine with witnessing drug use and sex. I prefer to use drugs and have sex without kids around. I also have an easier time being silly and expressing myself without kids around.

The STRIKE plan summarised:

Official closing ceremony on Monday the 21st + final party night for everyone(1) who hasn't left during the day; no striking of the communal spaces before dawn. Burn "officially ends" at dawn without additional note or ceremony.

Tuesday the 22nd is for striking of the common spaces and departing. 🌄 All yurts & the Roundhouse must be struck and returned to their original state by noonish; and then we could have a final goodbye meeting (say 12:34?) and disperse(2)

1) Anyone who wants, but we do ask that they pre-register their intention to stay for Strike Tuesday so that we have an idea of how many of us are up for it. The more the merrier!

2) Anyone who wants to stay beyond Tuesday can directly arrange this with the site, as normal (this is not the concern of this dream/burn).

Clarification: The Build proposal and the Strike proposal are separate dreams (each costing £300).
It is concievable that we will end up having only one of them, or neither, or both!
My argument for accepting them is that each one we accept will effectively yield an extra burn day (a Monday) for all participants! (not only those who come for Build Sunday or stay for Strike Tuesday)

Build / Strike

For build if there's demand for it (particularly from space-owners) then I think this is a reasonable use of funds, if people would like to get ahead of that then great. I am not personally one of those people ;)

For strike I would like to sound a note of caution. At the moment, strike takes place when nearly everyone is still there, happens quite quickly because there are numbers, and can be fairly do-ocracy as since it is fairly obvious what needs to be done as we are all leaving on the same day. There is a communal sense of clearing out. If you extend the rental into a strike period, that is lost, and now you have some (most, I would guess, since it's a new working week the next day) who will leave on Monday, and a few who will stay, and it won't be so clear what Monday-leavers need to contribute. It fuzzes the ending, and might lead to strikers being left with a bigger job than they really signed up for.

For these reasons I would be against having a strike period given we have been quite good at clearing up together so far.

Under 18s

This is a debate in my head, I do not want to tell anyone they cannot or should not come to a burn, it is antithetical to how I see the community.

But. I do feel less comfortable with children at a burn. One of the things I appreciate about burns is the sense that everyone is an independent adult that is looking after themselves, and has the freedom to join or leave any thing as they wish... eg these people have a sexual energy that I don't want to be involved in, I can move somewhere else; this conversation is too controversial or serious for me, I can move somewhere else; this workshop is bringing up unwanted emotions, I can leave. It grants much more scope and freedom for those things to exist because we're all in control of what we're involved in. But children don't have that judgement, if they are around I have to censor.

I don't personally think there is much to see that children can be harmed by though, I think we underestimate how uninterested they are in 'adult stuff'. But who knows if that's a correct judgement, I don't! And I don't know if it's a legally sound opinion.

I don't want to go so far as saying we shouldn't have under-18s at the event, but I don't personally know how to integrate them yet.

Re: Build/Strike: Very much agree with Carl’s points above on build and strike. Personally I would consider coming early to build but I would not be willing to use an extra day of annual leave to strike. I would also be concerned about the potential for spaces to then remain open on the last burn day and for those remaining to have less support in clearing things out.

That said, in terms of whether we fund these things from dreams budget, I feel the voices of the space adopters (I.e. snuggery contributors) are most important here as they end up taking on most of the responsibilities for build and strike.

Edit: Re memberships generally, I strongly feel membership sign up should be on our website and folks should not have to sign up to Wrike or loomio to become members (though I do feel joining these should be encouraged and supported). If our website isn’t ready by the time it needs to be then we can use something simple like google forms. Re: actual payment and concern about bank details being publicly available, we can have an automated email sent to folks once they’ve registered, with the bank details.

Have proposed on telegram previously a couple ways to promote engagement if we feel that is needed.
1) During membership sign up have a required tick that they have or will sign up to Wrike. They could also be provided with and a clear screenshot guide on how to sign up with troubleshooting (given all the difficulties thus far) and a designated email (NOT telegram handle) could be provided for folks to request invite to Wrike.
2) In the membership form they could also be asked to indicate one area of interest that they’d like to commit their support to (kitchen, welfare, specific space curation, cabaret, etc). Then we could have a reception creature-esque person, or someone who is happy to act as an onboarding person in a particular area, contact folks interested in different areas and help them get involved and get them subscribed to updates for said area on Wrike for example.

I agree with Carl and Rachel too. I'd be happy to come up on Sunday (for whenever I manage to get there), but I would not commit another day for strike. Sam vocalises my thoughts on it rather well.

For the rest of it I don't have any better ideas and I find the proposals reasonable.

@Jakub Hajko I also think an extra day of build is a great idea and I would happily attend. Would recommend against an extra day of strike for the reasons already said, mainly that it could end up putting the bulk of the strike workload on a small group who stay the extra day

@Jakub Hajko +1 on yes extra build day, no extra strike day. Most of us are procrastinators - we will not do the boring, necessary things that mark the end of the fun until we absolutely have to. It would just be a tighter strike day with fewer to help, imo.

​Hi @Rachel  Thanks a lot for your input! I've just explained some parts about the buying process and payment details in my reply to Madeleine above, so I invite you to check that as well as part of my response to you, so my comments don't get too long... x

Yes, we're thinking of using a Google form.

I'm explaining the above, because I'm hoping that you (and others who have the same concern) can see the work that I've already put into integrating various different principles while writing this (mostly inclusion, decentralisation, and communal effort), based on feedback already received.

I get that it may feel more convenient for some to receive the payment information in emails, however that is

a) A less decentralised solution (and lots of extra work, as Sam said) and

b) Saying that this would not be inclusive/accessible enough, because signing up for Loomio might put someone off and cause them to not buy a membership - I feel that this would be focusing on accessibilty (not even proper Inclusion) only, in an unbalanced way, to the detriment of other principles.

​The suggestion to make the process of membership buying a mutual thing, where each member starts to actively do something and interact with the community from the first moment of the commitment to attend - this was not a new idea of mine this year. There are very important reasons why we want to invite a group of people who have "buy-in" and actively engage with each other, not just pay and receive a ticket like they would for a "normal" festival.

Inclusion is not the same as accessibility. Even if we did equate the two: I do see and acknowledge that this may feel like an inconvenience to some. But in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with this feeling of a dynamic tension that comes from holding multiple principles at the same time, imperfectly, as we can. Rather than trying to hold the inclusion principle perfectly while disregarding the others.

I'd like to understand better what is your concern, what you feel would be lost, if we don't send out emails with payment details? I'm also open for other new strategies, if they do a similar job at balancing the different principles at play here.

@Isabelle hi Isa, having had more time to think on this I agree with your approach and my concerns are resolved. Thank you for your response.

@Rachel great note about wrike sign up guide!

This is the first year that I won't have co-authored the budget + membership AP. This I'm grateful for, that you fox and Isa are stepping forward and making things happen. I can give a little perspective on the reason for past decisions:

Dreams work well as the mechanism for distributing funds in an inclusive/ accessible/ transparent/ crowd sourcing way (decentralised). It works well that we don't need to centrally forecast budgets for (yet un-manifested) teams/ tasks.
Year 1 and 2 our Dreams pot was voluntary donation based and collected an average £18/ person. This feels pure and good because it is what people can afford. Everyone shared the fixed costs and some donated £0 and some £70. Year 3 we wanted a bigger dream budget so asked for a minimum donation. I think this was already going off track.

1) For this year, I think include whatever is decided for Build/ strike as a fixed cost.
2) My utopian suggestion for dreams funding would be to have a voluntary donation pot at point of sale and then fill the pot up more from fundraising events that we do within the community.

This will also be the year that I step down properly for membership backroom work. It's a LOT of work, so I wish for you to create systems that the least work possible and doesn't burn you out. I think bank transfers could be good, automation helps too, can't automate receiving a bank transfer with a confirmation so that's at least 130 checks (spread out over a few months), you don't want multiples 2x, 3x 4, of these steps (million workload) (I personalised each membership certificate for year 1...... then came make your own membership).

Build and strike: I like that CB has always had a "all for one" approach where we all build/ strike together, rather than a festival style approach of building for others to come and consume. I'd suggest to just book the whole site for the Sunday before and then everyone can arrive and be part of the process together. I'd say stick with the same Monday leaving day and finish the burn with a Sunday closing ceremony so we can all end the journey together.

Lastly, I think I'd move away from mixing membership email collection from coms newsletter collection. Keep membership email for confirmation only, separately. Have a different opt in newsletter list that rolls over each burn.

@Sam Lee Your last point about membership email vs comms email is well-taken, and will be added into DSP as long as Isa believes it's doable. I agree with you on that - cleaner and simpler in the long run. I personally hate getting CB emails to the email I originally gave; it's not (consciously) what I submitted the details for in the first place, and it's not where those kinds of emails would usually come in so it feels all wrong when I get one haha.

@Sam Lee love all Sam says

Hi! Thanks for all this work on clarifying information and giving all the major details that new burners will need to know 🙂 In principle I think your main chunk of text seems on point, and excellently clarifies all the main points needed. I'm sure we will discuss later on in the website construction how/where it all links up/is placed, but thank you for the solid content.

I mainly jumped on here to urge us to hold back on the part about child memberships until that element is properly discussed and concluded. It's such a huge topic that it needs an AP of its own, which Aella is currently in the process of putting together. So could we please side-bar that conversation for now? I think embedding it in the main discussion about membership details isn't really doing it the justice it deserves. 🙏

I haven't thought in detail about the extra strike day tbh so won't comment right now. I'll be back if/when I do haha.

@Zoe Ironstone 

Yes this would be wise.

If consensus is reached that we do want to safeguard and include minors then there needs to be something like an "accompanying adult membership" which will need to include additional information about their agreed upon responsibilities.

At other events a system of identifying accompanying adults and their children via wristband works well and satisfies some safeguarding (specifically around lost child criteria). It is also a way of monitoring that relevant info has been received and agreed to by said accompanying adult.

@Madeleine  For anyone reading this thread, Madeleine's AP addressing child safeguarding at CB is now live here: https://www.loomio.com/d/ZoHG563k/evaluating-capacity-for-adequate-safeguarding-of-minors-at-celtic-burn So hop on over there if you want to discuss in more detail.

Build/Strike: I don't feel strongly about this. As a parent, I can rarely commit to Build and Strike as it is. The proposal is slightly more likely to exclude me from participating in those, but that shouldn't crowd out those who want to enjoy more time together.

Payments: bank transfer is fine with me, but please think about how you will track these. "What's this payment from D B Smith, I only see a playa name, FreeHugs ShirtCocker, registered. How do we reconcile these?" Do we use the same email address as our reference number, and deal with the 18 character limit?

Children: No concern with the pricing.

Let's keep the conversation on inclusion of children to the other AP.

Build & Strike-

Sounds like a good idea to have an extra day to build with those who have capacity. With regards to striking I hear Rachel's reservation that it may fall on less people to strike if it gets pushed back a day. That could also mean that people who can't attend the whole week may be able to have more time that end of the week if the Monday still has a full programme.

This year it will fall on Easter Monday so many people will not be at work anyway that day.

As a parent I am limited on how much time I can manage away from my family.

Payment -

I think Tyler makes a good point about people including the name they will use at the burn or on registration to make it easier to reconcile who has & hasn't paid.

Pricing-

Seems a good idea to take payments in one go & reduce admin. I also agree with the proposal for refunds & reselling.

With regards to the child tickets, that needs resolving in the other AP.

The basic terms of handing membership in this AP sound fine.

One detail is what bank account? Does this wait until the AP on umbrella organisation is published and decided and, presumably a bank account is opened under that?

Or is there another option?

On dedicated build and strike days, I Love it. Yes please.

He people of the corn, hope it's not too late to comment on this. I only have 2 things to say without going into another long message so in short:

Dreams budget; I feel this should be volunteery rather than a minimum £35. At ticket purchase stage there could be prompts to amounts (£15/£25/£35/£45...) but essentially, allow members to make their own mind up as to how much they would like to donate. To me, set amounts with a minimum puts the onus on money rather than participation and my understanding of dreams is we see what we got and run with that rather than over engineer. And if you don't get full funding, the dream owner has the choice to self fund or ditch it. Up to the owner to pitch the dream just right for good participation levels....which leads me beautifully into my next point. 👇

Xtra build and strike; the container is 1 of the most beautiful and crucial facets of spending time with eachother (IMO) and anyone who turns up to a burn 1/2 way though will tell you a) it takes a while to land and b) there's that feeling of catching up/missed out. Sam said if you want to make the burn longer to allow more build and strike then why not make it 2 or 3 extra days...what do you really need to build in 3 days?🤷 I think there's enough time within a week to build, burn then strike. Sounds like to me the question is engagement and not having a select few do the lions share rather than extending the days. Strike is always a mo fo and we'd love to stay in the afterglow forever never going back to the lap top but haters gown hate so suck it up, make a tea and crack on.

Suggestion; Have a dedicated pep team to get folk excited about build and strike and make it part of the burn...it could be a dream if you need money for materials...you could fluff, paint faces, glitter bomb people, dance for entertainment, rally troops and tea, technical support, be called junior chief superintendent Feathers McFluff....all in the name of engaging people to participate.

Believe in the people and power to them 🫵✊

Also sneaking my comment in at the 11th hour...

Regarding the membership AP, I don't think there should be an option for 16-18, or any under 18s for that matter to buy a membership regardless of if they have a suitable guardian. We are organising an adult's playground, whatever definition or meaning you derive from the event. However, if over 18s need to bring under-18 dependants then we should welcome that as part of radical inclusion but as others have warned here, this comes with added liabilities and a complex burden to those who wish to freely express themselves or explore altered states in a safe environment, which is being discussed in another AP.

_

As per the Build and Strike proposal, I welcome the idea of extra days for the burn but disagree with the concept of splitting the activities of Building and Striking from the core burn experience. At my first burn this year, the build, burn and strike phases provided an easy and enjoyable narrative for me to enjoy my first experience and contribute where I could. Having an early bird build phase on Sunday gives those with the motivation, first access to the site to establish their dreams. Having the main build on Monday gives everyone arriving on the "first day" a free day to land, plan, collaborate and build in a condusive environment. Holding the opening ceremony to the burn phase on Tuesday morning, when most have landed, still gives an adequate full 6 nights of burning, before Monday's bank holiday closing ceremony when most will leave. This will make Tuesday's leaving strike much easier and bittersweet for those who remain to the last.

How this is expressed financially, I don't know as we don't yet know membership signups and voluntary donations amounts but I am still in agreement with the AP's overall intentions, stand against whatever the notion of a "true burn" is and thank the authors and contributors for their efforts.

@Carwyn I disagree about the part that were making an adult playground, well, I do think we're doing that but more than that I think we're making a sustainable community, and that needs to be fully age inclusive.

I do really agree with the part about build being for everyone, so that everyone can be in the same flow and help where they can. It's not quite like other burns where we are putting in a power grid, toilets, structure etc. When everyone is allowed to arrive at the same time then it creates more cohesion. I don't think build needs to be separated from "the first day of burn", I think build should be the first day for everyone. We all make the burn, not just a few, not like a festival

@Carwyn As far as I am aware - new starter safeguarding plans for <18's are being put together now , and that's the main thing atm for that side before selling memberships?
Yeah, no separate category and am unsure where that came from, it's been pointed out already that 16-18 is treated as same issue with safeguarding so.

We should add a simple Vote on this sent out via email to see if there is interest and availability on different options, before moving forward on date changes or allocating communal funds?
Simplify it nay?

My thoughts on the main text, for the rest - tag me if needed.

on build/strike day:

with my experience of 2 burns, one of them invested un build and strike of a space:

I support idea of build, would really help to have more burn time and will allow to have set the space earlier.

Don t feel to add day for strike, because of the last day being sunday: finishing sunday and leave alltogether feels nicer than the have 2 days of goodbyes as it was at 2023.

/surely come for build.

~

on buying memberships: 

be invited to wrike - fantastic, maybe reach a reception creature to be invited, great to see what s going on.

loomio - don't see a nessesity to become a member, you may read it before having an account. +kind no objection just see less obligation into the involvment if you don t feel like

so I would offer to do all the payments infos through wrike.

it would be nice to write a note about exceptional option of paying the deposit in 2 payments for people who can t efford to pay full deposit at once. that still would be more work for Reception Creatures, but less because it would be made only by special request and gives some flexibility for those who need it.

~

all the rest - my total support.

'Scuse the delay in replying - have a strong emotional barrier towards creating Y.A.F.L. (Yet another fucking login). And I do broadly agree with a lot of what has been said.

Re. Proposed sale date 15/12 - I have strong reservations. For many it's the busiest month and the hardest for cashflow. With a larger community than ever and a return to school holiday dates, no doubt we will sell out, and if we do so before January the busiest and poorest in our community stand to miss out. (Potentially, of course - I ain't no shaman.)

By far the best solution, imo, is to postpone until early January, and a fair compromise would be to at least allow deferral of payment for approx 1 month.

Re. Build and strike being handled by a small team outside of event dates - yes, to an extent. As mentioned above, this makes more sense for build than strike, and I personally would love to get there a night early and ease in slowly with a handful of others. But the build we do on the first day should, imo, be limited and well defined.

For example, it makes sense to put up any additional tents and structures, as well as to get spaces to a stage where the people arriving the next day can do their own build with minimal fuss, but a small team trying to do everything for everyone feels bad all round. As camping space is extremely limited, perhaps THE most important thing to hash out on a first day would be to have and follow a clear camping and parking plan (but that warrants an AP of its own, which I'm happy to author in the new year).

Re. Payments info only being offered on wrike and loomio - hard veto on the basis of radical exclusion. Putting info in such spaces is fine, but the reasoning is flawed as loomio, for example, is no less public than any other website - a login is not needed to read all posts and replies.

Best solution, imo, is to also send the payment info directly to the email address people put down when they fill in their details to buy a membership. This can, I believe, be automated. Each person can also be given a unique reference to put on their bank transfer which might minimise admin with checking who is paid. On that note, I'm more than happy to provide some assistance with such admin work in the new year.

Re. Forced dreams budget - I broadly agree with above points that it should instead be up to each individual whether or not and how much to donate to this pot, but not having seen the books and budgets from previous years, I will leave that in your hands.

That's all that comes to mind. Thank you for getting this AP stitched together Isa, and love to you all. x

@Gareth 100% agree on delaying membership sales until January

No new opinions at this late stage, don't worry. Just wanted to say I'm super keen for extra build/strike days. Reading the reservations about and extra strike day I can see that maybe a trial of extra build day and register interest for strike could be a good option. Really keen for a build/strike team, I'd volunteer for that :)