Introductory Workshop: Radical Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (R.I.D.E.) Stress Test

Have your best-laid plans ever blown up in your face?

Learn with fellow artists, builders, makers, and event and camp leads about how to bring our communities into conversations to illuminate potential blindspots and help create even more inclusive, anti-racist events, projects, and community spaces. 

This is a journey for leaders, and for some it can feel uncomfortable and overwhelming to know where to start. Join a friendly, non-judgemental, values-forward community conversation to build trust, and familiarize ourselves with the R.I.D.E. Stress Test, please read it here beforehand!

At our collective best, Burning Man is a multicultural, open, inviting, and inclusive global community. In reality, many teams, projects, and initiatives in our community are missing input and leadership from people from conventionally-marginalized communities. By bringing an anti-racist and anti-discriminatory lens into our strategies and work, we are putting our principles into practice, and helping to build the future we want to live in.

We have created a tool and are excited to learn how to use it with you. It’s called a “Stress Test,” because it is designed to help you as a creator examine your proposal through the lenses of Radical Inclusion, diversity, and equity (R.I.D.E.).

In this one hour virtual experience, expect to spend some time getting to know peers, a review and discussion about the tool and conversations in small groups about how we might apply this in our own contexts.

Please read the R.I.D.E. Stress Test beforehand.

For more about Burning Man Project’s R.I.D.E. work, head over to this page.

Photo: Chris Stanford 1997, Dust devil

Facilitator Bios:

Iris Yee

As Head of Regional Network, Iris facilitates connections between Burners across the world and supports over 250 Regional Contacts, who nurture Burning Man culture year-round in their local communities. Living and traveling in over 15 countries has ignited Iris’ appreciation for communities’ diverse and ingenious ways of collaboration and creative self-expression. Trained as a sociologist, she brings those skills and experiences to the R.I.D.E. Stewardship Group and Burning Man Project.

Molly Rose

As Program Manager for Burners Without Borders, Molly Rose promotes Burners’ civic impact around the world. She partners with leaders at all stages of civic aspirations, amplifies community initiatives, and supports the BWB network in self-organizing and decentralized networking. Molly is a member of the R.I.D.E Stewardship Group; has lived, worked, and studied in fifteen countries; and has been facilitating community conversations in various modalities for over a decade.

Simone Torrey

Simone has worked with Burning Man Project on several community engagement initiatives since 2018. As a professional facilitator for transformative change processes she has lived, studied and worked in 15 countries over the past 23 years. Simone’s facilitation is experiential and embodied, trauma and resilience informed, deeply rooted in compassion, transformative justice and emergence.