This advice process has been closed. We will have the vision weekend in December 10th-11th. Sign up and details will follow soon.

TLDR: We think it might be time for a structured process regarding the future of Kiez Burn. We advocate for a strategy workshop with the goal of creating a longer term vision.

Proposers: @Julian Finn @Franzi

Proposers Roles:

Julian has been involved in KB since 2018 and was this year's welfare lead, Franzi has held multiple leading roles including being a Board member.

Who would impement this: Organizing the weekend would fall to the new board and whoever steps forward, probably Franzi

Affected: Everyone involved in Kiezburn

The Proposal:

Analysis:

Kiez Burn 2022 was a blast! Of course it was. This is not about criticizing the past year but rather about pointing out some systemic challenges. We are collecting here our observations as well as the outcomes from the leadership program and the powerful teams survey.

• The Decentralization tends to lead to people defining their own lead roles, creating gaps and unclarities regarding responsibilities. This is mostly due to a lack of onboarding. The originally set up system of guides is not working in practise and most realizers are ‘left alone’. Roles are clearly defined but not communicated well. There is a lot of communication overhead between individual areas as well as between camps and core-orga (Korg, Board, Leads etc).

• Orga set up: We have no clear set up for ‘how we do Kiez Burn’. We have different groups of people such as: board, korgies, leads, some form of core team etc but their roles and focus is not clarified. We have a lot of people working very, very hard to make Kiez Burn happen and burning out over it. Which leads to core people leaving every year and a lot of new people coming in. This causes us friction in: no clear roles, people don’t get onboarded, conflicts are not managed, realisers are not following the principles of Kiez Burn and doing ‘their own thing’, massive loss of knowledge and we lose amazing people. We have not managed so far to build a robust system with clear roles & responsibilities that makes people want to stay and allows us all to make Kiez Burn happen in a happy and healthy way.

• Bureaucracy: Especially the dreams process has turned into a system where the hassle outweighs the benefits. It is easier to just self-fund (or drop) a small dream than going through the dreams platform. Creating a dream feels quite bureaucratic and un-burnery. It also favors those with a larger network and disadvantages people who are less good at communicating. To be clear: this is a structural issue.

• Communication and ways of working: How do we store our knowledge and make it accessible? Do we still use realities? Was the launch of discord a success or a pain? What is the communication tool that serves us? How do we take decisions online together?

• Separation from European Burner culture: KB is the fourth largest burn in Europe, yet we are more or less separate from the “rest of the scene”. With one or two exceptions there are no larger European camps or groups coming to KB, neither do KB camps tend to visit Nowhere, Borderland or other European burns. KB is extremely Berlin centric, with none of the crews from Hamburg, Cologne, Munich or other places coordinating to come. Long story short: KB somehow feels like its own thing without much of an integration and therefore not much variety.

• Party Focus: If we want it or not: the chances of someone suddenly walking into The Observatory Friday night and getting lost in telescoping for 3 hours are fairly small. There are multiple theories why this is the case, but it is safe to say that most Kiez Burners somehow end up meandering along the underworld-musotopia axis (with wonderland / saloon as other stops) at night or just going to bed because they hate the music and there’s not much else to do.

• Long-Term vision: Kiez Burn somehow lives from year to year, yet most of the camps have somehow been around for ages. This means that there are the same “should we get a new Gelände” debates every year and the same sort of “well, if someone did this it might be nice” responses. Yet we also don’t decide to grow, actively invite new camps or cooperate with Freiland to build new structures. All things that might be possible if we knew what we would be doing longer term.

Ideas

All these points are mere observations. To each of these there is a valid “yeah, and that is perfectly fine!” answer. And still, it feels like they could also be consciously discussed. And maybe written down somewhere.

Here are some wild ideas what a longer term vision could bring us:

• If we were to decide to stay at Freiland for the next 5 years, we could decide to grow KB to the maximum Freiland capacity. We could talk to FL about building more permanent structures. We could focus on things such as extending the numbers of days (and be creative about how to fill them if we don’t get a sound permit). We wouldn’t even have to commit to FL with a contract. Just state intentions.

• If we were to decide that we want to be “the german burn”, maybe other crews would put in more effort in joining. If we were to decide that we don’t want to fill that role, maybe the other crews would decide to do their own thing, which could also be totally fine

• If we got more European camps to join us, maybe more people who only know Kiez Burn could become inspired. Start building their own stuff.

• If we were to extend the burn to the entire week without getting more sound permits, maybe other camps could take over the Underworld space monday til wednesday.

• If we were to change the venue, maybe we could get a “seven days including sound” permit without going on any neighbours’ nerves

Conclusion

All this means one thing: It is time to sit down and get inspired. To actually talk about the pressing questions. We’ve listed a few of them below and can imagine there’s many more. We call the KB community and Vorstand to come together, get a date and spend a weekend on a strategy workshop with the goal of creating a “Long term vision for Kiez Burn” document. Not as a fixed set of rules but rather as guidelines for where we want to go.

Some of the questions that could be discussed are:

• What do we want KB to look like five years from now?

• What set up do we need to get there? Board? Korg? Leads? Resuscitate guides?

• Do we think Freiland enables or hinders us?

• Do we wanna move site?

• Do we want to become “the big German summer burn” or do we want to stay the way we are?

• Do we want more outreach into the wider Burner Community? If so: How to do that?

• Do we want more and bigger art pieces? If so: how do we want to achieve that?

• Is three and a half days (Wednesday afternoon til Saturday night) enough or do we want to extend to five, six, seven days?

• Do we want more sound / party? Less? Is it “too much party” or just “too little other stuff”? Or is it all just fine as is?

The workshop will be November/December from Friday - Sunday and open for everyone who wants to contribute. We will rent the Seminar House again. We will run workshops for: vision building, strategy & planning, retrospective ‘looking back to look forward’ and working out a clear set up for Kiez Burn.

EDIT:

After a discussion with Remy and Hanna Maija I am (Franzi) updating this advice process. Its to give more clarity in what we want to do.

The vision weekend will not only brainstorm on the vision of Kiez Burn but also take tangible and very concrete decisions on what our focus will be and what we will work on. eg: move site yes or no. on the back of the decisions we take the board and the kiez burn core team (whatever they ll be called) then will ensure that teams are formed that work on these initiatives and work on them themselves.