About Gateway Burners
Mission Statement
Gateway Burners is an organization created to foster radical self-expression, radical inclusion, participatory art, and sustainable community as well as encouraging civic responsibility through regional events, information sharing and education for the community in Saint Louis and its surrounding areas. The Gateway Burners are a regional chapter of Burning Man and strive to follow the Ten Principles below.
Ten Principles of Burning Man
Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of a Burn. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for
participation in our community.
Gifting
Burns are devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate
a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are
unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our
culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-Reliance
Burns encourage the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
Radical Self-Expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a
collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should
respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect
social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public
welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume
responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
Leave-No-Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities
wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places
in a better state than when we found them.
Participation
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change,
whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation.
We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world
real through actions that open the heart.
Immediacy
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek
to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those
around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers.
No idea can substitute for this experience.