Marie Marshall

I told you in my last news update here about my contribution to Camp Thump Thump’s presentation for Burning Man 2016 I Tamburisti di FIREnze. Well, it has grown arms and legs since then. The text has tripled and the story of the Guild – part fact, mostly fiction, and a little bit Time-Lord – has been brought up to the present day. The plan of the Project Coordinator is to adapt what I have written into a large, scrapbook-like record, to be put on display at the Guild’s mobile HQ on the Playa at this year’s Burning Man, so that people who drop in to the workshop can read it and marvel! I have to say I’m honoured.

Now, the essence of Burning Man is that things are given freely. The members of the Camp Thump Thump team give up their time, energy, materials, and finished products entirely gratis, in the spirit of that BM ethos. But outside of Burning Man – in the world in which preparations are made – things cost money. I wish they didn’t, I wish that everything in the world wasn’t reduced to a commodity and that the Burning Man ethos would spread beyond its borders, but such a thing has yet to be. I live in hope.

This year the team will be doing their bit to spread that ethos beyond its borders by making and donating a dozen drums to a school on the ‘outside’.

Meanwhile, the team is obliged to raise money for transport, workshop construction, materials, etc., and are obliged therefore to ask for donations. If you would like to know more, please click on this link, watch the video, read the blurb, and see if you are able to make a cash donation. If you do nothing else, please help by spreading the word – reblog this item, put it out on social media, tell your friends over a cup of coffee.

I can’t get there myself, but it is so exciting for me to be a ‘remote’ part of the Camp Thump Thump team, helping to create I Tamburisti di FIREnze.