The creatives need to live life creatively

Going analog and have zero internet connection was exactly what we needed.

By Amber Hickman·LinkedIn

While Burning Man fills our spirits and gives us lots of inspiration to expand our business, it is not in the way some people might think. We didn’t go on this adventure thinking about making content or how we were going to leverage this experience to build our business.

Burning Man has been an inspiration for us for many reasons. We feel connected to the principals and work on integrating them and considering them in our lives and in our business. Radical Creativity. Immediacy. Inclusivity. Communal effort. … So many concepts that we keep close to our heart, even as Burning Man the event becomes more and more commercial and we now see more and more people trying to capture the moment with their phones. Many of our friends and clients “want to see some pictures” but when we are truly in our flow, taking a picture is the last thing we think about. Mostly because we are so present within our experience, a picture, or a video could never really do justice the fullness of the experience.

We ended up with a few snaps and hopefully the old school point and shoot camera will yield a few extra fun pictures, but truly, we didn’t take our phones with us on our journey. It’s the best decision we could have made. Taking a true break from connecting online and “staying informed” or trying to show everyone how cool our experiences are, or how incredible the art is. We have to rely on good story telling for that. Which is a great take away.

Inspired

The things that I did take back with me is witnessing life. It is the stories. It is the connections. It is the abundance of information filling all of our senses and being reminded how impactful the art can be when you can touch it, climb on it, ride on it, experience the music from it. You can’t take a picture if you have to hold on with two hands while you get spun around in the air within a giant metal heart. You won’t be able to pull out your phone when the your riding your bike through the dust storm during sunset while chasing the possibility of listening to an orchestra just ahead, through the dust. I see it clearly in my head. One of the most incredible sights. The light rays shining through a white out with your friends riding just ahead of me in a crazy weird costume and hope that we are almost there even though you can’t see anything.

I’m inspired by that sight in my mind. I could see the softness of the colors of the dust. What a beautiful brand color palette that is. What a beautiful scene, so simple, so complex and so much to say. No one will ever know exactly what that looked like to me and how I saw that moment.

The inspiration is to live life. Live it to the fullest.

Don’t get me wrong. There will be events that we will intentionally capture content and build upon, but the goal is to build a business so we can provide our services to our community without sacrificing our lives to do it. As a creative team, you wont see us as ONLY content creators. You won’t see us pulling out our phones at inappropriate moments just because it is beautiful. We are inspired by life. Inspired by our experiences. We fill our cup and allow our spirits to fully live, and we honor the need for all of us to have moments of pure presence. This is part of our values. We aren’t trying to capture every special moment we live in, we are working on integrating the best of those moments and work on sharing that inspiration and love for life with you.

Integration

The things we are taking with us into our business is a refreshed and recharged spirit. I see so many possible color palettes and moods that speak new languages. We see more depth in building the culture of our business which is part of the Brand. We see the playfulness in bringing analog pieces into the digital world. We see how extremely outrageous we could be, and how something soft and simple can be so crucial at different points of communication. We see the value in a strong foundation, regardless if it a physical tent or a strong mission statement. We have much more content within our own personal echo system that we didn’t ingest from the digital world and how priceless it truly is.

While we watch more people with their phones at Burning Man and started getting discouraged about the commercialization and see how social media only captures one little frequency of the whole. We see what is missing and think deeper about how to communicate a true message and not just a 30second clip. We talked to some old burners, the ones that had been going for over 20+ years who have seen many changes before the current version manifested and asked them. “What do you think about the changes that we are seeing?” One women took her time to answer, acknowledging the shifts, and with a hopeful attitude asked us “did you get what you needed from your experience?” It was such a good reflection. Yes, yes we did.

We aren’t here to control the narrative or tell someone they are doing it wrong. We are here to understand what we value. Our lives are changed because of such a big and incredible experience. Many people may not see what we’ve seen and the wisdom we have been blessed with. There are many more things we can learn. The key is, we got what we needed AND, we are here to share our skills, our thoughts, our developing business to support the people that resonate with us.

And with that… we are full of possibilities. Isn’t that what you want in your creative team?