Welcome

Forward

It has been over three years since I last wrote the forward to a Black Rock City population report. It is hard to understate my excitement for the community to see the results. Not only is the release of the annual report this year a celebration of all the hard work of the many absolutely amazing volunteers of the Black Rock City Census, but this report also represents a celebration of the return home for our community to the Black Rock Desert. This year also marks an important milestone for the Black Rock City Census – data using our improved data collection methods spanning a decade (although no data were collected in 2020 and 2021). The world has changed since Burning Man 2019, and burners have changed with it. The subsequent document details in what ways we have changed and in what ways we persevered as community and remained the same.

Contributions and acknowledgments

BRC Census General Manager: Andi “Sonder” Morency, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator: Samuel Ehrenreich, Ph.D.

Study Design and Data Analysis and Visualization: Aaron “Murrs” Shev, Ph.D.

Special thanks and acknowledgements:

The nearly 200 volunteers of the 2022 Census Lab including: research collaborators, volunteer coordinators, camp builders, gate samplers, key punchers, Census Lab hosts, graphic designers, and many more!
Special thanks to Dana “DV8” DeVaul whose work on the 2018 population report was the basis for many elements in this report, and to Dominic “Hunter” Beaulieu-Prévost for cleaning and weighting data from 2013 to 2019.
We would also like to thank Dominique DeBucquoy “Great Question” Dodley, Leslie Moyer, Carly “I-Carly” Rhodes, and the Burning Man Communications Department.
Additionally, we would like to extend our sincere thanks to all of the Burning Man participants who have taken the time to provide their data. This project would not exist without our respondents.
Finally, our thanks to Burning Man Project for the resources they provide both on playa and off playa and for believing in the Black Rock City Census!

For more information

To contact the Census Lab, email census@burningman.org

Census Lab Blog: https://journal.burningman.org/author/census/

Census Lab Data Archive: https://burningman.org/culture/history/brc-history/census-data/

Citation: Shev, A.B., Morency A., and the 2022 Census Lab. (2023). Black Rock City Census: 2013-2022 Population Analysis. Black Rock City Census.