1. On the 21st June 1986 – the date of the summer solstice – Larry Harvey and Jerry James invited a few friends to Baker Beach in San Francisco to celebrate the longest day of the year. They marked the event by setting fire to a nine foot wooden model of a man and a dog. As they watched the flames consume the crudely made figures, none of them could have known how their small gathering would grow over the next two decades and develop into an annual seven day experience that has become known simply as Burning Man. In 2011, so many people wanted to be part of it that the number of participants had to be limited to 50,000. 2. Even the organisers of the Burning Man project find it difficult to describe the experience. ‘Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event,’ says their official website, ‘is a bit like trying to explain what a particular colour looks like to someone who is blind.’ Part celebration, part act of rebellion, part community theatre, the week long event – now held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada – attracts tens of thousands of people. They still come to watch the ritual destruction of a wooden figure (now more than forty feet high), but most of all they come to take part in a series of spontaneous ‘happenings’ and to create a temporary community of like-minded people. 3. Larry Harvey, one of the founding