Report Back: Resilience Fest 2025 –Lessons in Recovery and Resilience
September 30, 2025
Hosted by Footprint Project | July 30–31, 2025 | Black Mountain, NC
What happens when you bring solar builders, grassroots organizers, festival producers, disaster responders, and cultural workers into one experimental learning space?
You get Resilience Fest—a gathering where creativity and community become the backbone of response and long-term recovery. Resilience Fest organizers believe that by joining together, we can make better decisions—grounded in collective wisdom—about how we prepare for and respond to life-altering events.
A Legacy of Experimentation, in the Presence of Recovery
Resilience Fest took place at LEAF Global Arts Retreat Center, nestled on the historic grounds of Black Mountain College—a site long known for pushing boundaries in art, education, and social design. In the 20th century, this was a cradle of experimentation for creatives like Buckminster Fuller, Josef and Anni Albers, and Merce Cunningham.
But this location wasn’t just a nod to artistic legacy. It was also a return to a community still deeply impacted.
Nine months earlier, Hurricane Helene tore through Black Mountain and the surrounding areas, causing significant destruction. Homes were lost. Infrastructure remains fragile. Healing is just beginning.
Hosting a resilience-themed gathering in the heart of a recovering disaster zone was no accident. It reminded us that recovery is not a quick fix—it’s a long, often invisible phase that demands resources, relationships, and ritual.
And just as importantly, it highlighted that recovery is an opportunity to rebuild in ways that are more connected, more community-powered and more regenerative. Footprint project likes to use the hashtag #buildbackgreener when telling the story of their work.
“Resilience isn’t about bouncing back. It’s about bouncing forward—toward something more regenerative, equitable, and alive.”
Why We Went
We were invited by our longtime partners at Footprint Project—an organization that first tested their solar prototypes in Black Rock City, supported BWB’s very first solar build, and has since grown into a national leader in renewable energy for community resilience. Today, they remain an ongoing partner of Burners Without Borders, helping bring sustainable power solutions to communities when and where they’re needed most.
We attended Resilience Fest because we share the beliefeve that resilience is about reimagining systems that are joyful, just, and rooted in local leadership.
This is the kind of space where imagination becomes action and where BWB’s commitment to prototyping, partnership, and play truly comes alive.
Panel: Festivals as Resilience Labs
BWB Project Manager, Jaymie Braun spoke on a panel called “Mass Gatherings as Community Resilience Labs: How Celebrations Inform Survival.” Moderated by Matt Kowal (The Art of Mass Gatherings), we were joined by:
- Kelsy Dewald – Sustainability Manager at Bonnaroo
- Jennifer Pickering – Founder of LEAF Global Arts
- Sage Franz – Resilience Coordinator at Footprint Project
Together, we explored how festivals, sometimes dismissed as escapism, can actually serve as high-functioning testbeds for preparedness, energy innovation, water systems, communications, and, most importantly, these experiences build community trust and a space to experiment.
We shared how BWB’s prototypes on playa—from communal kitchens to decentralized solar hubs—are now being adapted for real-world relief and recovery.
➡️ Check out the presentation we shared: 2025 BWB Resilience Fest: Prototyping the Future
The Long Tail of Recovery — Nine Months After Helene
At Resilience Fest, recovery wasn’t an abstract theme.
In workshops like Mapping Your Disaster, participants named the emotional undercurrents of recovery: grief, dislocation, overwhelm. Maps became mirrors of grief and resilience, layered with stories of lost homes and unexpected acts of care. These weren’t theoretical sessions; they were acts of processing, healing, and solidarity.
Nine months in, some truths have become clear:
- Recovery is not linear. It comes in waves, often without closure.
- Infrastructure isn’t enough. Culture, creativity, and connection are just as vital.
- Outside help must be collaborative. Locally rooted leadership is essential to response, recovery, and rebuilding.
One example of local leadership is Civic Ignition Grant recipient Fabrizio, who became a touchstone for outside responders in rural Appalachia. His resilience hub (aka his home) anchors preparedness and response with community care. Fabrizio embodies what we’ve always believed: that response is strongest when it grows from within, and resilience means tending the fabric that holds us together long before the next disaster arrives.
That same spirit gave rise to Burner Disaster Response (BDR), born directly out of Helene’s devastation. Its founder, Fixxer (Andy Owens), had spent more than a decade building Rootpile—a self-sufficient food and music camp at Burning Man. When Helene tore through his Appalachian homeland, Fixxer realized that Rootpile’s infrastructure and skills could serve a greater purpose. He mobilized locally stored heavy equipment and camp resources to clear debris, rebuild driveways, and shelter volunteers—work that will continue for years.
BDR now aims to grow into a deployable Burner-led response force, rooted in Appalachia and inspired by Burners Without Borders.
Organizations You Should Know
At Resilience Fest, we met a dynamic ecosystem of changemakers. The organizations highlighted below are either Burner-led or deeply aligned with the 10 Principles, embodying values like radical inclusion and communal effort. They’re part of a much larger network you can explore on the Resilience Fest webpage—and each offers a chance to connect, collaborate, or get inspired.
- Grassroots Aid Partnership – Food systems and deployable kitchen grounded in Burner values.
- Burner Disaster Response– boots-on-the-ground responses to disasters with the support of the Burning Man community and others.
- Solidarity Engineering – Building infrastructure for displaced and vulnerable communities.Currently seek partners on US Mexico Border, Ukraine and Gaza.
- Empowered by Light – Bringing clean, renewable energy to communities on the frontlines of climate change and energy poverty. Currently looking to connect with local leadership in Africa.
- Good360 – Connecting communities in crisis with essential goods and helps businesses responsibly redistribute excess inventory.
- Global Support and Development (GSD) – Pioneering rapid response logistics in the Caribbean, Central America, and the South Pacific.
Many of these orgs are looking for collaborators, volunteers, local partners, and new ways to activate their work. Reach out. Share your ideas. Start a project.
Why This Matters to BWB
Resilience Fest reminded us of the importance of relationships and reimagining how we work together, with a deep commitment to local partners and community-led leadership.
That’s where BWB thrives: we experiment with new ways of building community, amplify local voices and visions, learn alongside one another, and connect people and projects across place and purpose.
Let’s Keep the Momentum Going
If you’re imagining a better way forward, we’re here to help you build it. Here’s how you can take the next step:
✅ Reach out to the orgs above—many are open to volunteers, partnerships, or skill-sharing.
✅ Bring BWB energy into your local work—start a project, host a workshop, build a prototype.
✅ Connect with us—we want to support what you’re building.
Drop us a line at bwb@burningiman.org or share a project you are working on through our project proposal form.
