Burning Spring Festival is an annual skydiving event based on Burning Man. What does Burning Man have to do with skydiving? Read on.
What is Burning Man?
Burning Man is an annual event in the United States at Black Rock City, Nevada. Black Rock is built for Burning Man– afterwards everything is gone, and it looks like nothing happened there. Larry Harvey and Jerry James hosted the first Burning Man on San Francisco’s Baker Beach. They named it for the wooden effigy of a man they burned at the end. They could not have imagined what this symbolic event would become.
What began 33 years ago as a small beach festival is now a globally-recognized event focused on art and community experiments. “Burners” have ten primary principals: radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leave no trace.
What is the Burning Spring Festival?
Burning Spring Festival is a skydiving event inspired by Burning Man. Of course, it’s on a much smaller scale, and the number of attendees is lower than at Burning Man. But the Burning Spring Festival is focused on skydivers, who make up the community of burners here.
The event brings radical expression to the skydiving community, in art and skydiving jumps. At the Burning Spring Festival, every skydiver registered can jump with amazing load organizers in all skydiving disciplines; join incredible parties that take place close to the Main Stage, Colorful Jerseys Camp or at the Silence Camp and; and check out new products with the many vendors who set up at the event.
For the art portion of the event, we expect more every year, and there is lots of room for improvement. This year we had the opportunity to feature a sculpture from Red Bull Australia carving their magic work into a huge stone, a big turtle filled with plastic collected from the sea, and the Colorful Jerseys Camp.
Join us: Art Camps
This year, Colorful Jerseys created a camp to introduce their concept to the skydiving community in Europe. I recommend that everyone who has idea for a work of art to create it at the Burning Spring Festival. It’s great to see the way people interact with your art, and you can meet an enormous number of people. Everyone has a story, and it’s very cool to learn about it. The best example this year for me was Olav Zipser, who was located behind the Colorful Jerseys Camp. It was amazing to learn about how he started, his most recent trips, and that we share our home drop zone.
If you decide to come to the event and it’s your first time traveling with skydiving gear, please check how to travel with your skydiving gear and be prepared.
Who is Burning Spring Festival?
There’s a long list of names working behind the scenes to make the Burning Spring Festival run smoothly. The leading team is formed by Babylon Freefly. The Babylon Freefly SL is approaching its 20th anniversary and includes some big names in the sport. How big? .
The Idealizer
Aldo Comas is the person who brought the Burning Man vibe to Skydive Empuriabrava. He went to two Burning Man Festivals, where he had remarkable experiences. At the first festival he proposed to his wife, Macarena Gómes. Clearly, Burning Man Festival is a special place for them, so they scheduled their honeymoon to include a stop at the event after their wedding the next year.
Aldo’s experience at Burning Man gave him a desire to make the event part of his life. Combining his passion for skydiving and creative ideas for the sport, he set out to organize of the biggest and most incredible skydiving boogies of all time, in Spain. And so, the Burning Spring Festival was born.
“I’m motivated to give a new dimension to skydive boogies. There are too many skill camps based on level and minimal skydiving events based on the people and their creativity.” Aldo Comas
Burning Spring + Colorful Jerseys
The Burning Spring Festival and Colorful Jerseys have a lot in common. First of all, both are very colorful and creative. Like the festival, the Colorful Jerseys focus on the experience– we want people contributing to the skydiving environment by using the power of colors to transmit happiness and good vibes.
The Colorful Jerseys Camp was a mix of exciting branding experience where anyone who came to visit the event could interact with the art created. The feedback about the camp we built at Burning Spring was excellent and the results were too: Colorful Jerseys are now in more than 15 different countries!
We also used the Colorful Jerseys Camp as a platform to share the Colorful Jerseys Foundation project.
Colorful Jerseys Camp at Burning Spring
Colorful Pendulum was the most interactive part of our camp. The Colorful Pendulum was a wood structure created by Mauro Jasmin with 12 plastic bottles all containing the same amount of water. Lines of varying lengths held the bottles to the wood structure, creating a stunning design when visitors moved the bottles around. People could come and play with the pendulum in whichever way they believed was right.
Colorful Frame Wall was the second attraction we prepared for this event. We built a wood wall 3×2.8 meters, and added beautiful and interesting old frames to it. Natalie Bassegio, the creator behind the wall’s art, used colorful neon spray paint to create a very cool design on the surface. This wall was an incredible backdrop for people to stand against and take pictures with their friends.
Tree of Life and Buddha had their time at the Colorful Jerseys Camp as well. Our goal was to combine the Burning Spring action with a space for people to rest and enjoy a relaxed time. We manage to bring a real olive tree to the Colorful Jerseys Camp (the tree wasn’t removed from the ground, don’t worry). By placing a Buddha statue in front of the tree, we created a feeling of peace in that spot.
The Colorful Truck
The Colorful Jerseys Truck was the central part of the camp. It was right in the middle; it was connecting all the attractions. We added some colorful material on the top of the truck, and the rest was all about graffiti art. We used the truck to show the new Colorful Jerseys collection to the Burning Spring visitors.
Also, we had colorful puffs all over the camp. People could get there during any time of the day to sit down and, have a great time. Few people were there chatting and other just chilling. It was a great spot to meet new friends as well.
My Experience
Burning Spring Festival is a great place to get to know people and jump with the most incredible load organizers. This year, I had the chance to jump with the father of freefly Olav Zipser, Will Penny, Oscar Asfura, Sergey Ffracoon, Max Haim, Filippo Fabbi, Dani Roman and most of the Babylon Freely team.
Let’s be honest; I never imagined a day when I could be part of jumps with such great and famous skydivers, I feel honored to have few pictures I took shared by them on their social media.
The parties and the art are also something unique and super connected with the community and culture that Burning Man brings to life each year in Black Rock City. The people at Burning Spring Festival can have fun and express themselves without judgment, and this is what brings to life the fantastic feeling that we all belong to the community.
The end
The end of the event is similar to the end of Burning Man. The last Saturday of Burning Spring, we jump all day long, and the party starts after dinner. The skydivers and other visitors from the city begin to get together around the “Man” at 10:30 pm. The show this year started at 11 pm with fireworks and a few artists from Cirque du Soleil. At 11:55 pm, everyone goes to the premises where the man will be burned. At midnight the fire starts with silence followed by applause. An incredible feeling of “we did a great job” came to my heart. Finally the last and biggest party begins, and on the next day everyone rests.
I hope to see you here next year. Let’s burn!
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