HullabalU is an all-ages event that upholds the ideals of the Burning Man Festival. It is a time when burners old and new can gather to discuss the burn season, make plans for future gatherings, and have a crazy good time with their burner family. Come celebrate with Midwest Burners and many, many others as we extend this social phenomenon into America's Heartland!
Haven't been to Burning Man? No worries! Many Midwest Burners have never been to Burning Man but are drawn to it because of the close friendships and spontaneous culture it produces. HullabalU has a very laid-back atmosphere that allows you to really get to know us. If you want to get a feel for the community ahead of time, please join our yahoo group and introduce yourself.
To become a member of Midwest Burners, register at our Membership & Event Registration site.
Midwest Burners is a Burning Man-inspired organization. As such, we strive to uphold our understanding of the 10 Principles.
- Radical Inclusion
- Anyone who desires to pursue this Association's values and purposes is welcome to participate. A person does not have to know a member of this Association or be from the Midwestern United States in order to join this Association. We do not discriminate on the basis of gender, sexual preference, race, or religion.
- Leave No Trace
- We want to leave the environment, where we gather, in the same or better condition than when we arrived.
- Radical Self-Expression
- We believe in the freedom of each individual to express him or herself as that person sees fit. Self-expression is the essence of art. Self-expression is a gift to the community and is a part of our gift culture. The giver should keep this social context in mind and respect the rights and liberties of the recipients.
- Personal Responsibility and Self Sufficiency
- Personal freedom and happiness starts with the individual. We are committed to a Do-It-Yourself mind-set. The individual is primarily responsible for creating and maintaining his or her own reality.
- Participation
- Individual and communal happiness are achieved through personal participation. Our community is only as great and enjoyable as each person makes it. Participation is the Do-It-Yourself mind-set applied to the social realm. Everyone is welcome to work and play.
- Communal Effort
- We constantly work to improve and enrich our interaction with each other. We build and maintain an environment of creative cooperation and collaboration.
- Gift Culture
- We reject any form of commerce during our events. We focus instead on gift giving, which does not require a gift in return.
- Decommodification
- We are participants rather than consumers. Thus, we bar commercial sponsorships, transactions, and advertising from our social gatherings.
- Civic Responsibility
- While we value individual freedom, we realize that it exists within the context of society. Each member is responsible for the impact of his or her actions on the Association and society in general. We strive to avoid harming each other and to operate our events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
- Immediacy
- We seek immediate experience of ourselves, each other, society, and the cosmos. We attempt to remove barriers to this experience. The pursuit of immediate experience underlies all of our other values and objectives.
Earth Guardians
The Earth Guardians spearhead our Leave No Trace efforts. This includes recycling, education, MOOP prevention, MOOP collection, and taking charge of the lost & found.
HullabalU Recycling
Recycling conserves our limited resources, reduces the amount of CO2 we put in the air, and is an important part of Leaving No Trace.
You may drop recycling off at the Earth Guardian station at any time. Please be self-sufficient and place your sorted recyclables into the proper containers at the Earth Guardians Station.
The Earth Guardians will accept plastics (#1-7) and aluminum cans. The plastic and cans can go into the same bag (stop by the Earth Guardian station if you need recycling bags), but please keep the trash out. Someone has to go through and pick any trash out of the recyclables unless you are proactive and keep it separate in the first place.
The Earth Guardians can provide you with trash bags of various sizes and toughness to handle your own camp's trash collection or recycling efforts. We will also have some pill bottles and other pocket sized containers for cigarette butts.
Lost And Found
The Earth Guardians Station is also home to Lost And Found. If you find any item that appears to be separated from its owner, take it to the Earth Guardians Station. Earth Guardians have a storage area for all Found items. Valuable items such as cell phones, wallets, fire tools, etc. will be locked in a secure box until claimed. There is also a bulletin board for posting items you have lost and your preferred method of contact.
Post event, unclaimed Found items are inventoried. If you are missing something at the end of the event, please leave your information with the Earth Guardians so they can contact you if your item turns up. Don't lose hope. Things are often found long after the event is over.
Disclaimer: Items specifically like unopened cans of beer, bacon anything, and stuffed animals will be immediately confiscated by the TLA. Items such as dirty socks, torn undies, and toothbrushes will not be inventoried will be discarded. After an undetermined, but reasonable amount of time and effort to match the Founds with the Losts, unclaimed items in good shape will be cleaned and donated to charity.
The Giving Tree: Gifting And Gift Recycling
Somewhere near the Earth Guardians Station grows a giving tree. Inspired by childhood diversions and the innate desire to share, the Giving Tree has become a meeting place for these ideas and promotes re-purposing of things we no longer have a use for. It's a place where you can both give and receive everything from clothing and skill toys to canned food and batteries. Leave something. Take Something.
Please Note: In the event of rain or high winds, the items will be moved to inside the Earth Guardians Shelter.
The Butt Project
SAVE AND DONATE THOSE MINT TINS!
Have a thing for Altoids? Save those empties. Like the Green Tea Mints from Trader Joes? Save those empties.
We prefer the tins because they are cute, flat and fit well into pockets. But we also accept other very small closed containers, such as used prescription bottles (without the labels).
Hand painted/decorated ones are a BONUS if you feel like being creative! (And people are more likely to keep them.)
When you get to HullabalU, you can drop them off at the Front Gate if you are so inclined, or bring them to the Earth Guardians Station.
Earth Guardians' Tips
- * PLAN. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES put your trash bags in the neighbors' trash on your way home. We are guests in this area and want to maintain a good relationship with the neighbors. Dumping your trash in the neighborhood is very unfriendly and can endanger the existence of HullabalU.
- * PREPARE. Plan your packing with trash hauling in mind. Make sure you have room for your trash. Consider using 5 gallon buckets with lids for carrying stinky wet trash in cars.
- * REDUCE. First before your buy something, ask yourself whether you really need it. When you do purchase supplies, buy in bulk to reduce packaging and your expenses. Strip your gear and food of all unnecessary excess packaging BEFORE coming to HullabalU, to reduce your trash load. Burn non-toxic and paper trash.
- * REUSE. Reusable cups, personal water bottles/canteens, camel baks, and large refillable water containers are much easier on the environment and your trash load than disposable cups and plastic water bottles. If you're running a bar camp, consider making people be self-sufficient and bring their own cups or make nice HullabalU gift cups that people won't want to throw away. The same goes for reusable dinnerware vs. disposable dinnerware. If you must use disposable dishes, use paper products that you can burn to reduce your trash load.
- * RECYCLE. Check out the items above that the Earth Guardians will take for recycling. You can further reduce your trash by keeping these items separate from your trash and giving them to the Earth Guardians. Do NOT throw metal and glass into fire circles. The Leisure Army will come beat you with their shovels and full cans of warm PBR. You will feel shame.
- * When planning the drinks you're going to bring, please remember: cans are better than bottles. Cans can be crushed to take up less space in your recycling bag and they weigh far less than bottles when empty. Also, bottles can break. Broken glass is a real danger and an accident waiting to happen.
- * Never let your trash hit the ground.
- * Clean up your camp throughout the event, so there's not a huge mess to clean up when you're tired and want to go home. Make yourself the Earth Guardian for your camp and lead your campmates in camp LNT efforts.
- * Use tarps and large pieces of carpet or rug as ground cover in common areas of your Theme Camp. Roll it up carefully after HullabalU to catch all of the tiny MOOP in one fell swoop.
- * Did you know that bottles, bottle caps, and cigarette butts are the most common MOOP found? Bring portable containers to put your butts in, like empty prescription bottles, Altoid tins, or in an emergency, empty beer bottles. Drop your bottle caps in your pocket for recycling later. Empty plastic bottles should be taken back to the recycling bag at your camp or the Earth Guardians Station.
- * Think about your costumes as you create them. You want to avoid costumes with loose things attached to them like boa feathers. You don't want your fabulous costume to be a walking MOOP machine! Leave your feather boa at home and bring fur boas instead!
- * Do not discharge wastes, pesticides, herbicides or other agents to repel insects or kill noxious weeds. The only exception is trace run off from your body of insect repellants. Consider buying organic bug repellants usually sold at your local health food store.
- * If it didn't come from your body, don't put it in the potty. Anything but toilet paper, body fluids, and sawdust will hinder the composting toilets.
- * After the event we must return the land to it's original condition. So do not discard anything that does not occur naturally in the Ozarks, including biodegradable trash like fruit rinds.
- * Consider using rechargeable batteries, battery powered glow sticks, and LED rope or Christmas lights to sustainably light up your experience and save energy so you can have a smaller power source.
- * Consider purchasing carbon offsets to cover the carbon you produce traveling to HullabalU. You can easily calculate your carbon footprint and purchase offsets cheaply and quickly online through a variety of companies.