New-ish to Burning Man? Black Rock City is built and managed by every person who comes to the event — that means YOU! Read on to meet Black Rock City volunteers whose on-playa work is ideally suited to first- or second-year Burners. To get involved, create a Burner Profile, fill out the Volunteer Questionnaire in your profile and select the volunteer teams that spark your curiosity! Jump to our Volunteering page to learn about all Black Rock City’s volunteer teams.
A dust storm.
A tent.
The ninja kindness of strangers.
A constellation of small playa moments signaled the connections that would shape Jonathan Penn’s first year as a Lamplighter.
In 2024, after reading all things Burning Man, Jonathan and his wife decided volunteering had to be part of their first playa foray. A self-proclaimed sucker for traditions and rituals, Jonathan, who goes by HardHat on playa, thought the Lamplighters team would be his jam and their village would make a good playa home.
What he found was family.
“We arrived in the middle of a sandstorm. The sun was going down, and I’d never put up our rental tent. It was not gonna be fun. Then, two guys on either side of us were like: ‘We got you’, and they put up the tent and were gone before I could even say thank you,” Jonathan says.
“And every time we turned around, there was some other amazing gesture of family and kindness from people we’d known for 36 hours.”
Once he hit Black Rock City’s streets as a Lamplighter, he continued to be moved by his interactions with people: “There were people lining the route, cheering for us, and just getting fully immersed in the ritual.”
Lighting Up
Each night of the Burn, around 140 Lamplighters take part in the ritualistic pageantry of hanging 700 kerosene lamps across the city. Around 50 participants are Lamplighter villagers; the rest are BRC citizens who put their hands up to help.
They don robes with flame-licked hems, shoulder yokes strung with lanterns, and slowly — almost meditatively — walk in procession down six city routes. On Burn Night, they help light the Man from El Diabla, the Center Camp cauldron.
It was here that Jonathan experienced one of his most memorable moments. The closet-thespian had just nervously delivered his first cauldron invocation, a prayer that kicks off the city’s ritual illumination, when he was approached by a long-time Burner who had returned to playa after a five-year hiatus.
She was crying.
“She said to me: ‘I was freaking out because it wasn’t the same, and I didn’t know if it was still right for me to be here. Then I heard you give the invocation and it reminded me that traditions are still here, and I just have to find them’,” says Jonathan.
“She’s telling me this while tears are streaming down her face and she’s profusely thanking me. Then I’m crying, and we give each other this huge hug, she rides off, and I’m like: What just happened!?”
To become a Lamplighter in Black Rock City 2026, create a Burner Profile, fill out the Volunteer Questionnaire, and select Lamplighters as your preferred team.
The Potency of Moments
You can’t spit without hitting a Burner who has had one of these strangely potent moments from gifting their time on playa.
These moments help explain why every participant in Black Rock City helps raise, run, color in, and return the city to dust each year. Gifting, Participation, Communal Effort, and Leaving No Trace are the lifeblood of Black Rock City’s epic, annual barn-raising. Participants build the city, manage its services, create awe-inspiring art, organize and build theme camps and gatherings, and gift their time and talents to create a shared experience far bigger than any one person could imagine alone.
“The moments you have and the connections you make in Black Rock City are hard to define or quantify. I feel like I’m being given so much by the Burn, I’ve got to give back as much as I can,” says Jonathan, who also volunteers as a Temple Guardian.
Moreover, his volunteering experience has trickled back into his day-to-day life.
“Burning Man at large, and volunteering with Lamplighters specifically, has restored some of my faith that there are still lots of good people out there who want to do good things and who aren’t just in it for themselves. I think we need volunteering and that community service and spirit beyond Black Rock City, now more than ever,” Jonathan says.
The Joy of Service
For Julie Starr, known in Black Rock City as VegasQueen, the “joy of service” was a no-brainer when she first came to playa.
“Being of service has always been a big part of my life, so it was just natural to bring volunteering into my experience of Burning Man. My father’s a rabbi and my mother’s a therapist, so I grew up volunteering. Jews call it tzedakah: it’s just good deeds,” she says.
Julie first dipped her toe in playa life in 2013 after some encouragement from new Burner friends in Vegas. Despite an aversion to any sort of camping that didn’t involve a cabin with electricity and running water, she took to playa life like a jackrabbit to dust. She started volunteering in her second year.
The newly-minted Burner loved her shifts with Arctica and Center Camp Café. But it was the Greeters team, “their amazing humans,” and the gifting of experiences that stole her heart.
“You have the opportunity to set the tone for this amazing journey that some people have done 20 times but others may only do once. And it’s just such an honor and privilege to be able to welcome people into the city,” she says.
Each year, approximately 500 people join the Greeters’ ranks to help people transition from the default world into the liminal space of the playa. They orient participants with maps, guides and hugs, and initiate Burgins with well-loved rituals such as dust angels and bell ringing. (They’re also the soft ‘n cuddly yin to the Gate team’s crustier yang — but more on Gate in an upcoming Journal post.)
Like Jonathan, Julie’s Greeters experience has created chosen family and rippled out from the playa.
“One of the things that I love about the Burning Man community is it fosters intergenerational relationships in a way that the default world does not: I have friends who are 90 and friends who are 17. I have also become a better person and leader because of my volunteering experience,” says the now volunteer Greeters Project Manager, who also supports other volunteer teams year round.
Walk-On Teams and Top Tips
Arctica, Census, Earth Guardians, Greeters, and Lamplighters are some of the teams that are particularly easy for first-time volunteers to join, both pre-playa and once you arrive.
“We love when you plan — because we have to fill our shifts — but if you’re on playa and think, ‘I just want to help today’, you can walk up to Greeters, Lamplighters and Arctica and be a volunteer in five minutes,” says Julie.
For those considering volunteering for the first time, she also has a formula for working out where to land: “If you can find the intersection between availability, ability, and interest, then you’re going to be happy, and that’s the most important thing.”
Not the cuddly, lamp-lighting, ice-wielding type? No problem.
Volunteering comes in all shapes and sizes to suit all skills, ages, and energy. Ultimately, however you choose to show up, your participation helps create something greater than the sum total of its parts — and a little bit magic.
“All of us are co-creating magic,” Julie says,” whether we’re with Greeters, or running a theme camp, or bringing an art car, or doing performance art. And without all of the people creating all that magic, Burning Man would not exist.
To get involved, learn about Volunteer teams here. Then create a Burner Profile, fill out the Volunteer Questionnaire, and select the teams that you’re interested in joining!
