🎉 Vision Literacy PSA [Festival Template]
Help restore the Vision Commons
Happy solstice!
Exactly one year ago, alone on a mountain in Northern Sweden, I decided that if I were to have only one year left to live, I would write this book.
The Visionary’s Ways is based on a recurring Vision of standing outside of places of Vision (like a meditation hall, retreat center, festival), and handing starry-eyed visionaries something tangible on their way out that would help to ground, integrate, and orient them in a good way.
Clarifying what I mean with some of these words and phrases:
Vision (with a capital V)
An embodied experience of sensing a potential, that is uniquely designed to help us grow.Vision Stage
The period between the arrival of Vision and its first expression to the world.Vision Literacy
The knowledge and capacity to receive, discern, and enact Visions intentionally.Vision Commons
The collective cultural infrastructure through which Visions are held.
A few weeks after I came down the mountain, I felt inspired to start the book journey by creating a simple flyer version to bring as a gift to The Borderland (regional Burn in Sweden).
I whipped up an MVP of suggestions and set about distributing it at the festival. Taped to port-a-potties, handed out to more transformation looking camps, kept some in my bag for when I met someone who needed it, and dropped others in completely random places. The joyful experience and excellent feedback encouraged me to embark on the writing path I’ve been on since.
Since then I’ve been progressing the book, while also making multiple booklets (tech conference, Jewish festival, retreat center), and a number of flyers for various events I’ve attended.
It has been delightful to show up with something physical that starts a conversation (people seem to be responding favorably to print these days). To go through the process of translating ideas and aesthetics for different audiences. To hear weeks later that somebody stumbled upon it and has been thinking about it ever since.
Template to Make Your Own
This summer I’m not certain if I’ll be attending any festivals, conferences, or retreats (except ours in Shasta in Sept!), but I imagine some of you might be (or people you know)! I want to offer a template that you can feel free to run with.
Put your own spin on it. Integrate the design aesthetic and language of the event you’re going to. Write your own suggestions. Play with the size and shape. Nix or replace School of Wise Innovation at the bottom (especially if de-commodification is a festival value). Ask Claude for advice if you get stuck.
I usually print 50 to 100. Local print shop charge ~ 25 cents a page. Make sure to buy some scotch tape. Share digital copies in event groups.
Restoring The Vision Commons
Vision is not merely personal. In my worldview, it’s Earth’s immune system speaking through individual humans. The planet’s impulse toward health and wholeness finding expression in whoever is open enough to receive it.
Collectively, these transmissions form a commons: a shared resource that belongs to no one and everyone, and whose health determines the quality of what gets created.
Like any commons, it can be tended or degraded. It’s currently being degraded. Contemporary culture around Vision is extractive. The headwaters are polluted.
Restoring the Vision Commons means cultivating fertile conditions under which Vision can be received, integrated, and enacted wisely.
Especially at sites of mass visionary experience, like transformational festivals attended by founders and changemakers with greater capacity to enact what they see. Including all the regional burns, Envision, Boom, Medicine Festival, Lightning in a Bottle, Lucidity and so on. It’s frankly a matter of harm reduction.
Get in touch if you’d like to collaborate with me on a larger Burning Man booklet.
If we can meet more people at this delicate Vision Stage when they are highly neuroplastic, and elegantly offer compelling mindset shifts and practices, then we can start to shift the culture of what gets created and how.
Please let me know if you use the template. I am here to offer light feedback and ideas.
And if you feel moved to support commons restoration outside of festivals, you can reserve a copy of the book today.
Warmly,
Andrew
I’m so honored I got to hold the first draft of the workbook in my hands! I can’t wait to join others with you and move through the visionary’s ways together.