Firefly Arts Collective is a non-profit organization that facilitates the annual New England regional burner festival 'Firefly'. Firefly is a regional event inspired by the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. Firefly is held in Vermont typically during July 4 weekend. Most of the organizers and participants come from the Boston metropolitan area and surrounding states including, but not limited to, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York.
Firefly is a camping event that celebrates art for art's sake and espouses a gift economy where no vending, sales or barter are permitted. Visual and performance artists from all over the New England region and the East Coast create a temporary community for the weekend. Participants share a wide range of talents from sculpting, painting, music, theatre, and DJing, to alternative forms of expression such as games, performance art, and circus talents such as aerial silks, juggling, and fire spinning.
The event adheres to the ten principles of the Burning Man event in Nevada. Among these are the Leave No Trace philosophy, an environmental policy whereby participants are obligated to remove every piece of refuse that they generate while at the event, taking it with them when they leave. The themes of radical self-expression and radical self-reliance are also borrowed from Burning Man.
In addition, the event is considered a "no spectators" event, meaning that all attendees are expected to actively participate in its creation, staffing, and general philosophy.
According to the event's official website Firefly is, "A celebration of self-expression and community! Firefly is a participatory arts and music gathering in the woods of Vermont." The event is organized and run completely by volunteers. On the last night of Firefly a giant wooden Firefly is burned. In 2006 the Firefly included fireworks launched from its top.
Famous quotes containing the words firefly, arts and/or collective:
“Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o’-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor firefly has shown me the causeway to it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and dote on past achievement.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.”
—John le Carré (b. 1931)