About Scorched Festival
Welcome to Scorched Festival
Scorched Festival is a Four-day burn-style art and camping festival just outside of Austin, Texas where creativity, fire, music, and radical self-expression collide. Whether you’re a seasoned Burner, a Flipside builder, or just someone looking to reconnect with community, art, and open skies, you’ll feel right at home. This isn’t a spectator event. It’s a co-created playground.
The Bear Awaits
At the heart of Scorched Festival stands our effigy a massive, hand-built wooden bear raised high and lovingly burned in ritual celebration. It’s our offering to transformation, to joy, and to the magic that happens when we gather with intention and ignite our creativity.
What You'll Experience
Interactive Art Installations
From spontaneous creativity to planned pieces, the land comes alive with expression. You’re invited to bring your own creations or simply participate in others'.
The Burn
On Saturday night (weather permitting), we set the Bear aflame in a shared moment of awe, ritual, and fire-lit energy.
Music, Fire & Flow
DJs, drum circles, fire dancers, LED spinners, and impromptu performances fill the nights with rhythm and color. Bring your props, instruments, and light.
Radical Camping Culture
Scorched Festival spans over 10 acres of private land, offering space for theme camps, art cars, chill domes, and personal sanctuaries. It’s immersive and intimate, designed for connection and collaboration.
Gate In & Out
Come and go as needed this is your space. We value freedom, participation, and mutual respect.
Why Burn Here?
Scorched Festival is built in the spirit of Burning Man, but on a regional, hands-on scale. No spectators. No VIPs. Just artists, burners, builders, dreamers, and you. It’s a place where radical inclusion and decommodified joy still thrive. You’ll get all the vibes without the dust.
Whether you’re crafting an art car, leading a theme camp, fire spinning under the stars, or discovering your next creative obsession, this is the place to do it.
Come Burn With Us
Scorched Festival is a place for connection, for reinvention, for dancing barefoot by firelight, for howling at the moon and making something wild together.
Welcome home.
Now let’s burn the Bear.
The 10 Principles of Burning Man
Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the 10 Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception.
Why Cancel Culture Has No Place at Scorched Festival
Scorched Festival is built on the values of radical inclusion, personal responsibility, and freedom of expression. We judge people by how they participate here not by rumors, online drama, or their past. We own our land, our infrastructure, and our event. That means no online mob, boycott, or political pressure can dictate how we celebrate. The fire will always burn, and the party will always go on. Cancel culture divides communities. Burn culture builds them. Learn why we stand firmly against it and how it protects our community spirit:
Read Our Full Statement →
Our Story
Scorched Festival was founded in 2018 by Josiah Ingalls in partnership with Lancelot Smith. That first year, Josiah and Lancelot brought together two vibrant worlds the burner community and the furry fandom under one creative umbrella to create a truly one-of-a-kind event.
From the very beginning, the heart of the festival has been about building bridges, celebrating radical self-expression, and forging connections that transcend traditional community lines. Josiah also invited a close friend, Red, to be part of that very first year.
Since 2018, Josiah has served as Festival Chair, guiding the event’s growth and evolution. From 2018 to 2020, Lancelot served alongside him as Co-Chair. When Lancelot stepped away after the 2020 event, Red was promoted to Co-Chair a role he still proudly holds today.
The Bear: Our Living Symbol
The effigy at our very first festival was a wooden bear, standing as a symbol of creativity, community, and transformation.
Every year since, the bear has returned always reimagined, always part of the effigy’s design. While each year’s effigy is inspired by a new theme, the bear remains our only constant.
In the same way that Burning Man burns “The Man,” Scorched Festival burns The Bear. Our themes change each year, but the spirit of the bear and what it represents lives on.
Growing the Community
Over the years, Scorched Festival has developed a unique, ever-evolving community. Every year, new people join us, contribute their creativity, and become part of something bigger than themselves.
The festival has become a creative home not just for burners, but also for friends from various communities which will always have a place here.
In 2024, Lancelot returned to the event after several years away and was welcomed back with open arms. Now, the original founders stand side-by-side once again, joined by new friends who carried the torch during his absence. Together, they are shaping the next chapter of Scorched Festival.
More Than Just a Festival
Scorched Festival is more than an event.
It’s a home.
It’s a family.
It’s a place where burners and friends alike can create, connect, and set the night sky ablaze in celebration of who we are and who we dare to become.
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