Welcome to BRC UniverseCity

(Image is not an accurate representation of BRC UniverseCity. The actual campus is FAR more dusty.)

AN INSTITUTE OF HIGHER (un)LEARNING

Welcome to UniverseCity, the prestigious Black Rock City College of Arts and Sciences. Our accredited program issues diplomas on any subject matter, however imaginary. These range from the fictional and unlikely to major changes in life direction. Join us on campus and register at the Admissions Office to receive your Letter of Acceptance. Attend New Student Orientation activities, come relax in our verdant Quad, take in lectures of questionable accuracy, gaze into our night time Planetarium. We grant diplomas recognizing unique contributions to your field of study during a personalized graduation ceremony. We are a family-friendly camp, welcome all burners to our campus and encourage participation in launching your self-declared education.

Earn a Degree

Visit the Planetarium

Relax in the Quad

Make New Friends

(Disclaimer: Your actual experience will look absolutely NOTHING like most of the images on this website. Don’t say we didn’t warn you…)

ADMISSIONS

Our attorneys have advised us to admit to nothing.

That said, our inclusive environment welcomes all burners into our UniverseCity to declare their interests in an accreditation of their choice. After a stringently non-rigorous application process, our camp celebrates your acceptance to the exclusively inclusive UniverseCity. A career and diploma of your choosing await! After you are cleared by Admissions, proceed to the quad for Orientation. Having reviewed your transcript, we note abundant life experiences for which we offer space credits that you can put toward your degree. Note that we might include that questionable but surprisingly educational thing you did last summer. Be an active participant in your, or someone else’s education!

Our orientation sessions are highly engaging, of variable content, and low on specifics. We welcome all ideas and support requests as long as they enable inclusion. We encourage diversity of thought. Our (improvisational) activities are founded on open-ended and non-bias questions. Admissions offers newly enrolled students a personalized Letter of Acceptance. We honor pronoun preference.

CLASSES

UniverseCity offers an extensive curriculum of educational (or whatever) and highly entertaining activities as well as courses of deeply questionable value. Most importantly, no matter what path your education takes you on, you will be awarded a diploma for your efforts. In fact, you may be awarded a diploma for no effort whatsoever given sufficient coaxing or bribery consistent with org principles.

 

  • Lectures offered by adult and pre-adult professors in Sciences, Art, Entertaining Lies People Like Me Tell, Marginally Interpretive Dance, Theater, Cheerleading, Animating Objects by Running into Them or topics proposed/demanded to meet during “absent professor” class time.
  • On-demand graduation ceremonies in which graduates specify their area of expertise. Example diplomas may include: graduating from toxic relationships; stale playa names; death of a loved one or “that thing I did in a pile of naked humans last night.”
  • Master degrees can be earned by performing specific tasks or having experiences throughout the week which are aligned with the degree you designed and launched during our admissions process. Advisors are available on campus to support you in developing your curriculum towards your desired degree.
  • “Study abroad” colleagues are welcomed. What lessons did you learn from far away, exotic camps? Are you a transfer student from our ancestral camp, with tales of adventure to share?

CAMPUS

When you walk near our camp you are beckoned in by our alluring ivy covered columns, friendly and energetic admissions personnel who will greet (OK, recruit) from the street. Enter through the columns to our shady green quad where you can lounge with your community, pursue postings on the bulletin board, or proceed on to one of our campus facilities. Housed in good old sturdy car ports, you will find our office of admissions, lecture hall, lie-brary and art gallery. Toward the center of our public space is our planetarium (a light-proof hexayurt), complete with star projectors and space for relaxing anytime. If you have knowledge to share, come on down and take a turn behind our podium of pedagogy. Each space is designed to support spontaneous interactions with passers-by (new enrollees) as well as host our various activities throughout the week.

All ages are welcome and child care is available during classes, but please take your children, not ours, with you when you leave.

HISTORY

UniverseCity is a recently founded 200 year old institution. Founded primarily by previous members of the different iterations of Bob (Bob’s Rainforest, Buhpartment of Buhfense and Cult of Bob), our faculty have a long and varied collective history at Burning Man. Our esteemed colleagues have built theme camps, art installations, mutant vehicles, Temple build, Antarctica, run mobile build crews, been greeters, worked on the Artery Operations team, and much more.

UniverseCity differs from our previous camps in some major ways:

  1. This camp is explicitly family friendly. We make space for, and celebrate, children as well as the diversity of playa experiences that children can provide.
  2. Previously (as Bob’s Rainforest, Buhpartment of Buhfense and Cult of Bob), we created spontaneous, unscheduled and variably-themed interactions with passers-by. Here, we apply a new and coherent theme to all activities. In other words, we offer a newly coherent identity.
  3. Earlier interactivity offered an assumed and playful “jerk” persona that used its shock value to drive immediacy. With UniverseCity, we instead bring absurdist humor that supports and accepts a wider variety of identities and experiences.