Mission, Vision and Values

Mission

SOAK’s mission is to foster opportunities for participatory art, civic engagement, and leadership development. Our organization seeks not only to build bridges between the vibrant, creative, and artistic burner community and others in the Portland metro area, but also to provide opportunities for skill-building, arts education, and leadership development. We aim to achieve this by offering participatory, decommodified, and interactive events and programs to the community.

Vision

We envision an inclusive Greater Portland and Southern Washington community that thrives on civic contribution, non-commodified participatory art and events, education, and open-source leadership development. All are welcome to participate in this community, and participants are actively encouraged and enabled to share their creative gifts, learn, and grow together.

Our Core Values

Inclusion• Accountability • Responsibility • Respect

Derived from the 10 Principles of Burning Man, these are the 10 Principles of SOAK:

Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of SOAK. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Gifting
SOAK is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Self-reliance
SOAK encourages the individual to discover, exercise, and rely on their inner resources.

Self-expression
Self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

Communal Effort
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote, and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state, and federal laws.

Leaving No Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Participation
Our community is committed to a participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

Immediacy
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.