FAQs 2 — CAMP Festival | July 5-8, 2024 | Camp Ramblewood, MD (2024)

your questions are likely answered here. Some may be in a different section to what you may assume, so please check thoroughly.

Contents

• Camp Ramblewood, located at 2564 Silver Rd, Darlington, MD 21034.

• The gate will be open for entry from Friday 12pm, July 5th, 2024. We also kindly ask everyone to gtfo by 2pm on July 8th unless they plan to help break down :-p

• It’s an easy 3-hour drive south of NYC, 60 minutes from Philly, 90 minutes from DC. There’s onsite parking (parking pass required), which is a few minutes walk from cabins and tenting areas. A bus will be leaving Brooklyn on the morning of the festival as well (more info coming soon). Grab a bus ticket on the ticketing page. There’s a community ride sharing option here.

Essential info

• Entry to the event and all the epic, weird, and wonderful programming, and land to pitch a tent with plenty of shade. If you'd like a sleeping upgrade, book a cabin. Options for food and transportation are not included.

• Nope. Everyone needs to buy a ticket.

• Whilst we believe that children are the future of community, only children under 5 are allowed on site and have free entry! Anyone else must be 21 and over.

• The name on the ticket must match the name on the ID of the person who shows up at the event. To transfer your ticket, follow this easy 2-minute process, click here.

• It’s very important to us that we know who’s on site so we can all be safer and more accountable to one another. Read more here.

• Somewhere in the neighborhood of 850 magical creators, performers, contributors, and a bunch of your new best friends.

• Unfortunately not, but you can always sell your ticket (see info above).

• Unfortunately, not quite yet. We’re just getting off the ground and can barely support the event itself. However, plans for this are in the works. But there are many different ways to volunteer for discounted or free tickets.

Ticket related things

• Yes! Everyone is welcome and even encouraged to BYO food and cooking equipment (fire must stay above ground, so BBQs or gas cookers only please). Ice will be available for $6/bag to keep your perishables in coolers.

• There will likely be food vendors, as well as a meal plan available for purchase on our ticketing site, including 5 tasty, nutritious meals served at the dining hall.

  Meals will each last two hours, so there will be plenty of time for you to get served at your leisure. All meals include substantial gluten-free and vegan options.

  Sample dinner: chicken shawarma, mushroom shawarma (for vegetarians/vegans), pita, 2 types of hummus, falafel, tabboleh w feta/mint/tomato/onion, Israeli salad, toppings bar with pickled veg and sauces, dessert.

• Nope. For several reasons.

  1. Charging crazy amounts for alcohol rather than allowing people to bring their own feels unfair. We could really use the amazing revenue of a bar but we believe it gets in the way of many of our values — community, participation, gifting, play, and creative self expression.

  2. CAMP has multiple spaces activated with free alcohol 🥳 in exchange for participation, and similarly, we strongly encourage people to create fun, silly activations which can include the gift of booze if they desire.

  3.It’s a safety issue. According to tons of anecdotal evidence as well as research that was probably done by someone somewhere at some point, alcohol is responsible for more stupid-ass behavior, dehydration, contraindications, and trips to the medics than just about everything else combined. So while we know selling all-you-can-drink-if-you-got-the-money poolside margaritas and forest-side craft co*cktails would be great for our finances, we’re also trying to avoid people getting completely sh*tfaced. No judgment–we drink too–we just want you to be safe and watch your intake!

• Yes! Consume responsibly and don’t be the person that needs a babysitter. No glass bottles allowed anywhere onsite!

• There are water spigots with delicious, safe, drinkable water throughout the venue. The same water comes out of all bathroom faucets. Bring a bottle or cup!

Food & drink

• Oh yes you can. We really, really need you to. We’re asking that everyone contribute a 2-hour shift as community service.

  You can also volunteer in exchange for a cheaper/free ticket. Please, please, please do so here. There are lots of different opportunities.

• Yes please! Simply hit this link.

• Unfortunately, no. See reasons in the music section below.

• Yup! Right here. We want to hear your proposal because depending on what you do, you may want to be in more or less public areas and we can help create the best situation on site.

• We love our artisan friends and we would love to support them. But ultimately, we believe vending can get in the way of gifting and participation (check out our values), and we hope there are other ways for these folks to share their gifts.

Getting involved

• Dust off your Burning Man tent and pitch it in the camping zone, or secure yourself a spot in a cabin and sleep on a twin bed (BYO bedding) in a shared cabin. Don't worry, they're not bunk beds).

  Cabins range between 7 and 13 people. There are also tiny private cabins and glamping tents available.

• All cabins have their own bathrooms with showers. Some are completely private while others are semi-private (meaning they may be connected to another cabin).

• There’s a block of cabins (G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N) that have many public toilets and showers you can use. These are the ONLY bathrooms for campers, but there are plenty of them. You can also rinse off in the showers by the pool, but these close when the pool closes.

• They’re lush and come with all sorts of lovely things. They more or less look like this.

Accommodation & CAmping

• Every vehicle will require a parking pass. RVs will need an RV pass. All purchased on the ticketing page.

• Totally fine, but all vehicles will be in the parking lot, about 2 - 6 minutes from where the action is, depending on where the action happens to be in that moment. RVs require an RV pass on our ticketing page.

• Reentry is not allowed from Friday night July 5 at 10pm, until Camp is over. Plan accordingly and make sure you have everything you need!

• The short answer is: figure out a way to make it during gate hours.

Parking & Entry

• It’s all here on our sparkly packing list.

• We have a community lead team who looks after safety planning pre-event, safety volunteers during CAMP, and escalation for violations. To protect each other and ourselves, we will not tolerate non-consensual touch, conversation, harassment, or behavior that is racist, sexist, hom*ophobic, transphobic, or discriminatory in any way. You can find our entire policy here.

  If you need to fill in an incident report (anonymous is fine) click here.

• You cannot. Sloths find them way too scary.

• Unfortunately as a venue rule, no animals can be onsite. Only party animals are welcome!

• In a nutshell, no. But many of you will have some sort of standard (but not very strong) LTE/5G connection.

• If you're attending, it's very possible that a photo of you may end up in the public realm.

• The short answer is, please keep your pants on and use your discretion. Anything overtly sexual or non PG13ish shouldn’t be in public. #notasexparty

• For now, in line with regional mandates, we’re not asking for tests upon entry. If there’s a change in the covid situation, we’ll update you all.

• Unfortunately there’s a not-so-friendly snapping turtle in the lake that may think your toes are food. Swimming in the lake is not allowed.

• We’re excited to collaborate with Sonic Jungle/Gaia Nomaya, Lightning Society, Deep Playa, Pew Pew, #NotASexParty, Junxion, 57, and Butt Disco, with more announcements to come! If your community would like to get involved, please reach out!

• Yes! At the info booth on the main field, just across from cabin 1 and 2.

General things you may wanna know

• here 2023 we had more than 50 DJs perform, and we’ll likely have at least that many in 2024. If you’re interested in DJing, fill this form out and we’ll get back to you!

• Stage programming is divided among the CAMP music team and a few collaborators who program stage takeovers. The music team’s programming choices are based on: experience, musical selection, skill, range, and ensuring a variety of genres play throughout the weekend. Also taken into substantial consideration is the relationship with CAMP - that is to say, DJs who have played amazing sets at CAMP events in the past, shown they can read a crowd, donated substantial time in the past, been a pleasure to work with, and have shown flexibility and support throughout the production process. In general, stage takeovers are mostly autonomous, as long as there is always a variety of musical genres at any given moment across the festival.

• Yes! We would love to collaborate with more live musicians. Please fill out this form and we’ll get back to you.

• Sorry, but stage takeovers are a difficult thing to plan and generally reserved for CAMP collaborative communities. But we invite you to apply to DJ through the survey.

• A few reasons. For starters, keeping the noise to reasonable decibels is a real battle. It takes a lot of effort for us to avoid the wrath of the police and keep a mutually respectful relationship with Camp Ramblewood. Second, we strongly believe in curation. Too many stages means both bad trip-inducing sound bleed and a dispersion of energy, resulting in a lot of empty dance floors and nights spent wandering from place to place chasing the dragon. We want the DJs that are on the schedule to feel fully supported by always having a Goldilocks amount of people at their stage.

• We hear you, and wish there was space to include everyone in this way, but it only makes sense to have a certain number of stages. There are so many other ways to contribute. Reach out with an idea and we’re happy to brainstorm/support you in any way we can to help make it happen. Read the next question to see just a few awesome ways groups got together to contribute last year.

Music and DJ related Things

• We love any sort of creative expression—from performances to large scale art to costuming to character roles to elaborate comedic bits to pranks and hijinks (that aren’t mean to people).

  Examples of some of our favorite curated experiences from last year:

  The Burlesque performances at The Circus Tent. The Greek Taverna that played traditional Greek music and served all kinds of grilled delights. Everyone who role-played at The Saloon and The Red Light District. The Yoni Temple. The Kinkathlon (which is basically what it sounds like). The cake fight at the annual Summer Camp Games. Nude line drawing.

  Examples of some of our favorite surprise experiences people randomly created last year:

  Forest fairies who grabbed people on the dance floor for a surprise sensorial massage experience. 2 am grilled cheese brigade. The cows serving boozy milkshakes at Déjà Moo. The group who busted into The Saloon for a laser gun stickup.

  Basically, we’re huge fans of anything that is roaming or adds to an already existent space as opposed to requiring its own space.

  Examples of what we’d like to see more of:

  Free-standing art installations, immersive art, and creative shenanigans and mischief of all sorts.

  Examples of things we will definitely say no to:

  Renegade sound systems/music spaces of any size.

  Anything that requires amplified sound. That includes anything beyond one small bluetooth speaker in your own cabin.

  Any sort of space for more than 50 people (we will likely say no to any space for larger than 25 people).

• We strive to create portals: worlds that transport participants outside of their default environment, and inspire experimentation and evolution. While we are open to giving grants for art that is purely aesthetically awe-inspiring, we give preference to immersive art— art created not just for viewing, but for interacting, and art that perpetually changes depending on the way participants interact with it at any given time.

• Currently we have about $13,000 set aside specifically for art grants. If enough people buy tickets by the end of April, that will allow us to significantly increase that budget. Otherwise, we simply don’t have the capital. Donations also help us tremendously in bringing more art to CAMP.

• You can click on this link here.

• Generally speaking, between $100 and $1,000, and in some cases, one or two comp tickets. If our grant budget increases due to donations or people not waiting until late in the game to buy tickets, that number could increase. Please do not send us proposals for projects that cost $5,000. It takes a lot of time to review proposals, and there is simply no world in which we can afford that quite yet.

• If we love your idea and it’s simply a matter of budget, we can try to help you think through ways to reduce the scope of the project to fit the size of the grant. Otherwise, we invite you to crowdfund. If we really love the project, we might try to help you crowdfund by featuring it in our social media, emails, and/or website.

• Our design team reviews all decisions and decides based on the following factors: interactivity, originality, budget, past experience, past relationship, ease of execution, and environmental sustainability. Generally, people who have proven they can execute on smaller projects in the past have a larger likelihood of getting grants for larger projects (our design co-lead had literally no design or art experience 5 years ago, and began by volunteering in small ways at our events). We also save a certain number of smaller grants for virgin artists, as it’s important for us that CAMP is a platform for people to test their creative edges and step into a new reality.

• Because the large majority of attendees are also contributing to the experience in a very meaningful way, we simply cannot afford to give comp tickets to most participants. The majority of comp tickets go to volunteers who sacrifice many hours during the event, or the build crew (who work roughly four 16-hour days to make CAMP possible). How that applies to artists: if your project requires a massive amount of work beforehand, and/or for you to come several days before CAMP to create your art on site, there’s a much better chance at getting a comp.

• Absolutely! We encourage everyone to bring art and co-create and/or participate creatively.

• That depends. Under the following conditions you need approval:

  — Anything with a footprint larger than 5x5.

  — Anything that draws power from CAMP.

  — Any space where people gather.

  — Anything that might be considered sexual or controversial.

  — Any space that requires amplified sound/renegade sound stages is an automatic no, so please don’t ask (We may allow ambient sound).

  If your gift doesn’t fall into any of the above, then go nuts! That said, we’d still love to hear about what you’re planning to contribute if you’re open to sharing, so we can potentially offer support, ideas, or helpful resources.

• For starters, so that we can give you optimal placement. Also, because while we love creative spaces and activations, we are also a relatively small festival. We want to make sure we don’t have gathering spaces so large that energy becomes too widely dispersed. We also want to avoid having four tea lounges, three yoni temples, or 30 bars. A festival of this size simply can’t support too much of a good thing. We believe having too many activated spaces actually takes away from the experience, because everywhere starts feeling empty and non-participatory. We’d rather connect the tea lovers and yoni worshippers with their fellow appreciators to join forces, or help them to think of a new way to participate.

• Wahoo!! Please come make art. Just fill out this survey and we’ll do our best to connect you with artists who need help.

Art & art grants