Once a year a city rises from the African dust – only it’s not a city, it’s an experiment, a cultural laboratory and an incubator of ideas. This laboratory isn’t reserved for academics alone – since 2007, the blank canvas that is Tankwa Town has offered a space to anyone that wishes to experiment, tinker, play or explore.  

This year’s theme - Afroboratory - invites you to embrace the notion that what we co-create in the desert is an experiment. What do you want to achieve – and how are you going to achieve it? Do you want to find better ways of being, and doing? Are you interested in exploring new frontiers in electronics, sound or light? Are you an amateur pioneer in pyrotechnics, art or kinetic sculpture? Got a hankering to tinker with gastronomical chemistry, strange & unusual physics or esoteric psychology? This is the place to do it. Your ideas, your innovations and experimentation are a rich tapestry - bring them to the desert, and add them to our desert's African laboratory.

This experiment you're embarking on is not a party, or a music festival – it’s an extreme experience that will exhaust you, get you dusty and dirty and take you way out of your comfort zone. But in the process you’ll have experiences that you cannot have anywhere else. You’ll discover parts of yourself and strengths (and weaknesses) that you never knew existed. It will test you, but also reward you. It’s an experience like no other that gives back as much as you put in.

To become a builder of this city, all you need to do is step up and start planning your participation. To understand the ethos that underpins it all, read about the 11 principles, and click the links below for practical and philosophical info & tips.

Finally... as announced in mid-October, this year will be the last time Tankwa Town rises at Stonehenge Private Reserve, the location that AfrikaBurn has called home since 2007. In 2021, Tankwa Town will rise from the dust of its new home at Quaggafontein Farm - also in the Tankwa Karoo.

We look forward to gathering once again with you as we bid farewell to our beloved Stoney, and look toward new horizons. 

Recommended reading:

- Prepare for the desert (and definitely read the survival guide)

- Ticket and gate information

- Ways to participate

- Join a project or find a camp

- Read more about the theme here.