Community Lab Camp - is a three-month immersion at Mars College, in the
California desert near Bombay Beach. Our camp will be researching what it
means to be an “organismic being”.
Mars College is a three-month, learning focused, Burning Man–inspired
container. Participants — Martians — organize into different camps, each
with its own focus and culture, building a temporary village together
from the ground up and sharing skills, workshops, and events across camps
throughout the season.
02Our camp at Mars
To explore an intentional co-created organismic consciousness
Within Mars, we form a camp called Community Lab, focused on researching
“coherent community” — a group “state” where a collection of individuals
become “a communal being” while remaining deeply connected to themselves.
We research this through intensive, immersive experiences that develop
awareness and connection: personal, relational, and with the land.
Our methods for building coherant community:
1
Immersions
4 day experiences lead by one of our camp members that bring us into connection with each other, ourselves and the earth.
2
Governance structure
We will use the method of sociocracy to support the group in sharing responsibility and making thoughtful decisions while listening to the needs of each individual.
3
Relational Practices and Conflict Resolution
We as a group will have continuous group time where we can emotionally clear with one another to create emotional intimacy, transparency and build trust.
4
A coherent value system
Which includes self responsibility, self reflection, and a willingness to be vulnerable.
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Many more.
04Our rhythm
Alternating weeks. Immersion, then integration.
After the first weeks of arriving and building camp — physically and
culturally — we settle into a tide of focused dives and spacious integration.
Week A
Immersion
Our main focus time — Monday through Thursday we are together in our
immersion, and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday we have off. During this
time we dive into experiences that cultivate awareness, attunement, and
bonding with ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
Four-day intensive
A camp member leads an immersive experience for the rest of the camp (and will open to other Martians as well). The intention of these immersions will be to create transformative journeys, deepen connection, and enrich our lives. Examples of immersions could include: (but are not limited to) Bodywork, breathwork, clowning, impro theater, authentic relating practices, grief work, days of silence, meditation, tantric arts, dream work, nature immersion, contact improve seminars and more.
Shared meals
We will most likely share lunch and dinner as a camp, rotating who cooks and shops
Emotional clearing
A practice we hold both weeks.
Logistics meeting
Roles and the daily maintenance of camp life.
Week B
Integration
During integration weeks, there's a ton of personal time. We'll keep
having meals together, we'll have a focused camp day once a week and
perhaps a few meetings/ sharing throughout the week to keep us connected,
but the bulk is for you to explore and offer things in the wider Mars
schedule and to digest our immersion.
Community day
One full day as a camp — on this day we will focus on logistical planning, emotional clearing, physical cleaning, group bonding.
Group sharings
Check-ins as touch points through the week.
Shared meals
We will most likely share lunch and dinner as a camp, rotating who cooks and shops
Workshops for Mars
We will have the possibility to offer workshops to the wider community — this can include authentic relating, morning meditation, yoga, improv comedy, painting, a running club. Whatever inspires you.
In addition to our bi-weekly schedule our camp will:
Final project
Our Final Project
The last two weeks before takedown, we focus on a presentation for the wider Mars community — we will split into groups or create personal projects that reflect the learnings we harvested from our time together as a camp. This might include: an animated short, a mini documentary, an art installation, or anything that reflects what coherent community looked like for us.
Recurring events
Camp Offerings
We'd love to host recurring events for the rest of Mars as a camp — something gathering and joyful, like a weekly ecstatic dance.
Hands in Bombay Beach
Bodywork Clinic
If you're a bodyworker and want to join us, we'll hold a clinic in the nearby town — roughly every other week
06The season
From build to departure.
Mars is full of offerings, happening on any given day across all the camps.
This is our camps frame.
01 · Dec 28
Build team arrives
we start our build
02 · Jan 4
The rest of camp arrives
For those who couldn't come
03 · Jan 5
Build week
We build a common house and kitchen, separate living pods, and we will build and steward a dojo for our immersions and workshops that will also be a shared space for the wider mars community
04 · Jan 10
Ideas week
All of Mars will take a week to start planning and dreaming about the semester. This will be our focus time for those who want to hold immersions and workshops for Mars
05 · Jan 18
First intensive
This will be our camps first step into our bi-weekly rhythm.
06 · Feb 12
Midterms weekend
This will be where the Mars campus pauses and comes together to present where each of us are at in our Mars journeys.
07 · Mar 8
Final projects begin
Our camp will step into a two week period where we will have time to create our final projects to harvest and present to all of Mars during Mars Electronica
08 · Mar 26 – 28
Mars Electronica
A weekend where Martians present their final projects
09 · Mar 30
Unbuild
10 · Apr 4
Departure
07How we decide
Sociocracy, in three pillars.
Rather than one person making decisions for everyone, decision-making power
is shared by the whole group.
Proposals
Anyone can write a concrete suggestion. Proposals gather the needs of the group, are refined through feedback, and are designed to be easy to pass.
Shared responsibility
Each camp member takes one or two roles. Work is distributed; everyone co-creates the experience.
Consent
A proposal passes not when everyone loves it, but when no one objects. Is this within my window of tolerance, and will it help the group meet its aim?
08Finances
One pooled budget, stewarded together.
Our money is pooled into a shared group budget that covers food, materials,
and daily living during our time together. A budget circle manages our
money and spending on behalf of the camp. The cost is meant to be pretty
inclusive of our time together. You might factor in another ~$200 for
personal extras — eating out in town from time to time, or picking up
extra food you'd like for yourself.
Camp cost
≈ $1,500 per person
Covers
Food, materials, shared infrastructure, daily living
Personal extras
Budget ~$200 more for yourself
Stewardship
A budget circle manages our pooled funds
Surplus
If money is left over, a group process decides where it goes
09From the desert
A few moments from the Mars 2026.
Swipe or drag to explore
10Who we are
The initiators of the camp.
Bodhi
A passionate human
His main joy and passions are in the worlds of space holding, community
building, relational arts, Zenthai Shiatsu, Circling, and Western
Tropical Astrology. Ultimately, whatever content he's studying, he loves
sharing and teaching it. He loves being in connection with others and
cultivating deep, intentional relational spaces. Underneath all of his
practices, his soul calling is community building — cultivating
intentional communities and micro cultures. He has spent extensive time
living in community, practicing in mystery schools, meditating in
retreats, and exploring what it means to co-create culture that brings
togetherness, collaboration, and symbiosis with each other and the earth.
He is on a mission to co-create a post-capitalist eco-village and be part
of an education team that shares the seeds of culture with other curious
creatures.
Magnus
Sensitive attunement, expansion, experimentation
Magnus grew up in a communal setting and has explored different forms of
communal living throughout much of his life. One of his deep passions is
Human Design — he has studied it for 14 years, also teaching and reading
charts. Another side of him revolves around a deep love for plants,
nature, and natural medicines. He spent time studying with indigenous
tribes in South America, learning from their ancestral wisdom and
integrating it into his life. His meditation practice is essential to him;
he has been practising and studying Buddhist philosophy and Vipassana on
and off for the last 8 years. For the last year his focus has moved toward
body-related practices. After completing a 3-month Zenthai Shiatsu
training, he is continuing to deep-dive into bodywork. As his material
grounding for the last decade, he has worked self-employed as a 'Jack of
all Trades' — construction, painting, tree felling, and various practical
work.
Join us
Once you apply, you'll find a role and start shaping the camp.
We value collaboration, shared contribution, and active participation. Bring
your craft, your curiosity, and your willingness to be changed by the people
around you.
