Any Fire Performers and Volunteer Fire Safeties wishing to participate in the fire circle(s) at Prairie Pothole: Please read this thoroughly.
For each day of the festival, we will be hosting Daily Fire Safety meetings at TBD, in the grassy area across the road from the lodge stage (in between the swimming hole and the fire ring.) There will be a sign out by the road pointing toward the location.
If you wish to participate in the Fire Circle(s) for that day, we require you to come to a safety meeting first. Please attend all possible meetings. These will be to cover locations of circles, times, and safety for those that need it.
We welcome all Fire Performers with some experience dancing with fire (even beginners) with their own safe and adequate fire props and/or equipment. If you are a beginner please share your experience with us, so we can get you well informed. If you have NEVER danced with fire and/or do not have your own props, it is best not to participant, but please be very clear with the fire leaders about any limitations you have.
Meetings will be held each day at TBD. We wish to be thorough but also keep meetings as brief as possible. We will go over:
After you have gone through the safety precautions, procedures, protocols, and prop inspection you then can receive your red bracelet for participating in the fire circle. The red bracelets will be labeled with the day you attended the meeting.
Once you have fully been through one of the fire safety meetings and wish to participate again, we will briefly coordinate the following day and share next set time(s) with you and you will receive your second or third bracelet. Then you can go off to prepare and or enjoy the festival. For those who could not make it to one of the meetings prior, we will repeat the information and inspection so you can participate and get your bracelet. An additional meeting Friday at 10pm will be held for only experienced fire performers who arrived later, to get their bracelets.
If you wish to be a volunteer fire safety, we greatly welcome you. Even if you have never done it before, at the meeting we go over a brief training with a fire blanket and the PASS acronym for fire extinguishers so you will have some experience beforehand. As safeties, this gives you the benefit of a front row seat to all the fire action. For the performers, we wish that you too will take some turns with a fire blanket so other safeties can be cycled out.
Also, when you are receiving your bracelet we will be reminding and sharing with all of you the set times for the fire circle(s). At Prairie Pothole we have always started around sunset and we will continue to do so. In addition, with the proper amount of fire performers and safeties, we can continue to perform at later times as well. Which, in turn, is also why we require you to come to the daily meetings so we can further understand our numbers and re-coordinate if we have bad weather.
As for the time length of the fire safety meeting(s), we wish to be thorough but also keep them as brief as possible. As supervisors, we too want to have time to prepare for the fire circle and enjoy the festival as well. However, we find that having multiple meetings is the best way we can coordinate with all performers and safeties, so the information and set times of the fire circle(s) is shared. We anticipate having rain and bad weather and have backup plans, so using these meetings as a time and place to communicate is to all of our benefit. We also anticipate having many fire performers this year and we want everyone to get their fill of performing this year.
In turn, we wish that fire performers and safeties utilize these meetings not only for better communication with each other, but to have a time and place to gather and build rapport and trust. For Prairie Pothole this year, we want everyone to come together and turn all of us regional fire performers into a huge team!