Core Values

Suspended Animation is an idealistic organization. We are here not just to have fun, but to make the world a better place by promoting and modeling our core values.

We hold ourselves to a consistently high standard. When we fail to live up to our own standards, we take responsibility for what went wrong and work hard to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Professionalism

We are professional in everything we do. We work hard and we take pride in doing consistently excellent work. We carry our share of the load so that others won’t be forced to carry it for us. We show up when we say we’ll show up and do what we say we’re going to do. We prize technical excellence.

We always operate in good faith, and we assume that others do the same until proven otherwise. We consistently treat others with kindness, courtesy, and consideration.

We believe that our community needs a multitude of educators, performers, and organizations. We welcome opportunities to collaborate with other people and organizations.

Safety and consent

Because kink has ample potential to cause both physical and emotional harm, we are relentless about best practices around safety and consent.

We strive to practice and model excellent consent in our personal lives as well as at SA events. We are committed to ensuring that everyone who visits us is safe and respected, and we thoroughly investigate all allegations of consent violations.

We have no tolerance for malice or carelessness in the treatment of other people. At the same time, we believe that most people are well-intentioned and that many injuries are the result of good faith errors. We take safety and consent very seriously, but we don’t use them as weapons.

Grace under pressure

We define drama as making difficult situations worse than they need to be: lashing out at other people, assuming the worst of others, and creating or catalyzing discord. We abhor drama.

The opposite of drama is grace. We can’t (and shouldn’t) avoid all difficult situations, but we navigate them with grace rather than drama.

Inclusion

We strive to be inclusive of all people who share our values. We welcome members and visitors regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, body type, disability or other attributes, and we have zero tolerance for bigotry of any kind.

We are not, however, radically inclusive in the Burning Man sense: not everyone is a good fit for us. We are not rude or unkind, but we are selective about who we associate and collaborate with.

We recognize that our membership is not as diverse as it should be and we are committed to improving.