Last month, we announced that the TESA Collective has partnered with Beautiful Solutions to create a strategic card game. Beautiful Trouble is a revolution in a box, which takes the most important elements of the group’s book by the same name, and converts them into an engaging and fun training tool any activist can use to expand upon campaign strategies or just enjoy a game night with friends.
We’re delighted to have worked with a passionate group of artist-activists to create a deck that promotes the true spirit of activism and the organized pursuit of progressive causes.
In this blog series, we’ll take a closer look at Beautiful Trouble as a venture, a philosophy, and a game to learn more about how and why you should get involved in making Beautiful Trouble and initiating non-violent changes in the world around you.
The History of Beautiful Trouble
The brilliant minds that came up with Beautiful Trouble have worked together since 2010 to provide folks who are passionate about change with the tools they need.
Seventy artist-activists collaborated to create the first release of Beautiful Trouble, a 500-page book with 150 mini-chapters on activist ideas and strategies.
From there, this treasure trove of information was organized into an online toolbox so that activists all over the world could access it at no cost.
The book has been released in several languages so that activists from around the world can benefit from the tactics, strategies, and advice it contains.
Recently, Beautiful Solutions worked with the TESA Collective to create and publish the Beautiful Trouble strategic card game so that activists, as well as their friends and families, could engage in fun, creative sessions dedicated to improving strategies.
Creating the Game
The best ideas from the book went into the creation of the Beautiful Trouble strategic card game. The deck is designed to be both a fun way for activists to engage with one another, and as a training tool for classrooms and people who are new to social justice. The game strives to meet the needs of both brand-new activists as well as individuals who have been advocating for change for a long time and feel a need to expand their perspective.
As a strategic card game, Beautiful Trouble has an array of different sub-games within the cards, including:
- Cards FOR Humanity
- Go Fishing for Trouble
- Action Brainstorm
- Campaign Strategy
- Radical Charades
Each of the fast, fun sub-games serves a unique purpose that expands and develops activist tactics. Games can be as simple or complicated as players want.
Players can also use the QR codes printed on each card to explore the content at length for a deeper experience. Every single card can be expanded upon with the use of a smartphone and a few minutes of reading.
Liked learning about this new game? Stay tuned for our next blog post, on the philosophy and purpose of Beautiful Trouble.