A Toolbox for the Revolution…
Guide to using the Beautiful Trouble Toolbox
Take a quick tour of the New Beautiful Trouble Toolbox!
The Beautiful Trouble toolbox illustrates the key tactics, principles, methodologies, theories and stories that have inspired centuries of people-powered victories. Written by over 175 frontline activists from Harare to Amman, New York to Oaxaca, the toolbox is one part prankster manifesto, one part direct action manual, and one part training guide for mass organizing and collective liberation.
Creative activism offers so much more than one-size-fits-all solutions, and so do we. Beautiful Trouble is less a cookbook than a pattern language —a matrix of interlinked concepts that you can apply as works in your situation.
The toolbox is organized into several different types of tools:
Stories
Accounts of memorable actions and campaigns, analysing what worked, or didn’t, and why.
Tactics
Specific forms of creative action, such as a flash mob or blockade.
Theories
Time-tested guidelines for how to design successful actions and campaigns.
Principles
Big-picture ideas that help us understand how the world works and how we might change it.
Methodologies
Strategic frameworks and hands-on exercises to help you assess your situation and plan your campaign.
Customizable
Customizable: Generate your own unique collection of tools, and download, print and share (non-commercially and with attribution please!).
Simply click the ❤️ on the tools you want to add, then go to “My tools” to view or download your selection. Your choices are stored in cookies, so they’ll still be there the next time you visit from the same device (but not from other devices or browsers).
If you create a unique combination of tools for your course, social movement, or issue, and would like to see it added to our Sets — collections of tools relevant to a theme or cause such as Election Protection or Black Lives Matter — please send it to us.
Multilingual
The toolbox is currently available in English, Arabic, Burmese, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, and we’re actively working with volunteer translation teams to bring other languages online.
To make our content as widely available as possible, the toolkit will display whatever content is available in the language of choice, with content that has not yet been translated displaying in English.
Many tools have also been translated in print in the Beautiful Trouble books in German, Russian, Thai, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Arabic.
Our Beautiful Action Training Modules are in English, Spanish, Arabic, and Bangla.
If you see a missing translation and want to help, get in touch.
An Evolving Resource
The toolbox continues to grow in step with emerging social movements and their tactical innovations.
If you think of an entry that you want to add, or see a short entry that you think should be expanded, please get in touch with us.
These tools are free for you to use and share freely, though we ask that you credit the source and the author(s).
We’d love to hear how it goes and what you learn.
If you want to show your appreciation with a small donation, we’ll gratefully put it towards keeping the lights on and the site growing.
Join us in March-June 2023 for our FREE Beautiful Trouble [mostly] Second Mondays Toolbox Jams! At Noon EST / UTC-5, we will do a 30-minute deep dive into one of our various tools in the Beautiful Trouble Universe–then hang around for another 15 minutes for questions. Sign up below for one or for all and share this far and wide. Recording of each session will be shared with registrants.
March 13th - Intro to BT Universe & Toolbox
April 10th - Intro to Trainers’ Resources, BATMo!
May 15th - How to Use the Beautiful Trouble Strategy Card Deck
June 12th - Intro to Movement Compass
Introduction to the Toolbox
with Train(ing) Conductor Nadine Bloch
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did you build this toolbox?
“Human salvation,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. argued, “lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted,” and recent historical events are proving him as prescient as ever. From Montreal to Mandalay, the realization is rippling through the ranks that, if deployed thoughtfully, our pranks, stunts, flash mobs and encampments can bring about real shifts in the balance of power. Large numbers of people have seen that creative action gets the goods — and have begun to act accordingly.
Millions around the world have awoken not just to the need to take action to reverse deepening inequality and ecological devastation, but to our own creative power to do so. We built the toolbox to distill ideas gleaned from those on the front lines of creative activism and make them more accessible for you. But these ideas are nothing until they’re acted upon.
We look forward to seeing what you do with them.
Who is this toolbox for?
Whether you are...
An essential worker in Alabama trying to figure out how to call a strike
A young activist facing down a coup in Myanmar
A professor keen to enliven your social movement history lecture
A reporter on deadline needing a definition for "civil disobedience"
A doom-scroller hungry for stories of how regular people can change the course of history
...this toolbox is your go-to resource.
When you open the toolbox, what treasures will you find?
Donate
When you support Beautiful Trouble, you equip social movement leaders with strategic campaigning skills and the latest innovations in creative resistance. We can’t do it without your support.
Please make your tax-deductible donation now. Thank you!