Trouble in the UK
The Beautiful Trouble Training Network is almost three years old and has already conducted over 40 trainings for a variety of groups in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Led by people on the frontlines of injustice in these movements, the Network has been hugely supportive to a wide range of grassroots movements for social justice. Over the last year, in response to the deepening wounds of austerity, Beautiful Trouble’s new UK Training Network arose to meet the demand for greater creative skills from UK-based organisers and campaigners.
In addition to increasing austerity, rising inequality and racism across the UK highlights a need for more creative and art-infused activism to make waves and win results. Grassroots movements increasingly look to creative tactics for inspiration, while more established struggles for justice are keen to expand their creative toolbox. There is a lack of space for people affected by injustice in their communities to reflect and learn the art of melding artistic sensibility and campaign savviness, and without proper infrastructure, movements won’t be equipped to respond to challenges like austerity, climate change and the refugee crisis.
Anchored by a core community of UK-based trainers, the Beautiful Trouble UK Training Network is now dramatically strengthening their work. Through a series of hands-on grassroots trainings and campaign development workshops, and in close collaboration with a growing network of partner organisations, Beautiful Trouble UK will empower communities to tackle inequality and injustice with imagination, humour and creativity.
The ultimate goal is to build capacity across a range of UK communities affected by inequality so that they can engage more powerfully, more creatively, and more effectively in building a just and equitable society for all. So far major training requests are lined up in London, Manchester, and Glasgow, with several more to follow.
These trainings will engage people working at the front lines of economic, social and racial marginalisation, and will focus on deepening participants’ core movement-building skills, including: strategic campaigning, creative direct action planning, messaging and media strategy, as well as facilitation, conflict management, and understanding and transforming power dynamics within their own groups.
Get involved with BT UK
If you would like a training in your community, if you would like to be a trainer, or if you would like advice on how to strengthen your communities’ struggle for justice then please get in touch with dan at beautifultrouble dot org.
We are looking for funding to support our dynamic progressive sliding scale of services — please reach out to dan at beautifultrouble dot org to provide leads or direct support.
And check out the rest of the Beautiful Trouble Training Program here.
