<aside> 👨‍👩‍👧 THE FUTURE TOGETHERNESS TEST KITCHEN is a place to prototype and test: weird new ways for community to form and for people to support one another; new ways to be human and together; moonshot increases in social support; and new designs for rituals and sacred space.

We are making a book together, the Future Togetherness Handbook. The book is supposed to help various local communities (everything from activism to swing dance) by giving them new group practices and games. Such communities have games and practices for some things, like consent or diversity or group decision-making. With the handbook, we're making practices and games for other things: for having group rituals, for fighting against bullshit power games, for redesigning society, for sharing unusual appreciations, for mutual support, and so on.

We take inspiration from secret societies, churches, suicide clubs, mafias, street games, violent mobs, mutual benefit societies, penpals, zines, tape clubs, and unsafe psychology experiments. And we focus on activities which are driven by values and meaning (rather than goals, collaborations, feelings, or beliefs); which are alien & disorienting; which are post-authentic, post-individual, difficult, or dangerous; or which restore the sacred, or trace where it collapses.

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The Test Kitchens are regular, open meetups where games for the Future Togetherness Handbook are tested. There is a regular one in Berlin and a facebook group for launching new ones.

<aside> 🔗 Facebook group

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Local Chapters

Berlin Future Togetherness Test Kitchens

How to run one:

1. Pick some games. For the first Berlin meeting, we played No Reply as people arrived, then Reality Prototyping, and then Out of Character. For the second meeting we’ll do a five-hour The We-Ness. This is a pretty good introduction to the genre. Alternatively you could pick a chapter and do games from that chapter.
2. Invite some people to try them, perhaps using the event text below
3. Be a good host — see "Hosting Your Test Kitchen", below
4. Report how it went on the page

Hosting Your Test Kitchen

• Each Game Optional. After you explain the rules of a game, give people a chance to leave or step out for that game, and don’t make them feel guilty!
• Safe word. For intense games, consider having a safe word that stops play for everyone, and a few people that are especially available to talk to.
• Gather co-hosts. At the first or second event, gather some people you trust and make them co-hosts, then set up a calendar so that everyone hosts once every few months (or if you have enough people, two people host every month).
• Gather activities. At the meetup, ask people if they want to make a game or ritual for any of the chapters. If they would, contact Joe Edelman or Anne to get those people connected and on the List of Collaborators.

Event Text

See above!