MANIFESTO!
MANIFESTO! is a card game for stimulating and supporting manifesto authoring. It stands alone as an analogue resource (e.g., for the classroom, organizational summits, etc.), as well as functioning as a design probe for expanding the Futures of Europe workshop toolkit (coming soon). The most recent iteration (known as the OG edition) was developed in 2024 and is aimed at anyone interested in writing a short, clarifying a statement of principles and a call to action.
EDITIONS
MANIFESTO! versions include the Tech edition (first deployed at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in 2019) and the Futures of Europe edition (currently in development). We also collaborated with the UK think tank and innovation agency Nesta in developing a dedicated toolkit for crowdsourcing a collective intelligence manifesto. In 2023 we published the Art + AI edition as part of the Artistic Process Futures and AI workshops we led that same year. All MANIFESTO! card game editions are covered under the (CC) BY-NC-SA 4.0 license agreement and can be downloaded and printed by clicking the links at the bottom of the page.
GAMEPLAY
MANIFESTO! is a game for individuals or groups of 2-6 players. In each round, players are dealt one random card from each category: Provocation, Orientation†, Opening, and Tone. Substitutions are allowed. The different categories define a unique parameter or constraint. Provocation suggests a broad topic or theme (e.g., ‘Better for whom?’, ‘Challenge inequality’); Orientation designates the type of manifesto players will create (e.g., ‘Diagram’, ‘Declaration’); Opening offers the initial phrase (e.g., ‘We declare’, ‘Imagine’); and Tone is the rhetorical register to be used in addressing the subject or audience (e.g., ‘Urgent’, ‘Hopeful’). Players use these constraints as prompts to individually or collectively write, sing, enact, draw, or build their manifesto. Each round can be timed (e.g., 10 minutes) or open-ended. When a round is complete, players may vote for the ‘winner’ (e.g., the most persuasive manifesto).
Caution will get you nowhere!
Continue the conversation. Disseminate and share photos of your #manifestogame, #techmanifestos and #artandaimanifestos on Instagram @futures_of_europe, and use them to start a revolution of your own.