James Moulding

Developed by military practitioners over two hundred years, wargaming is a practice used regularly by a range of organisations and actors, from the British Army to Greenpeace. What was originally used for training Prussian military officers in the 19th century, giving them a safe space to experiment, practice and make mistakes without serious consequences, has developed as an analytical, experiential and educational tool deployed for an array of contexts, far beyond its original scope. 

For activists, campaigners, civil society groups and those trying to change the world, wargaming offers a crucial practice, one that is becoming increasingly valuable as the legal, financial and human costs of political action increase. Wargaming provides capacity-poor civil society groups, campaigns and activists, a safe-to-fail space to test their assumptions, red team their plans and train organisers, rather than learning on the fly in public.

Wargaming for social change is an emerging field with few practitioners and a limited history. In the UK, examples of what can be done include the situationist ludic-science group Class Wargames, who have prepared wargames to simulate a run on the pound, activist training games focused on negotiating compromise under stress, running a newly elected radical council and games for trade union organising. Red Plenty Games have also produced similar games, such as Parts Per Million and the Social Strike Game.

Meanwhile, in the US and Hungary, political simulations such as 2020 Transition Integrity Project and the 2026 Hungarian Election Simulation have been used to inform pro-democracy coalition strategy in authoritarian contexts. The field of civil society wargaming is as yet still largely undeveloped, which presents a real and exciting opportunity to shape a new field and practice.

I have been playing, designing and facilitating wargames, serious games and recreational megagames for over a decade as a member of Class Wargames and now as an Associate Partner at serious games consultancy Stone Paper Scissors. I can help fellows design and facilitate wargames and serious games and provide guidance on their use. I can also teach the design and adjudication skills so you can run your own, or together as a cohort.

Note - this topic differs from "Building power through play". Whilst those games are focused on communication, persuasion and campaigning, these are for educational, analytical or experiential purposes.

Developing and strengthening bonds, connection and solidarity among groups of common interest or goals can result in large scale, meaningful change. I’ve set up networks among environmental sensing development communities, game designers, election technologists and UK democracy practitioners and activists and I’ve worked to strategically convene a range of groups towards shared goals and outcomes. I’m also a member of a variety of communities of practice around network development, such as FITO.

I can offer practices, principles, approaches and guidance on setting up and developing networks. These include establishing network purpose, mapping key stakeholders, establishing a pipeline of outputs, undertaking relational meetings and tailoring strategic interventions to your context, such as convening, weaving, connection events etc.

I have been developing a project to build a more connected and impactful UK democracy sector for over five years. The UK Democracy Network is a civil society infrastructure organisation, comprising an established and diverse network spanning hundreds of organisations across the country, working on a range of issues from civil liberties to civic education. Our work is based on and works to improve upon existing network development, network weaving and network infrastructure practice.

We started the work based on an acknowledgement that those working to improve democracy in the UK were fragmented, not talking to each other enough and lacking access - and the trust required to develop - shared resources. Based on this, we founded our predecessor organisation, the Centre for Democracy at Newspeak House in 2020 and undertook network mapping and seeding activities. Since then, we’ve built a directory of UK organisations working on democracy, regularly extracted their organisational outputs: newsletters, events, grants and socials - and fed this into our comprehensive sector bulletin, sector resources and the connection and capacity building activities we offer to improve the impact of UK democracy orgs and the vital work they do. 

I can share my learnings, practical examples and experiences through undertaking this work. I can help fellows with questions like: what do British democracy organisations care about and work on? How do we build trust in large communities? How do we prevent information and resource bottlenecks in networks? How do you evaluate the impact of network activities? How can I apply network development practices to build trust and collaboration in my sector?

Network infrastructure describes the connective tissue running behind the scenes in network contexts. Infrastructure practices lower the cost of the members of a network discovering each other, resourcing each other, acting together and improving their sense making of each other and the wider field. Network infrastructure practices improve the legibility of a field, so the network can see itself, generate shared languages, surface key resources and provide asynchronous means for connection, through newsletters, shared resources and community channels.

I can help fellows develop, assess or ideate on possible network infrastructure approaches for you and the communities you inhabit.

I’ve spent several years working in and around the UK democracy sector and working to understand the organisations and groups that make up the space,  what they’re trying to do and how they respond to political change. There are hundreds of organisations across the UK working to strengthen and safeguard democracy. These groups work across a range of areas, from civil liberties and electoral reform to civic education, they work to influence parliament and build more resilient and autonomous communities. 

I can help fellows consider questions like: Where do these organisations see opportunities for democratic expansion? What’s the funding for democracy landscape like and how are they funded? Who is working on combating disinformation? How are UK democracy organisations responding to threats to democracy and the rise of the far right?

• https://resources.democracynetwork.org.uk/uk-democracy-map

As a Residential Fellow of the first cohort of the Newspeak House Fellowship back in 2016, I have maintained a connection and presence in the Newspeak House space for over 10 years. I lived in the house for 15 months between 2016 and 2017, through a very politically turbulent year marked by the EU Referendum and the 2017 General Election. As a Fellow and member of the NH Faculty, I have engaged with and seen how various cohorts have spent their time in the space. I can offer my thoughts on how best to engage with the Fellowship and how to use your time most effectively in this space.

As the cohorts have changed, so too has the Fellowship, but the fundamentals remain the same - these include: the importance of gathering and convening your communities in the space. Using the building to run events and experiment. Actively managing the community and catalysing opportunities for diverse groups of people and organisations to mix, meet, build friendships and work together. Invite your people, invite your networks to the Ration Club weekly community dinner. Attend as many community events in the college as you can manage and discover new people and practices. Invite communities to run events in the space, introduce them to others and volunteer to help them run events in the space. Immerse yourself in and help strengthen the networks of those within your cohort, the wider Fellowship and existing communities and networking in Newspeak House. Use the space - it’s yours, want to run a conference, speed networking, festival or party - go right ahead. Ground your thinking, experiments and projects in the problems and challenges of existing political and civic communities. Actively reach out to faculty, we’re here to talk things through, assist and get stuck in - invite us.

Be political - Newspeak House is a space for working to build power, technology and the means to build a better world. Be bold, adaptive and experimental in your approach and act with an abundance mindset. You are here to collaborate together as a fellowship, not work in isolation - incubate each other's ideas and be a critical friend. The fellowship is an opportunity for you to explore, dip into things, and draw upon community resource - before contributing to broader civic and political technology impact through your end of year prototypes and projects. As Fellows of Newspeak House, you are stewards of a community resource - water it, nurture it.

If any of this sounds useful, get in touch. Your time here is what you make of it and remember, have fun.

Games are a powerful tool for political change. They are a powerful tool for storytelling, for communicating complex messages and topics in an accessible and fun format. But their real power runs deeper than communication. Games are systems. When people play, they inhabit the magic circle. They suspend the normal rules of the world, and step into spaces where those rules are substituted by the rules of the game - allowing for states of flow and immersion - enhancing learning, creating reflective states, stepping out of the every day, adopting perspectives and roles demanded by the game system.

Games are emerging as a key practice in the playbook for those organising to change politics and are being used by campaigners and activists the world over.

Key examples include Elizabeth Magie’s The Landlord’s Game designed to educate players about the Georgist land value tax. La France Insoumis’ Fiscal Kombat developed to support Jean Luc Melenchon’s bid for the French presidency in 2017. Papers, Please, an influential game about migration and authoritarianism through playing a border guard inspector. Guy Debord’s Game of War designed to train activists in strategic thinking. Games have a key role to play in organising, campaigns and training activists.

I can help fellows design and develop political games. I can hold space for playing political games together, exploring their themes and the means and mechanics they use. This might involve occasional or regular game sessions or game jams to think about games you might wish to create and experiment with.

For those looking to spice up their political toolbox. I’ve been part of several direct action groups of varying sizes and approaches, from cycle safety campaigns, anti-fascism and student street movements, though my primary experience is based on my experience as a National Coordinator of Extinction Rebellion in 2019 & 2020. 

I'm connected to people organising in that space who have thought about this a lot longer than I have - I can pull in various people currently organising and thinking about this to join us. Together we can discuss and evaluate the effectiveness of various approaches to direct action strategy and tactics, what has worked, what hasn’t - and what I, and others, have learned along the way. Whether that’s the use of mass arrest tactics, disruptive action, small scale targeted action or the challenges of growth, organising and mobilisation in mass movements. We can also discuss the current strategic predicament the current climate movement and the wider extra-parliamentary progressive movement faces. Beyond this, I can also offer specific training in the key skills of direct action: action design, affinity groups, spokescouncils and decision making, action roles, police liaison, legal observing, arrestee support and de-escalation.

Additionally, Newspeak House itself has hosted many such groups and acted as a valuable organising space. Welcoming and inviting the current generation of organisers to the space, to explore, experiment and collaborate would be a worthwhile and fascinating opportunity - if Fellows were interested in this I would be happy to assist and facilitate.