words: Nate (Itstheleak) Anidugbe

For the past weeks I have been working closely alongside Ruby Pseudo a consultancy agency with a focus on youth and youth culture. The company’s ethos is centred around kids doing the business, doing it well and making a difference in not only their OWN world but THE world.

So when we were approached by Nokia and Tim Kring, the creator of Heroes, about an all new gaming experience that allows players to actively make a change in the world for the better we jumped out of our skins to get involved.

Conspiracy For Good is an Alternate Reality Game which is followed on a multitude of media platforms, via YouTube clips that explain the story, through games played on Nokia mobile phones and then through real life actions where players get to tear through London decrypting codes with their mobile phones, visiting secret dungeons and getting harassed by S.W.A.T teams. This Saturday gone (17th July) was the first of four Live London events that players 18+ can get involved in and the gamers told me it was a truly immersive and exciting experience. I even heard there was a boat chase along the Thames.

The plot revolves around two fictional groups, the Conspiracy For Good – an organisation dedicated to helping the progression of problem areas of the world (so they’re the goodies) – battling against Blackwell Briggs – a faceless corporation dedicated to obtaining profit via the raping and pillaging of all natural recourses : the baddies, clearly. Are you still following…?

But I hear you asking, how does this make a difference to the world? Well, Nokia and Conspiracy For Good have teamed up with the Pearson Foundation and are contributing to the construction of five schools in Zambia. Additionally, every weekend there’s a different charity involved. This weekend it’s the Kids Company, which supports disadvantaged children all over London.

Even the launch party was full of charitable twists. For entry into the venue, entrants had to donate an old mobile phone which was then donated to Envirofone for recycling. This also entitled the party people to a couple of free drinks. There was also a Polaroid room, where in exchange for getting your mug snapped, you’d get £5 which you could decide to give to one of several charitable causes : you could feed 10 children in Somaliland, buy ten books for kids in Tanzania, buy a seed starter kit for a gardener or a farmer in Africa, even feed and house a homeless cat. This again allowed you to get a couple more free drinks on the house, so you can imagine a lot phones were donated and a lot of Polaroid’s got taken, making it a pretty lively party. There was even a live graffiti war inside the club courtesy of the Monorex Secret Wars Gang who are serious dope at street art, and the eventual winner ended up donating his winnings to the Pearson foundation.

There was also a stellar music line-up with Reaps, one the UK beat beatbox champions, truly rocking the crowd, and P-Money showing why he one of grime’s most prominent torchbearers, while DJs Motive, Deadly Rhythm Sound System and Tim and Barry kept the party going till the early hours. Even the headline act Giggs, more famed for his two year stint in prison and his street anthem ‘Talking The Hardest’ than his charitable actions, gave a sizeable chunk of his booking fee to charity on the night.

Everybody looked like they were thoroughly enjoying themselves and the free photo booth was a sick idea – I’ve never seen so many drunk passport pictures in my life. Whoever said parties always end up with a drunken fight should get out more, because this particular shindig led to, 110 text books being bought for kids in Tanzania, 8 starter kits for farmers in Africa, 3 donations to the Ayila primary school, 250 fruit trees being planted, 14 street kids being fed for 3 days, 8 meals on wheels for elderly residents in Ukraine, 9 children being put through school for a month in India and 5 homeless cats fed and housed.

This won’t be last you’ll be hearing about conspiracy for good, for more information visit: www.conspiracyforgood.com.

By Nate (Itstheleak) Anidugbe