BLKOUT
blkout · the commons The Kit
← back to commons

The Commons Kit

Two parts.
Your council.

An exercise to surface your organisation's operational values. A council kit to test any tool, partnership or platform against them. Built for peer Black queer organisations. Free to use, adapt, remix.

Not a product. Not a consultancy framework. A pattern, with the personalisation work load-bearing.

// why this kit

Community control. Shared resources.

The kit is what the two arguments on the front page look like in practice. Community control needs you to have named what you control for. Shared resources means we publish what we've learned about ethical AI decision-making as method, not as software — so you adopt it without becoming dependent on us.

The personalisation is the work. A drop-in template that runs without your org doing the values exercise first would be BLKOUT-lite — and that's exactly the dependency the commons is pushing against. The kit is uncomfortable to use until you've sat with what your line is.

// part one

Surface your values.

A 90-minute exercise. Five negative-space questions. Two outputs.

The mechanism

Most values statements are useless to a decision-maker. "We value community, inclusion, integrity" can't tell you whether to adopt a tool or take a funder. It's a virtue list, not a working document.

The questions don't ask what you value. They ask what you've refused, where you've felt friction, what you would lose before compromising. Refusals reveal values that virtues hide.

The five questions

  1. 01 Three tools or partnerships you've said no to in the last two years. Why?
  2. 02 What would a funder offer that you'd turn down — and at what amount?
  3. 03 Name an org similar to yours that you'd never want to be mistaken for. Why?
  4. 04 Whose work are you continuing? What would they not let you compromise on?
  5. 05 Where do you and your closest collaborator disagree about strategy? What's the disagreement actually about?

Two outputs from one exercise

A values document — five to seven specific operational lines you can hold a decision against. Input for Part 2.

An indication of what your AI strategy has to consider — data sovereignty, stack disposition, risk register, accountability anchors, open questions. Useful on its own, even if you never use Part 2.

Read Part 1 (markdown) → Download .md

// part two

The Dreamcatcher Council Kit.

Six historical judges. One meta-prompt. Your decisions.

Six Black queer historical figures, each holding one question they would ask of any tool, partnership or platform you're considering. Paired with a meta-prompt that runs your values document (from Part 1) against any specific proposal, returns six verdicts in the judges' voices, and surfaces where they disagree.

The starter council

Audre Lorde · the witness

"What silence are you spending to make this work?"

Joseph Beam · the continuity

"Who is in the room? Whose work does this continue?"

Marsha P. Johnson · the street

"Does this set the test by the most marginalised, or by the most acceptable?"

Ivor Cummings · the institution

"Can we hold this from inside, where the decisions are actually made?"

Pearl Alcock · the shelter

"Does this hold our people, or expect them to assimilate to be held?"

Justin Fashanu · the cost

"What does this cost the people we're asking to be visible — and have they consented?"

These six are illustrative starters drawn from a shared Black queer lineage. They are not BLKOUT's possession; they belong to the lineage. The kit includes a typology of roles (witness · continuity · street · institution · shelter · cost) and a template for adding your own judges. The most important judges for your organisation may not be on this list. Swap. Add. Make the council yours.

How to use it

  1. 01 Maintain a wishlist — every tool, partnership, platform or capability you're considering, one row per item. The kit ships a CSV template you can open in any spreadsheet app.
  2. 02 When an item reaches the top of your priorities, paste the meta-prompt into your LLM with three slots filled: your values doc (from Part 1), the six judge profiles, that one item.
  3. 03 Each judge gives a verdict in their own voice. Disagreement is surfaced, not synthesised. The council returns a summary.
  4. 04 Paste the council summary back into the wishlist. Your team makes the actual call. Record the decision in the same row — same artefact, full history, returnable.

The kit closes the way it opens: the council do not decide. You decide.

// downloads

Read the council kit → ↓ council-kit.md ↓ wishlist-template.csv Wishlist guide →

// using both

How they sit together.

  1. step 01 Do Part 1. Two to four decision-makers, 90 minutes, honest answers. Walk away with a values document and your AI-strategy indicators.
  2. step 02 Choose your council. Read the six starter judges. Keep the ones whose questions sit in your lineage. Swap or add others. The choosing is political work, not admin.
  3. step 03 Start a wishlist. Open the CSV template and start logging every tool, partnership or platform you're considering — one row each. The wishlist is what keeps ideas from getting lost between conversations, and what gives the council something concrete to evaluate.
  4. step 04 Run wishlist items through the council. Paste Part 2's meta-prompt into your LLM with your values doc, your six profiles, and one wishlist item. Read the verdicts together, not solo. Watch for the one that makes someone in the room go quiet.
  5. step 05 Decide and log. Paste the council summary back into the wishlist row. Your org makes the call. Record decision + date in the same row — full history, returnable.

You can use Part 1 on its own and never touch Part 2. The values document and AI-strategy indicators do useful work whether or not you build a council. The reverse is not true: Part 2 without Part 1 is BLKOUT-lite with extra steps.

// lineage and use

Tell us what you find.

The kit carries forward methods from earlier organisers and writers who insisted that values are visible in what we refuse, not what we proclaim. Specific debts: Audre Lorde on silence as expenditure, Joseph Beam on home as the question of who is in the room, the cooperative tradition of writing down what the membership won't do.

BLKOUT runs its own internal council with a different set of judges — Baldwin, Murray, Rustin, Rivera, Newton — tuned to our specific stack and values. The walkthrough describes how. The kit on this page is the transferable shape, with a starter council drawn from a shared lineage. Your council should reflect your specific position within it.

Free to use, adapt, remix, translate. If you do, tell us — commons@blkoutuk.com. We're curious about what your council looks like, what got swapped, what verdicts surprised you.

Without community there is no liberation. — Audre Lorde