What is Kandi Flipping Beads & Things? Reclaiming Our Narrative with PLUR

What does “Flipping the Script” Mean? 

For those of us in the rave scene, no words can describe the sheer magic of our community. Whether it’s dancing your heart out to robot noises, huddling under a canopy in a thunderstorm hoping you don’t lose your $1,000 campsite, finding a totem that says, “Autistic Children Playing,” or having strangers scream, “I don’t know you but I love you,” while you walk by, these interactions are what bring us back (despite our wallets screaming at us).

What happens next?

The music fades, the lasers turn off, we say goodbye to our forever friends, and head back home.

The terms “post-festival blues” or “post-fest sadness” are experiences we're all aware of. For so many of us, the real world brings heavy, exhausting truths that we shut off for the weekend. We navigate trauma, anxiety, grief, mental health struggles, and so much more. Oftentimes, in total isolation. It is going back to a world that focuses on money, power, status, and abstract hierarchies rather than genuine connection.

Raves are often assumed to be an open-air drug market fueled by the deepest of hedonistic desires, but the true history of raving provides intentional safe spaces for marginalized communities. It is a space of community, love, resistance, freedom, and joy.

Our name, Kandi Flipping Beads & Things, intentionally owns the double entendre of the term to reclaim our narrative. Our motto, #KandiFlipYourScript, invites you into an open, non-judgmental, radical conversation regarding the human experience and gives you the platform to write your own story.

Who is the Creator of Kandi Flipping Beads & Things?

My name is Lindsey. I am a Minnesota-based raver, passionate community advocate, and a subject matter expert in health and wellbeing.

For the last decade, I have dedicated myself to helping professions and have sat in spaces where all we talk about is pain, trauma, suffering, and what to do about it. I’ve heard hundreds of people's most painful stories and, for some, have witnessed the worst day of their lives.

During my undergraduate schooling, I worked as a Certified Nurse Aide in a Long-term Care Facility and volunteered for 4 years on the college's interpersonal violence and sexual assault crisis hotline. To complete my Master's of Public Health, I spent over 1,000 hours of research and advocacy regarding harm reduction, substance use, and mental health policy in Colorado. I've been privileged to travel the world to look at various systems impacting communities' health, wellbeing, economy, and more. Finally, I have successfully written a six-figure grant which invested $200,000 of funding into a rural community’s harm reduction and peer support system.

I bring these experiences to the table to drive home one fundamental point: I’ve seen a good chunk of what life has to offer (good and bad). I've listened to people in power talk the talk over and over again on how things need to change, but have not felt like I've seen it.

Through these experiences, especially over the last few years, I’ve learned that individuals will most likely choose their own comfort over imagining something new. However, choosing one’s comfort to maintain the status quo does not take away these realities:

Harm Reduction: Humans have used intoxicating substances from the dawn of time for various reasons. An abstinence-based model fueled by the war on drugs will not prevent someone from using substances nor will it help them manage their use in a healthier way.

Mental Health Spectrum: We all have mental health, at any given time. Treating mental distress as an individual failure is a tool to keep us complacent and judgmental of one another.

Radical Acceptance: Everyone experiences some level of trauma, pain, and suffering across their lifespan. Our society prioritizing quick dopamine hits and idealized realities does not make the trauma disappear; it just hurts our communities and separates us.

The Here and Now: Life is too short to spend it at war with yourself and others, and no matter what material gain you have in this world, we all have the same mortality.

I created Kandi Flipping Beads & Things because I was tired of respectability politics, tone policing myself to fit in, and to reclaim my narrative and space in this world. I sincerely hope our brand can do this for you too.

How Does The Movement Work?

We are more than a Kandi shop. This is a mini-movement that incorporates the positive aspects of the EDM community, modernizes PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect), and creates physical, handmade products for connection, radical acceptance, resistance, and mutual aid. We are not here to reinvent the wheel, but rather to put our own flair on the existing PLUR, resistance, and other social justice movements. We are here to contribute where and how we can to make our small part of the world a better place.

By pairing every single product with either a curated information card, a serialized PLUR Passport, or interactive, real-world Festival Bingo Cards, we are actively turning ravers into communication catalysts. Each piece levels up a traditional Kandi trade into a long-term relationship. Individuals can take their connection beyond the dance floor into our online community space on the Healing Hub. While we are starting small, our launch is just the beginning of dozens of products.

Where Do the Proceeds Go?

Our brand enforces a strict mutual aid architecture: 10% of the retail price of all products is donated directly to one of the following social justice initiatives of the purchaser’s choosing:

• Racial Justice and Healing

• LGBTQIA+ Support

• Climate Justice & Indigenous Sovereignty

• Global Reproductive Rights

• Disability Rights & Education

• Evidence-Based Drug Policy Reform.

The remainder of the proceeds goes directly to maintaining the business infrastructure and supporting your neurodivergent artist in her practice. All support is deeply appreciated and does not go unrecognized, so each quarter, we will conduct a raffle for a free product box as a thank-you.

Whether you are here to shop our drops, read a raw blog post, or join an open community group on our Healing Hub, welcome. You are officially a Kandi Flipper!

Let's flip the script and find our joy, one trade and one conversation at a time.