Programme

Lucia and Timo will host a workshop revolving around degrowth, critical pedagogies, radical utopias, and decoloniality. Participants will expand their understanding of the deeper root causes that lie beneath ecological breakdown, they will learn to identify capitalist and colonial patterns of our growth-based system and how their groups may reproduce them through narratives and actions participants will also become familiar with degrowth visions and develop capacities of imagining radical utopias.

Lucía (she/her) is a sociocultural anthropologist passionate about radical educational projects and an active member of Research & Degrowth. She has coordinated several socio-ecological initiatives and is pursuing a PhD focusing on tradition and folklore in relation to degrowth. She is a basket weaving apprentice and participates in a community living project in rural Galicia.

Timo (he/him) is an organiser with the collective Degrowth in Action and has been active in German and Spanish climate justice movements. His organising and political education centres on degrowth, capitalism, decoloniality and utopia. Timo also practices nonviolent communication, plays basketball and cuddles on the couch with his comrades.

Degrowth Copenhagen will be hosting a workshop inspired by the Latin American decolonial feminist method called body-territory. This method involves creating visual maps on bodies to represent personal and social experiences, offering insights into how we relate to our environment. Their goal is to help participants connect with their bodies, recognize the emotional impact of their activism, and foster a sense of community. This ritual will honour all emotions involved in degrowth activism, grounding participants at the festival's start and preparing them for the experiences ahead.

Degrowth Copenhagen is an open Collective of individuals who share degrowth values and a degrowth vision. Their main activities focus on education, activism and practice. 

Degrowth Vienna is hosting a workshop focusing on the intersection of Universal Basic Services (UBS) and Degrowth. UBS, a key topic in the degrowth movement, advocates that everyone, regardless of income or employment, should have access to essential services like mobility, electricity, heat, education, health care, housing, and food. It emphasizes meeting basic needs for a good life and societal participation. The workshop will explore these needs and connect UBS and degrowth to strategies for creating a needs-based, care-centered alternative to the current system.

Inea and JP will bring an interactive workshop to the table that will aim to get participants to reflect on the current state (weaknesses and strengths) of the degrowth community/movement. This workshop will hopefully produce some insights on where degrowth can improve and particularly how it can use its leverage in the global core to be a genuine fighter in the struggle against imperialism and supremacy.

Inea is Climate Vanguard's in-house political organizer. She aims to serve the collective liberation of human and non-human life through radical social-ecological transformation.

JP is an organizer with the International Degrowth Network and is increasing his focus on anti-imperial and revolutionary organising/strategizing.

Chihiro Geuzebroek has been organizing and creating creative articulation of decolonizing the climate activist spaces and politics since 2009. Based in Amsterdam, she has worked through audiovisual media, protest music, direct actions, making expositions, poetry and public speaking on antiracism and environmental justice. She is a cofounder of the foundation Aralez which dedicates itself to deepening understanding and coalition for decolonial work and solidarity. 

D.E.I. Futuro Antirazzista is an antiracist, non-partisan, antifascist, anti-sexism, anti homolesbobitransaphobia, anti-ableism, anti-fatphobia collective who does not seek any lucrative goal. They are specialize on social issues related to civil rights and use their platform to bring awareness to the BIPOC community, they produce discrimination reports and offer antiracist education.

Debt For Climate is a global grassroots movement initiated and led by the Global South which aims to build power from the bottom-up by uniting workers, Indigenous, feminist, faith, environmental, social and climate justice movements in the Global North and South, to cancel the financial debt of the Global South to enable a self-determined, just transition.

Abya Yala deScolonial is a space for caring conversations on deScoloniality and extractivism in Abya Yala (indigenous name for the 'american' continent). It is imbued with curiosity and was born out of the need to reflect on the colonial past and present of Abya Yala, using their experiences as migrants from the Global South as a starting point.

Laura Pipolo is a campaigner, community organiser and project manager focusing on the intersections of decoloniality, indigenous struggles and social, environmental and climate justice. With experiences in India, Kenya and Palestine, she fights alongside Indigenous peoples against extractivism and green colonialism, supporting movements and communities through decolonial solidarity.

How does financial stress and trauma show up in our money and work behaviours? How do we engage with our inner relationships with status quo capitalism? In this interactive 90 min workshop, @mihosoon will be sharing her research on economic psychology and open the space for reflective discussion around narratives and ways of engaging with degrowth, climate and economic justice in a trauma-informed way. 

Miho Soon is an independent researcher and designer from Malaysia researching financial and economic trauma from a systemic perspective. She is currently producing Money Trauma, a documentary podcast series about financial stress and economic psychology, connecting conversations with psychologists, activists and economists about mechanisms that keep people stuck in cycles of survivalism - and what people and organisations can do to create deeper resilience. Miho is a current fellow at the Post Growth Institute. She is currently based in Berlin.

This session, offered across 3 days, will delve into how dance and movement shape our body awareness and the perception of others. We will explore various forms of touch and the resonance spaces created through these interactions. Through artistic practice, participants will engage with the themes of each day, deepening their understanding of the connections between movement, touch, and embodied experience.

Miriam Bovenschen is a self-employed dance educator and performance artist based in Leipzig. She teaches children's dance, contemporary dance, Pilates, and contact improvisation, and has been organizing contact improvisation workshops and festivals since 2018. Her classes emphasize interpersonal communication and the socio-emotional impact of touch and movement.

This session will focus on crafting protest songs to narrate climate justice stories. Since 2009, Chihiro has been creatively decolonizing climate activism through audiovisual media, protest music, direct actions, expositions, poetry, and public speaking on antiracism and environmental justice. 

Chihiro Geuzebroek has been organizing and creating creative articulation of decolonizing the climate activist spaces and politics since 2009. Based in Amsterdam, she has worked through audiovisual media, protest music, direct actions, making expositions, poetry and public speaking on antiracism and environmental justice. She is a cofounder of the foundation Aralez which dedicates itself to deepening understanding and coalition for decolonial work and solidarity. 

Join us to integrate the topics and inspirations from the round tables and collaboratively craft a vision of the future we dream of. Over three sessions, we will create a picture/collage and a zine, capturing our collective imagination and aspirations. Additionally, we will design utopic postcards featuring questions, answers, and images of our envisioned future. Participants can send these postcards immediately, sharing their utopian visions with others.

Debt For Climate is a global grassroots movement initiated and led by the Global South which aims to build power from the bottom-up by uniting workers, Indigenous, feminist, faith, environmental, social and climate justice movements in the Global North and South, to cancel the financial debt of the Global South to enable a self-determined, just transition.

In this workshop, we will explore the resistance struggles of women in Abya Yala, drawing on Southern epistemologies that oppose extractivism and colonialism, inspired by figures like Francia Márquez and the concept of Territory. In the second part, we will use the photographic technique of cyanotype to expand a collective archive of resistance.

This workshop offers a chance to reflect on decoloniality by sharing our own experiences and visit about what authors have to say on the topic. Through writing and performative exercises, we'll explore these ideas and learn from each other. 

In this session, we'll dive into the idea of consent and how we interact with each other through movement, bodywork, and touch. Using the Wheel of Consent as our guide, we'll look at how we make contact and try to realign our habits. What can we learn from saying and hearing "yes"? What about saying and hearing "no"? And all the stuff in between? We'll explore these questions with exercises, games, and conversations, encouraging participants to set their own boundaries.

Working with methods of the Theater of the Opressed and Contact Improvisation for 15 years, emka* has gained the experience and knowledge to facilitate workshops and being informed about trauma and various needs that arise from participants. Being non-binary themself and working with queer youth in rural areas, emka*s work aims to be inclusive to all genders 

This workshop center a recorded group discussion around the themes of queer expression, transformation & collective (de-) growth. We are observing at transitions within ourselves, forming bonds of solidarity between each other and voicing demands for political changes. The result will then later be published as part of the latest season of the queer-feminist podcast "Queering the Perspective". We will firstly go into individual and small group brainstorming sessions in which we will establish the most relevant subthemes that we want to dive deeper into. With these in mind, we go into a group conversation, moderated by the podcast host @bela.belissima_ Come with whatever perspective/approach/experience you have towards the topics. We will bring them all together and meet.

Béla Belissima is a trans-femme artist, activist & podcaster focusing on the amplification of queer & trans* voices. In her work she always centers the element of empowerment and the creation of community-based structures to question all kinds of normalcies and binaries, especially with her queer-feminist podcast “Queering the Perspective”. 

This workshop will offer some quiet time as we make space for our more-than-human expression through art-making. We will start with a guided meditation to reconnect with the present moment, and then sit outside to listen and receive wisdom from a living being that chooses to come to us. This can be a beetle, a breeze, or a whole ecosystem. After this, we'll return back to our meeting place and spend time embodying the being(s) that communicated with us, and create visual creations from this exploration of our queer and non-dual selves. In the end, we'll share our artworks with each other. This activity takes inspiration from spiritual ecology, ancient wisdom traditions, decoloniality, and ecofeminism.

Ania Ektate (she/her) is a storyteller, meditation guide, and environmental activist from India. Her art, which takes the form of poems, paintings, short-stories, and essays, seeks to unravel modern-day constructions of human-nature relations. She takes inspiration from ancient wisdom traditions, as well as more recent practices such as mindfulness and spiritual ecology, to re-weave our nature-based narratives. She's been creating spaces for art exploration and meditation since 2021.

This immersive workshop combines the intuitive practice of Reiki, an indigenous healing system, with a collaborative writing exercise to explore the interplay between energy, perception, and interconnectedness. Participants will first be introduced to Reiki, learning how it enhances natural connections and gently stimulates the body's healing abilities. Following this, attendees will engage in a collective writing exercise, working in small groups to craft a unified declaration on the theme of freedom.

No prior Reiki experience is necessary; participants are encouraged to bring an open mind, wear comfortable clothing, and come well-rested. This blend of energy work and creative expression aims to shift participants' awareness, fostering a deeper sense of balance and connection with their environment and each other.

Chantelle is a freelance communications strategist and researcher based between London and Zurich. Originally from Manzini and raised in Johannesburg, she’s interested in otherness, kinship, intimacy, and the radical potential of embodied archives and communal dreaming. With a background in architecture and public relations, she leads communications and co-facilitates a 10-month program at the School of Commons. Chantelle is developing a digital garden and creating spaces for connecting ideas within creative and social change ecosystems. She is an Usui/Holy Fire Reiki practitioner.