Programme

Anti-oppression Workshops - 5th August

Degrowth & Class by Ashley Sheets

This workshop will explore the intersections of working-class struggles, environmental justice, and degrowth perspectives. We'll look at how environmental and labor movements can (and do) work together toward just transitions and sustainable futures while fundamentally questioning capitalism's growth paradigm, and why it is imperative to recognise the already-existing alignment between both labour movements led by working class voices, and environmental action. The workshop will include coalition-building ideas, practical examples of global alignment in action, and maybe a bit of theoretical analysis with visioning exercises for post-growth futures! When working-class perspectives are integrated-not merely consulted or given lip service- climate action becomes more democratic, grounded, transformative and responsive to real-life needs and challenges!   

Ashley Sheets is a degrowth and environmental labour activist and works as the Project Manager at Sunseed Desert Technology, a non-formal education project and international community in an off-grid village in southern Spain. Her background is in degrowth/post-growth futures, education, and environmental labour. Her work focuses on the intersections where environmental movements and labour activism meet. She is passionate about environmental labour activisms, holistic sustainable living practices, and sharing knowledge that strengthens our collective communities. She is an experienced facilitator and educator.  

Somatic Approaches on Gender Justice: Practicing Accountability & Allyship by Somatic Activism Leipzig

In this workshop, we will dive into individual and collective somatic explorations to research how our bodies are and have been shaped by patriarchal power structures. How can we become aware of this and practice embodied consciousness? At the same time, how can we shape and reshape those structures, our communities, and ourselves through embodied action? We will explore our ability to stay accountable and active through an ally and being allied practice. We warmly welcome cis gendered and TIAN* bodies.   

Somatic Activism Leipzig is a collective space to explore and integrate political somatics through movement, art and community building.  This workshop will be facilitated by Anno & Celi (they/them, white, able-bodied).

Fatphobia (black and antiracist edition) by DEI Futuro Antirazzista

Our society makes us struggle with our bodies, helped by the influence of the media, our family members might be fatphobic too, and the lack of positive representation makes fat people feel seen only when it comes to mocking, degrading and ugliness. This workshop doesn't aim to make someone confident about their body in just one day, but wishes to give you the tools to understand, to educate yourself and love your body, regardless of its shape, size and form.  

Degrowth Introduction Workshops - 5th August

Foundations of Degrowth Thinking by Nazemi

This workshop offers a big-picture introduction to degrowth as a systemic transformation. We will briefly cover critiques of economic growth and focus predominantly on the three dimensions of degrowth: biophysical, systemic, and cultural. By using the iceberg model from systems thinking, we'll uncover leverage points for deep societal change. Designed for both newcomers and those seeking a broader, holistic perspective on degrowth, the session blends frontal input with participatory discussions.  

This workshop will be facilitated by Tadeáš Žďárský, part of the Non-Growth Team at NaZemi.  The team was founded in 2021 to spark conversation around non-growth in the Czech context. They promote the idea that a dignified and high-quality life for all is possible within planetary boundaries.   

The White Savior’s Grave: Feeling What Does Not Want to Be Felt by Bernice Lysania Ekoula Akouala & Valentin:e Brasser

An attempt to make the invisible visible.

In this workshop, we enter a space that often remains unnamed and untouched: the somatic experience of whiteness. We look into the places where the nervous system builds protective mechanisms, where avoidance and denial arise, where not-wanting-to-feel becomes a subtle expression of power and violence. The focus of my research lies in predominantly white spaces and institutions. Therefore, this offering is primarily aimed at white people. However, this does not mean that non-white individuals are excluded - rather, I wish to be transparent about the framework in which we work: We engage with whiteness as an embodied structure - a space that can and likely will reproduce violence. Non-white participants should be aware of this context and can then decide for themselves whether they wish to enter this space. Together, we explore how denial functions as a form of protection and how somatic practices and questions can support us in entering into sensation without becoming overwhelmed. We work with movement exercises, writing rituals, and dialogical questions. 

Note on the term 'white': The term does not describe a biological characteristic but a socially constructed position that comes with privileges in predominantly white, Western societies. In anti-racism work, the term is often written in lowercase and italics, and stands in contrast to BIPoC and Black people.   

Bernice Lysania Ekoula Akouala
Social worker, spoken word artist, and Master's student in Critical Social Practice in Art Education at ZHdK.In this research, she asks how the visible becomes visible - and what must be unlearned and newly learned in the process. Black, positioned within the diaspora.

Valentin:e Brasser
Art mediator and also a Master's student in Critical Social Practice at ZHdK.Engages with systemic critique, healing processes, points of pain, and the question of how letting go can be embodied and where collective pain intertwines. White positioned.   

Capitalism, Colonialism, and Growth: Understanding the Roots & Degrowth Alternatives by ECHO

In this workshop, we'll dive into degrowth as both a critique of the current system and as a radical alternative. We'll uncover how capitalism and colonialism fuel ecological destruction and social injustice - and how degrowth offers a bold, systemic alternative. Through political analysis and collective imagination, we'll learn to recognise patterns of domination and oppression in the current system and explore radical visions for a liberated future.  

Beyond the binary by Degrowth Copenhagen

This workshop is a collective research of individual liberation from the terrifying dichotomy human vs. nature. After an initial moment of prompted reflection on this binary framework, we will explore and gradually blend with the surroundings. Participants, facilitators, and surroundings will gradually become a whole, a community comprising human beings, plants, soil, and rocks. We will take the shape of an altar/portal that both celebrates and grieves the end of the world we knew and the beginning of a polyphonic symphony: the beauty of togetherness.  

Let’s talk about gaps, baby! A Degrowth Laboratory of Taboos, Edges & Generative Friction by Ewa & Zofia

  Let's talk about gaps, baby! A Degrowth Laboratory of Taboos, Edges & Generative Friction Zofia and Ewa will hold a 2-hour experiential workshop where we collectively explore the edges, gaps, and areas of unawareness that often remain hidden in the degrowth community, e.g. the relation towards modernity and violence/nonviolence. We will aim to make space for the under-discussed terrains that may limit our capacity for generative alliances and non-bullshit solidarity. Together, we'll ask: •⁠ ⁠What are we not talking about enough in degrowth spaces? And why? •⁠ ⁠What are the consequences of these silences? •⁠ ⁠What strategic and generative invitations do these tensions hold for the future of degrowth? The first half of our time together will focus on collective inquiry-spicy, brain-tickling conversations that deepen our diagnostic gaze. In the second half, we will invite our bodies into the mix, using intuitive improvisation and embodied practices to map, animate and give voice to these taboos and tensions in the space around us. By the end, we hope to begin imagining how to move the edges, allow the silences to speak and move forward without being blind to differences - so that something new can emerge.  

 This workshop is aimed at those already familiar with the degrowth field - regardless whether your experience comes from within the degrowth umbrella or movements next to it.   

Creative Workshops - 6th to 8th August

Beyond plunder: Living bodies and territories in resistance to extractivism by Airam | 6th August

Drawing on Latin American grassroots struggles, this collective workshop invites us to explore, through sensorial and embodied practices, how extractivism, beyond being an economic model, operates as a colonial logic of domination that transforms territories, bodies, and knowledge into exploitable resources. From Indigenous resistance to everyday practices of care, we will affirm the body as a territory of struggle and defense of life against dynamics that threaten the planet, violate the rights of life, and deepen inequalities. We seek to share tools of resistance, strengthen alliances, and co-create post-extractivist imaginaries based on climate justice, territorial sovereignty, and interdependence.  

Lino Printing as a Tool for Undoing Extractivism by RE-PEAT | 6th August

 This hands-on workshop will digest anti-extractivist conversations from the day through the collective, tactile practice of lino printing. Drawing inspiration from soil cores, each participant will carve and print a layer that symbolizes what needs to be returned to the ground: gestures of repair, resistance, and regeneration. Together, these layers form a visual archive of what it means to undo extractive systems. No experience needed, just a willingness to explore with your hands.  

Rafoo : Mending Beyond Fabric by Compassion Contagion | 6th & 8th August

Rafoo - an Urdu word means to mend or darn a cloth, by hand stitching over a hole or tear to make it less visible. Mending Beyond Fabric is a slow, tactile workshop in which (Rafoo) mending is used as a metaphor - inviting participants to reflect on personal and collective ruptures, whether internal, historical, or structural, through the intimate, symbolic act of stitching. Through a series of guided prompts, participants engage with fabric- tearing, marking, and mending as a way to explore vulnerability, care, and resistance. Rather than seeking to "fix" what is torn, we ask: What does it mean to stay with the fray? To hold rupture with tenderness? Participants stitch slowly, using visible mending techniques like darning, kantha, or sashiko, patchwork, etc, to create a living archive of what has stretched or worn thin in their lives and communities. In doing so, the workshop becomes a space of liberatory practice, where making becomes a form of quiet resistance against extractivist pressures to produce, to fix, or to explain. Instead, Mending Fabric centers care, slowness, and embodied presence. The workshop will be facilitated by Rafooghar-the house that mends - a community space for rest, leisure, and soft resistance located in one of the most marginalized neighborhoods of New Delhi, India. Here, embroidery and textiles are used as tools to share stories, understand each other's lives, and discover solidarity in our everyday struggles, despite our many differences.   

Compassion Contagion ​was created as an online archive to document acts of compassion, solidarity and resilience during the pandemic through art, collages and graphic narratives. It's collective of ever growing team of artists, writers, volunteers and activists who believe in the the power of art, activism and storytelling to shift the narrative from despair to that of hope. 

Poly(is)topography by Carlo Sella | 6th and 7th August

 Poly(is)topography means place (topos), means writing (graphein), means poly (many), means polis (citizens' common ground). It's a collective research to find and write ourselves in/through the space. It's seeing the space as a book where we find inscriptions of our stories, and from there, we try to generate new ones. Poly(is)topography is a script-based collaborative performance, aimed at groups of people wanting to explore the topics of extractivism & antifascism through the here-and-now of our throwntogetherness, also known as (public) space.  

Too much noise for my inner animal by Maiskind | 6th and 8th August

If you feel it-dance. Issie and Cony offer a space to awaken the body and senses, reconnecting with our inner animal and the world around us. Rooted in the ancestral knowledge of maize, maiskind challenges Western norms through queer, feminist, and decolonial practices of care, imagination, and collective embodiment. There is urgency in reflecting together-with our bodies, our queerness, and our dreams. Come move, rest, trust, play. Let your body imagine and create utopia. No dance experience needed.   

Breathing Life into Post-capitalist Utopias by Maria Syed, Tommy Klug, Charlotte Sophia Bez and Nina Radakovich | 7th & 8th August

The year is 2052. Rising fascism and democratic decay in the early 21st century, coupled with accelerated climate catastrophe and care crisis, fomented a series of mass, transnational revolutions. Utopia Planning Councils have been established to compost fossil legacies based on feminist and decolonial restorative and redistributive justice principles. As a survivor of this revolution and Architect of the After, you are invited to share your vision for a new commune in the region formerly known as Saxony-Anhalt. This immersive workshop invites participants to collaboratively imagine post-capitalist futures through the creation of fictive interview transcripts. The workshop will be rooted in interdisciplinary and intersectional activist practice, (bridging breathwork, creative writing, and decolonial climate justice) and aims to spark bold, collective imaginations for radical futures.  

We Gather in the Cracks: An Invocation of Fugitive Collaborations by Abraham Tettey | 7th & 8th August

In a world increasingly shaped by extractive economies, rising fascisms, and the erosion of collective knowledge, how do we rehearse resistance without replicating the hierarchies we seek to dismantle? We Gather in the Cracks is a participatory workshop designed to address this pressing question by offering an intentional, embodied exploration of collective resistance, care, and disorientation through movement-based practices, embodied learning, and collaborative zine-making.  

Abraham Tettey is a Ghanaian artist, curator, and community facilitator working at the intersections of embodied pedagogy, decolonial practice, and ecological thought. Their work has been presented in workshops, residencies, and community spaces across Ghana, Netherlands, Germany and Austria, and is rooted in anti-disciplinary practices that center collaboration, care, and collective authorship. Their workshops often emerge from lived experience, political urgency, and a commitment to creating sustainable, liberatory forms of gathering.  

Aesthetics of Solidarity by Kuringa | 7th and 8th August

The Theatre of the Oppressed raises questions, develops images, explores different perspectives and celebrates the aesthetics of theatre as a space for encounter and transformation. In this workshop, we propose an aesthetic exercise in which we develop creative alternatives for transforming reality. We will work with a repertoire of exercises, games, and original techniques featured in the book TEATRO DE LAS OPRIMIDAS: Feminist Aesthetics for a Political Poetics written by Bárbara Santos. KURINGA has become a center for training in the Theatre of the Oppressed, a space for rehearsals and public performances of Forum Theatre groups, as well as a venue for other events related to theatre and the aesthetics of the oppressed.   

Eva Gloria - Theater pedagogue specialized in Theatre of the Oppressed and Teatro de las Oprimidas. Eva is part of Madalena-Berlin and Kuringa  

Minimal Resources, Maximum Impact: Filmmaking with a Single Camera and Recycled Sound by Kaya van den Handel | 8th August

Join this hands-on, eco-conscious filmmaking workshop where creativity meets constraint. Using just one camera, a basket of recycled props, and found sound objects, participants will explore how to craft powerful one-take slow films that resonate with themes of resistance and liberation. Learn old-school cinematic techniques, collaborate in small groups, and discover how minimal tools can lead to maximum storytelling impact.  

Feeling the Struggle by Militanz | 7th August

Antifascist struggles challenge us politically, physically and emotionally. After the roundtable , we invite you to join us in a space where we can tune into our bodies and explore how the discussion has affected us. Which sensations and emotions remain after the discussion? Where do we feel tightness, numbness or constriction, and what do these areas need? How do our bodies respond when we engage with crisis, resistance, dystopia and utopia? All are welcome - no prior experience is necessary, just an open mind and a willingness to connect through embodied exploration. We are Militanz - a collective exploring how political struggles and crises can be processed through and with the body, movement, and emotions. In workshops and on the streets, we create spaces for expression, feeling, and connection. For us, moving together and making space for emotions and embodied processing is not just vital - it's a radical act of resistance.   

Cultural Program

Gigi Saggi Dance Band | Concert | 5th August

The musicians of the Gigi Saggi Dance Band are passionate cooks. So it's hardly surprising that they transform the most (un)ordinary stages into bubbling cooking pots. Their songs combine indie, funk and psychedelia with improvisation and sound experiments, seasoned with live visuals by video artist Eva Luxem. The result is an energetic soup that eventually boils over when the quartet invites with infectious charisma into the psychedelic worlds of slime moulds and microbes, crows and tomato plants. Under the slogan 'Dance Music for Earthly Survival', the Gigi Saggi Dance Band brings together what is often separated: Body and mind, nature and culture, danceable music and transformative futures. They enjoy working with artists and activists: In 2020, they wrote a song for the 'Forno Vagabondo' project by designer Flora Mammana (La Foresta Rovereto), and in 2023 embarked on a journey to Documenta fifteen with cargo bikes alongside the //KOMPOST Ensemble. In March 2025 they released their debut album BLOB MUSIC.  

Las Perras del Infierno | Concert | 5th August

Las Perras del Infierno is an all-female band from Dresden. The musicians themselves come from countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, and Germany. A combination of freedom and empowerment makes their live show an explosion of emotion and multiculturalism, with Latin American rhythms and Caribbean sounds such as ska, reggae, cumbia, and dembow, mixed with punk!  Las Perras are currently in the process of recording their debut album, which will be loaded with frenetic rhythms that will make you dance while delivering a social message.

Bruno Tomasello | Concert | 5th August

Bruno Tomasello is an Italian saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist whose work explores the expressive possibilities of the alto saxophone in dialogue with popular and ethnic music traditions. Deeply engaged in total improvisation and extended techniques, he has collaborated with numerous artists in both live performances and recordings. In 2025, he released his first solo album La terra è pesante, a live project entirely based on improvisation. He has studied with masters such as Ustad Daud Khan Sadozai, Murat Salim Tokaç and Ross Daly, bringing the saxophone into unconventional musical contexts like Afghan music and the Ottoman Makam. Through his multi-instruementalist solo project of instant composition called "Call me Ishmael", born in the summer of 2022, he toured various Italian regions. He was also featured at the Windcraft Music Festival in Cyprus in projects like The Fellowship of Aeolus, the Kardjin Quartet, and the Idaeon Project, confirming his role as a boundary-pushing artist in contemporary music.   

Barking Varietà by Amaia Rodríguez and Lollo Cattel | Performance | 8th August

What happens when we step out of our usual roles and embrace the unexpected? When a pianist begins to dance, and a dancer starts to sing? When perra ("dog" or "bitch" in Spanish) transforms into a word of empowerment? The energy unleashed can overturn established dynamics, shifting power structures and bringing liberation. Drawing on a reimagining of traditional musical and artistic genres, Barking Varietà explores the masks we wear to conform to societal norms of masculinity and femininity. From this exploration emerges a shared moment of freedom through music, dance, and the rediscovery of the body. It is an artistic and personal liberation that invites us to see ourselves and each other beyond imposed roles and expectations. This performance blends dance, physical theatre, and live music, taking inspiration from the eclectic tradition of teatro varietà. Its vibrant, collage-like mix of sounds, languages, and movements reflects the dynamics of power and liberation, while its fragmented structure mirrors the fluid nature of identity: neither fixed nor binary but discovered in diversity and movement.  

Amaia Rodríguez (she/her) is a multidisciplinary dancer, political activist and gender studies student based in barcelona. Her artistic projects focus on theatre and queer flamenco, while she has professionalized in the field of workshops, where she combines her political and artistic expertise. Lorenzo Cattel (he/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and philosophy graduate based in milan. They play classical piano, they are a DJ and work as a curator for different performative projects. They wrote their philosophy master's thesis on the philosophy of listening and embodiment of the senses, themes which are applied to their art practices.      

Elijah Kashmir | Performance | 8th August

Born and raised in Odense, Denmark, Elijah Kashmir's musical journey is one of rebellion and self-reclamation. A nonbinary Palestinian artist, Elijah blends hard-hitting instrumentals with evocative lyricism to create sonic spaces that challenge, provoke, and heal. In their own words: "Since normal is a system of oppression, let's crash it." With an audacious fusion of electronic, pop, reggaeton, and rap, Elijah crafts soundscapes that hold space for both empowerment and pain-shattering norms while making room for something freer, something raw. Their rise has been marked by milestones that speak to both cultural weight and creative power. Singles like 'NOT ENOUGH' and 'BADU' sparked waves with their unapologetic narratives and unrelenting presence. Elijah has lit up stages across Denmark-from Villa CPH to the Royal Danish Theatre, from SPOT Festival to opening for queer icon Mykki Blanco. A defining moment came at Roskilde Festival, where Elijah performed with Shamelezz to an ecstatic crowd of 20,000. Their work has earned praise in Soundvenue's "Top Tracks" and recognition in Gaffa's "Keep an Eye On" spotlight. In 2023, they were nominated for "Artist of the Year" at the Danish Rainbow Awards. Up next, Elijah Kashmir brings their full spectrum to ALT SHIFT-delivering both a live performance and a genre-bending DJ set that promises to break boundaries and move bodies.