Toward a Radical Future
This program will be in English
What becomes possible when we choose radical hope over fear, and imagination over borders?
Refugee Welcome Week returns to Felix with a second edition. Centered around Radical Hope & Courage, this program explores what future(s) we can build together through art and collective imagination.
Join us for a day full of refugee-led visionary talks, performances, workshops, and photography exploring radical hope and courage, featuring a wide range of thinkers, artists, and activists. Take part in a community dinner and end the evening on the dancefloor with vibrant sounds and visuals by Syrian artist, DJ, and musician Adnan Samman.
Program outline & ticket tiers
Whether you join us for a single event or the entire day, we got options. All you have to do is choose:
Do you wanna scream? Then join us in Shameless Anger, where we channel trapped emotions. In a world that asks us to stay composed while everything feels like it’s falling apart, where does our anger go? Facilitated by Nisala, Rufino and Sófian, this workshop creates space to acknowledge, explore, and release emotions that are often suppressed, especially for those navigating displacement, injustice, and constant pressure to “hold it together.”
Through guided exercises, collective reflection, and body-based practices (including breathwork, voice, movement, grounding, and yes, possibly screaming), we’ll explore how anger lives in the body, and how it can be expressed safely, collectively, and without shame. Open to refugees, newcomers, and anyone who feels the weight of the current moment in their body and is looking for a space to process it collectively. No prior experience needed.
Note: this program takes place alongside Workshop B. You can only sign up for one!
Accessibility: please note that our Koepelzaal is only accessible by stairs. This only applies for those attending the workshop.
€5,00
Spotlight Team International Art invites you for a unique program centered around their fieldwork in Gaza and Syria. Expect storytelling, a Dabke workshop, a screening of the short film “Colored Dust”, and direct interaction with their teams on the ground.
Note: this program takes place alongside Workshop A. You can only sign up for one!
€5,00
We turn our beloved Concert Hall into an exhibition space where cinema, photography, performance, and research come together. We showcase short films by Roua Jafar, Emmanuela Agik, and Idris Elhassan, photography by investigative journalist Fadel Dawod titled “Hidden Stories: Breaking the Silences that Immobilize Us” (curated by Carolina Montenegro), and artistic outcomes from research materials by the Spotlight Team International Art, focusing on their fieldwork in Gaza and Syria.
At 7 PM, you’re welcome to join us for a sonic lecture by Talyshi cultural heritage specialist Gunay Rzazada and Iranian-Canadian DJ & producer Ayeda.
Free access
Join us for a community dinner with delicious Palestinian food by Sufret Salma.
Please make sure to select a ticket including dinner if you would like to join.
Join us for an evening program that brings together voices and sounds of migration, memory, and the courageous ways we live together. The program centers the work of Palestinian human rights defender and anti-colonial queer activist Omar al-Khatib, with interventions by trans artist, poet, and multidisciplinary practitioner Jonon Zulaikho, and Neo-sufi music by Sudanese composer Mohamed Al Tayeb and his band. Take part in an open conversation and unwind with us on the dancefloor with music and visuals by Syrian artist, DJ, and mucisian Adnan Samman.
€12,30 – €16,00
About Refugee Welcome Week
Refugee Welcome Week NL 2026 is a refugee-led programme bringing together young refugees and newcomers across four Dutch cities. Over two weeks, participants take the lead as performers, curators, hosts, producers, and storytellers, creating spaces of connection through art, discussion, film, music, food, and community action. Refugee Welcome Week NL is part of the wider international Refugee Week movement and is organised in close partnership with Refugee Week UK. Explore the full programme at refugeewelcomeweek.nl.
Omar al-Khatib
Omar al-Khatib is a prominent anti-colonial, feminist, and queer activist and writer based in Jerusalem, Palestine. His work focuses on gender, sexuality, and resistance under settler colonialism. Omar has organized across Palestine for over nine years, including six years with the leading Palestinian queer organization alQaws, and was detained for 16 months in Israeli prisons during the genocide.
Jonon
Jonon is a trans woman artist, poet, dancer, and multidisciplinary practitioner whose work moves between text, body, fabric, and ritual. Working across six languages, she explores identity, embodiment, transformation, and spiritual memory. Her practice brings together performance, textile sensitivity, poetic language, and healing-based rituals.
Fadel Dawod
Fadel Dawod is an Amsterdam-based Egyptian photojournalist who started his career at the young age of 17 with Al Masry Al Youm, covering historic events. His work was published by global outlets including The New York Times and The Guardian, and exposes the brutal realities of social injustice. Driven to dissect identity, exile, and displacement among marginalized peoples, Dawod uses photography to confront oppression and reclaim freedom.
Adnan Samman
Adnan Samman is a Syrian artist, DJ, and musician. He joins us with the audiovisual project Eyeless in Damascus, a live improvisation merging field recordings and samples with electronics and synthesizers. Samman creates soundscapes that are sometimes comforting, sometimes unsettling, but always curious and exploratory. Eyeless in Damascus has already been performed at Utrecht’s ACU, Rotterdam’s WORM and most recently a sold-out show at Filmhuis Cavia in Amsterdam.
Mohamed Al Tayeb
Mohamed Al Tayeb is a singer, songwriter, and composer who seeks to translate the complex social and spiritual poetry of Sudan into a unique, sophisticated acoustic sound. Singing exclusively in Sudanese Arabic, his music draws deeply from the Sufi tradition and the mesmerizing simplicity of the pentatonic scale. He fuses this ancient core with the rhythms of Western jazz and chamber music to create a truly global sound.
Gunay Rzazada
Gunay Rzazada is a cultural heritage specialist born in Lankaran, Azerbaijan. Her work focuses on documenting the oral histories and cultural practices of marginalized communities, exploring how memory, heritage, and ecological knowledge shape identity and collective belonging.
Belonging to the Talysh ethnic minority and growing up between Azerbaijan and Russia, she became aware of how easily voices of small communities can be silenced and cultural continuity can be disrupted. Her practice responds through living heritage traditions such as weaving, storytelling, and women-led craft practices, treating cultural legacy as a living archive of memory, resilience, and quiet resistance.
AYEDA
AYEDA is an Iranian-Canadian DJ & producer,based in the Netherlands. Her sound is a vibrant fusion of Southwest Asia and North Africa inspired melodies, experimental electronic, UK-garage and tech house. She presents a sound that pushes the boundaries of tradition, fusing genre-bending frequencies rising from the underground. Ayeda has performed at festivals such as Amsterdam Dance Event, Queer Intimacy Festival and Kinetic. She has held radio residencies and aired on B-Side Radio, Operator Radio, Radio Weesper, and other community radios across Europe.
Spotlight Team International Art
Founded in 2018 by artivist Mostafa Betaree, Spotlight Team International Art is a Dutch-based, artist-led organization working across Gaza, Syria, and Europe through performance, film, music, and participatory methods. Led by newcomers and refugees, the organisation develops long-term projects at the intersection of art, human rights, and community.
For this program, Spotlight Team will curate the expo hall with materials from their fieldwork in Gaza and Syria, where art is used as a tool for psychosocial support, expression, and the creation of safe spaces within communities affected by war and displacement. Their contribution includes the screening of the short film Colored Dust, storytelling, and opportunities to engage directly with members of their team.
Palestinian food by Salma Barakat
Founded by Salma Barakat, Sufret Salma carries the flavors of Gaza City. What started as a desperate effort to keep her family alive, Sufret Salma has grown into Salma’s life work: securing medical passage and healing for Gaza’s injured children. Through Sufret Salma, you are invited you to see Gaza not just through its struggle, but through the strength of its people and the hope we refuse to let go.
Milka Yemane – Host
Milka Yemane is a proud African Eritrean diasporan and refugee millennial. She has worked for many years on issues related to migration and refugee policies in the Netherlands, Lampedusa, and Turkey. She founded and led an Eritrean diaspora-led organisation focused on cultural awareness and effective integration policies and strategies based on the needs of newcomers. Currently, she is serving her second term as a city councillor in Amsterdam and is the head of the International Foundation GroenLinks, where she works with progressive civil society organisations in SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) and South East Europe. Recently, she also became the Chair of War Child.
Films
Every Delinquency into Oblivion (Jafar, 2022)
Every Delinquency into Oblivion is a short film by Syrian multidisciplinary artist Roua Jafar. The film is a silent conversation with death. A poetic regression to Jafar’s personal journey from Syria to the Netherlands in 2014, through one of the deadliest refugee routes linking West Asia to Europe.
Fear and Love (Agik, 2026)
Fear and Love is about reaching deep into one’s inner self. Accepting and nourishing who one is. This is a personal piece. It is about not only going through all the emotions, the good and the bad, but it insits on learning how to accept, learn and give oneself grace through it all.
Not A Home by (Elhassan, 2025)
Not A Home is a collaborative film project by Idris Elhassan. It transforms lived experiences in camps during the asylum process into a dynamic artistic output. By centering refugee voices, the work maps alternative methods to challenge dominant narratives of migration in the Netherlands. Through community sharing circles, visual art, and participatory research, it offers a profound reimagining of care, resilience, and belonging.
Would you like to attend this program, but don’t have the means to pay for a ticket? Send an email to info@felixmeritis.nl, we can work something out.
Note: By booking this ticket, you agree to potentially be photographed during the event.