168
Registered people
31
Guests
23
Interpreters
15
Sessions
The Unlearning Festival is an invitation to deconstruct harmful patterns and narrow perspectives; be challenged, provoked and inspired to rethink our practices and approaches.
The Festival features diverse and interactive online session formats to explore six forms of oppression that we all need to unlearn:
Confirmed Speakers
Adriana’s work centres on developing social and emotional competencies for collaboration, leadership, inclusion and social impact. In her approach to learning, she considers the different ways in which each of us learn best, incorporating elements of embodiment, self-reflection and personal sharing.
Adriana Costa
Allapopp
Allapopp’s queer and non-binary gaze focuses on tech-inclusive decolonial visions of the future and present. Drawing from the Tatar cultural heritage, allapopp invites to think about how AI reproduces existing power imbalances with a focus on imagining ways of reappropriating AI’s potential to rewrite the technological narratives.
Antonia Vilarinho
Antonia Vilarinho is a black neuro-adverse artist and artistic researcher from Brasília, Brazil. She’s also an atypical mother, clown, capoeirista, performer, director, actress and teacher.
Aslam Bulbulia is a 4th generation South African-Indian who has been on the land Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-waututh (Vancouver) for the pst 7 years. He led community engagement initiatives for many years and currently facilitates group conflict.
Aslam Bulbulia
Aude Nasr
Aude Nasr is a French-Lebanese illustrator based in Marseille, France. She collaborates with independent media and initiatives in the Middle-East and Europe, and shares her own illustrated stories along the way.
Dandara Manoela is a singer, songwriter, percussionist, artistic and cultural producer, and vocal educator. Her musical power is a symbol of the resistance of Afro-Brazilian cultural manifestations and of black and lesbian women in the artistic field. She moves through various Brazilian rhythms, such as samba and MPB, with Afro and Latin influences, singing of struggles, affections and subjectivities.
Dandara Manoela
Daouda Gueye is a research engineer in energy and natural resources development, environmentalist and climate leader, and chairman of the network of associations for the protection of environment and nature.
Daouda Gueye
Elyla is an artist and activist from Nicaragua, Mesoamerica. They are a Chontal reconnecting native mainly working in the fields of visual arts, performing arts and anticolonial artistic research.
Elyla
Etrit is a passionate explorer of human interactions and power dynamics. She guides inquisitive university students through the intricacies of political thinking. Loves designing conversations that nurture profound connections.
Etrit Shkreli
Hope Chigudu is an uncontainable feminist activist. She supports organisations and individuals by reminding them to keep their “vehicles” in good repair. Her home is in her body, and anywhere where we are collectively lifted, lightened and where liberating power pulsates through us and transforms all that is within, and leaves us pulsating with joy.
Hope Chigudu
Inaê Iabel Barbosa
Inaê Iabel Barbosa is a Brazilian non-binary and transfeminist social scientist and yoga instructor. They are enthusiast of encounters and co-productions and for sharing knowledge. Inaê designs and facilitates workshops and offers consulting on non-binarism, inclusive language and other topics linked to gender and sexual orientation.
Dance and anthropology as life perspectives have guided my walk, from questions more than answers, but above all, from the reaffirmation of my own being and my own identity; also from the question for the care and defense of life as an unfinished collective purpose. A process in which we unlearn, relearn, rebuild and reengage with each other and with all forms of life.
Indira Barbosa
Jude Clark, an African Feminist clinical psychologist and facilitator within the social justice domain who accompanies marginalized groups and movements in processes of radical wellness.
Jude Clark
Lana is a community alchemist, speaker, author, and learning design strategist with an extensive background in training and education. She is the author of Community Building: Designing Communities for Change”, “What’s Strong with You?” From Deficits to Strengths, and 90-Day Action Planner.
Lana Jelenjev
Leo Aquino is a storyteller, poet, screenwriter, and award-winning journalist covering anti-capitalist personal finance. He is also the founder of Queer and Trans Wealth, an organization dedicated to increasing the financial literacy and economic empowerment of LGBTQ communities.
Leo Aquino
Mbacke Seck has been a social worker for more than twenty years. He leads the fight against pollution in Hann Bay, the most polluted beach of Senegal. His actions pushed the gouverment to invest more than 62 million euros to restore the bay.
Mbacke Seck
Malu Dini has been working since 2012 as a designer, pedagogue and Brazilian Sign Language interpreter. In addition to her consolidated experience as an accessibility consultant, having provided her services to renowned institutions, Malu is also one of the creators of CoMonas, a project for and by the deaf lgbtqiapn+ community.
Malu Dini
Miriam Yosef is a researcher, political education facilitator, writer, and theater maker. She is working on interwoven diasporic narratives, resistance and alienation. Miriam is currently a Research Fellow at ELES and is pursuing a PhD on Critical Race Theory and Ashkenormativity at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Miriam Yosef
Mihaela Drăgan is a multidisciplinary artist with an education in theatre who lives in Bucharest and works in several other countries. In 2014, together with other Roma actresses, she co-founded Giuvlipen Theatre Company, for which she is an actress, playwright and director.
Mihaela Drăgan
Lebanese writer and researcher with a practice focused on media studies, nonfiction storytelling and Arab erotic histories.
Nadia Ali
Okara Yby is an indigenous descendant of the Potiguara people. They are a psychologist and non-binary. Okara grew up in Niterói (Brazil) and (re)exist outside sexual and gender normativity, also being non-monogamous. They are a grandchild of Mrs Maísa.
Okara Yby
Rheana Marchand
Rukiya Khamis is an environmental and human rights defender from Kenya, with a background in environmental science and water resource conservation and management. Rukiya works alongside communities across Africa to inspire an African climate justice movement, and leading fossil-free campaigns that bring back hope, power and dignity to the people of Africa.
Rukiya Khamis
Sarah Sandy is a citizen of the Anishnabek Nation and member of Beausoleil First Nation, G’Chimnissing on Georgian Bay. Sarah works to decolonize approaches in education and leadership. She collaborates on land-based experiential program and curriculum design, evaluation, and community engagement processes, committed to creating programs and pathways for people and their communities to heal and to connect with the life and land that surrounds them.
Sarah Sandy
Shrouk is a certified Erasmus+ Facilitator, Coach, NLP Practitioner, who collaborates with a range of organizations across Europe, Asia, and the USA, focusing on cross-cultural exchanges field. In addition, She is the founder and director of Yellow vs. Blue, and working hard towards promoting youth’s mental health and wellbeing through art, dialogue and theatre.
Shrouk Hussien
TAI is a visual artivist from Belém, Brazil, inspired mainly by Amazonian women and their ancestral culture. She has produced illustrations for various national and international companies, is the author of the comic book “Causos de Visagens para Crianças Maluvidas” (2022), and is a member of various activist groups.
TAI
Thu Hoài Trần is a theater creator, educator, and researcher. They are directing and writing plays, conducting research on theater and social inequality, sharing knowledge about intersectionality, contemplating solidarity and emotions, questioning power dynamics, and learning to embrace contradictions.
Thu Hoai Tran
Uwayo is a migrant that crossed multiple physical and symbolic boarders throughout her life. She is a proud pan-African trans woman of Rwandan descent and has called home multiple nations across Africa, Europe and North America. She is a public policy analyst, an artist, a community organizer and an avid traveler.
Uwayo Dushime
Waleska Queiroz, young black woman from the Amazon lives on the outskirts of Belém, Brazil. She is a communicator and a socio-environmental activist and one of the “Youth Climate Leaders”. She is president of the Jandyras Network and member of the COP Coalition of the Baixadas, where she addresses issues related to race, climate, gender and cities.
Waleska Queiroz
Testimonials from previous editions
What to
expect
Non-hierarchical approach
Co-responsibility
Intersectional approach
We invite everyone to be mindful of the different identities and experiences that will be present at the Festival. This requires us to listen carefully, reflect on how we communicate and the space we take up.
Who is
behind the
Unlearning
Festival?
Instituto NOW is a social enterprise powered by female and queer professionals from the Global South. We support purpose-driven organisations in their development and learning. Our work is guided by our values of social justice, sustainability and inclusion. The NOW Association is a swiss-based non-profit organisation that works to empower young people through inter-diversity learning.
We believe that selling tickets for the Festival should not be a barrier for anyone’s participation. That is why we use a sliding scale. We invite you to be conscious of your privileges when deciding the amount of your contribution.
If you are unsure where you stand in terms of income in comparison to other people on this globe, have a look at the World Inequality Database.