Come to the table! - Festivals as Spaces for New Ideas

Long Table organised by The Festival Academy in collaboration with Ettijahat in the framework of Rawabet Festival. 

Join our Long Table on 7 November at 4 pm at Wiels! 

With Alia Alzougbi (Artistic Director & CEO Shubbak Festival London), Karen El Haddad and Makram Al Halabi (co-founders Mirsat Brussels), Aymen Gharbi (Artistic Director See Djerba Tunis) and many more.

Rawabet Festivals 
Four festivals designed around themes of migration, mobility and visibility, and implemented in Berlin, Genoa, Oslo, and Brussels. The festivals include a rich and diverse programme of performance art, music, and multidisciplinary creations by new and emerging artists based in Europe, as well as select projects which have participated in the Rawabet Residencies and have received production grants. 

The concluding festival is taking place in Brussels from 5-7 November 2026.

Link to Rawabet Festival 2026

The Festival Academy, Mirsat, Proximanente Festival and Ru'qah invite your to a special edition of the Long Table

Join our Long Table on 17 November at 11 am at Ru'qahFrom 17 to 21 November 2026, Próximamente Festival returns to KVS. The 2026 edition unfolds in a world burdened by structural violence, destruction, and the return of old oppression logic in new disguises. Democracy, human rights, ecology and the arts are no longer self-evident, unambiguous concepts, but fragile territories under constant pressure.

Link to Proximamente Festival 2026

Link to the Long Table

The Long Table is a performance. Inspired by the intimacy of a shared dinner table, we kick off the conversation with a provocation related to the following questions: 'Can art festivals foster new ideas and be the bedrocks of transformative action, or are they inevitably complicit in reinforcing existing power relations and world orders/the status quo? '

The format is conceived by Lois Weaver in 2003 in response to the divided nature of conventional panel discussions. The Long Table is an open format and everyone is invited to contribute on equal terms. This Long Table takes place within a series of Long Tables organized by The Festival Academy with a previous edition at the Global Artivism convening in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil in November 2025 and in Theater der Welt Festival in Chemnitz, Germany in June 2026.