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Workshop on Feminist Utopias – Imagining Alternative Futures
Workshop on Feminist Utopias – Imagining Alternative Futures
October 11 @ 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm IST
An applied-theatre and participatory workshop led by Ekaterina Schalmann and Evdokia Romanova (aka Dunia)
Ekaterina Schalmann, theatre artist, drama teacher and researcher, and Evdokia Romanova (aka Dunia), an intersectional Feminist, Community Artist, and Human Rights Activist invite participants to imagine alternative feminist futures centred on care, solidarity, equality, ecological and social justice and collective liberation, using creative practices to question existing systems and rehearse more just futures. Presented by FemLink, a Queer, Feminist, Migrant Collective, based in Vienna, Austria
Book Your Place
Tickets free, but recommended donation of €15/€20 on the day
Artists
Ekaterina Schalmann, Theatre Artist, Drama Teacher, Researcher
Evdokia Romanova (aka Dunia), Intersectional Feminist, Community Artist, and Human Rights Activist
Full Event Details
In a world marked by the rise of authoritarianism, catastrophic climate change, ongoing wars, political violence, and multiple intersecting crises, it can become increasingly difficult to imagine a future beyond survival. We are constantly confronted with narratives of collapse, uncertainty, and fear. These realities can disconnect us from one another, fragment our communities, and make it difficult to believe that other ways of living are possible. Yet, in moments of crisis, the ability to imagine becomes a radical and necessary community practice.
What if we allowed ourselves to dream? What might our futures look like if we placed care, solidarity, equality, pleasure, ecological and social justice, and collective liberation at their centre?
The workshop Feminist Utopias places these questions at the forefront. Through applied theatre, embodied practices, and other interactive and creative formats, participants are invited to step into alternative feminist futures and explore the worlds that could exist beyond the present. Rather than understanding utopia as a perfect or fixed destination, we approach it as a creative process, a time travel to explore a shared rehearsal for the possible. Feminist utopics offers permission to challenge what we have been taught to consider inevitable. They enable us to question dominant systems of power and to imagine societies organised around different values.
Together, we will experiment with the so-called unrealistic realities, magical characters, queer relationships, far away spaces, and forms of collective life we are yet to discover. Through play and performance, we will ask not only what kind of world do we want? But what would become possible if gendered hierarchies, patriarchal structures, racism, exploitation, and extractive relationships with the Earth no longer defined our everyday lives? The workshop is an invitation to reimagine, rewrite, and rehearse the contemporary world. It is a space for collective dreaming, but also for critical reflection: to recognise that imagining another future is itself a political act.
We invite you to bring your experiences, questions, desires, contradictions, and wildest visions. Together, we will create fragments of feminist futures and develop our own proposals for worlds that have not yet come into being.
The workshop promotes a human rights agenda by creating a participatory space to imagine societies grounded in equality, dignity, freedom, care, solidarity, and collective liberation. The workshop also understands the right to participate, to express oneself, to be heard, and to collectively shape visions of the future as essential dimensions of human rights. Its inclusive and creative methodology encourages participants to bring diverse experiences, identities, desires, and perspectives into a shared process of reflection and dialogue.
All in all, the workshop frames imagination as a form of civic and political participation: a way to challenge what is presented as inevitable and to rehearse more just, inclusive, feminist, and sustainable futures.
This event is presented by FemLink Collective AT
FemLink is a queer feminist migrant collective dedicated to challenging oppression and discrimination. We create inclusive, horizontal spaces—virtual, physical, and public—where diverse identities come together to heal, connect, and foster solidarity. Rooted in creativity and care, we envision a future where queer, feminist, migrant, and curious individuals can move from othering to belonging, bridging communities and empowering each other to simply be. We are active in exploring the fields of collective care, craftivism and feminist resistance.
FemLink are a visiting collective attending the Irish Arts and Human Rights Festival 2026. They are based in Vienna, Austria.
Speaker Biographies:
Ekaterina Schalmann works at the intersection of art, activism, and community organising. Since 2020, she is a participatory theater artist and co-directs the theater collective Resilient Revolt. At Theater of the Oppressed Vienna she works as a drama teacher in schools and as a researcher in applied theater projects. She studied political economy, international relations and social ecology in Germany, the UK and Austria.
Evdokia Romanova (aka Dunia) is an intersectional feminist, community artist, and human rights activist. Her practice brings together artivism, theatre, collective care, and social justice, exploring how creative and participatory practices can become tools for resistance, connection, and social change. She has worked extensively on sexual and reproductive health and rights, queer feminist resistance, and the sustainability of radical activist communities. Her artistic practice is particularly rooted in theatre-based approaches. Dunia currently coordinates the Women in Development Europe network (WIDE Austria) and is a co-founder of the FemLink collective.
Organisations Involved / Partner Organisation(s):
