Call for Sessions
Survival Infrastructures 2.0, Rotterdam, 2026

Survival Infrastructures 2026 will take place at Gemaal op Zuid on Saturday October 3. Once again, we invite people, organizations, collectives, initiatives and movements active in and around Rotterdam to come together. We hope this second edition will be at least as exciting and engaging as the previous one. Read more about our orientation, plans and practical information below.

We are living through profoundly unstable times. Brutal hierarchies are intensifying: the rich and the poor, the lucky and the unlucky, the bombers and the bombed. Military escalation and mass killing by imperial states are becoming ever more normalized. In our immediate surroundings, liberal government is becoming ever more comfortable with fascist collaboration. Prices continue to rise. Prospects continue to worsen. Hate proliferates.

People of Rotterdam face the triple danger of a) being located at a crucial node of the war machine and therefore also a direct target, b) being a site for experiments in how to govern declining living conditions, and c) being home to longstanding reactionary politics that show little sign of extinguishing. It’s not that we’re running out of time, it’s that we need to get out of this timeline. We must imagine, plan and build Survival Infrastructures by strengthening the entanglement of our struggles.

Much like last year, we want to create a day of gathering to work on these issues. We really enjoyed the previous edition and received many good ideas for this year’s version. We can’t do everything at once, but hope to incorporate much of what we’ve learned.

Session Proposals
As before, our focus is on how we survive together: food provision, (mental) health care, (collective) housing, (more!) art, music, and poetry, (radical) education, abolition, legal expertise, digital alternatives, self-defense, cooperative production, (urban) agriculture, children’s power, etc. We specifically encourage proposals that feature hands-on activities, collaboration, and practical skills.
Sessions can be open to anyone or have a “closed-door” set-up. Sessions can be quite scripted, deliberately improvisational, work towards a clear goal, seek to launch activities beyond the day itself. But don’t feel restricted by our suggestions, we’d love to hear your ideas.

Please send us a brief outline for the session you have in mind until May 25, which includes:

• Who you are (outlines can be submitted by single entities, a coalition of people, and organizations)

• What you want to do (Include some basic information about practical and technical requirements; any accesibility needs; language of the session, we strongly invite Dutch-language sessions)

• How your proposal connects to Survival Infrastructures (short description, for example on the connection to the call for sessions, connection to the last edition, connection to the theme in general etc.)

Organizing the day
The organizing group will compose the proposals into a diverse program that will also feature time to hang out and meet, music and dancing, a specific program for kids, and of course: a community lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate every proposal we receive due to the limited time and space available to us on the day.

We depend on the community to help out with preparations and during the day itself. Let us know if you’d like to help by sending us an email. More information about the day and the program will be shared through our networks and our instagram account (@survivalinfrastructures). Let us know if you have any additional questions or concerns and please send your proposals to survivalinfrastructures@riseup.net by May 25.

With love,

the Survival Infrastructures organizing group