12 Jun

15:00

Felix Meritis

Keizersgracht 324, Amsterdam

Join a day of refugee-led visionary talks, performances, workshops, and art exploring radical hope and courage. The event includes a community dinner and an afterparty.

Toward a Radical Future

More info & tickets

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

Whether you join us for a single event or the entire day, we got options. All you have to do is choose:

Workshop option A: Shameless Anger: Channeling Trapped Emotions

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.

Accessibility: please note that our Koepelzaal is only accessible by stairs. This only applies for those attending the workshop.

Workshop option B: Spotlight

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.

Expo, Films & Showcases

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.

Community dinner

Join us for a community dinner with delicious Palestinian food by Sufret Salma.

Evening program & afterparty

Join us for an evening program that brings together voices and stories of migration, memory, and the courageous ways we live together. The program opens with a keynote by the Palestinian human defender and anti-colonial queer activist Omar al-Khatib, followed by a performance by trans artist, poet, and multidisciplinary practitioner Jonon Zulaikho. Enjoy music by Sudanese composer Mohamed Al Tayeb and take part in an open conversation with our guests. After the program, you are welcome to unwind with us on the dancefloor with music and visuals by Syrian artist, DJ, and mucisian Adnan Samman.

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.

Featured Artists & Speakers

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.