This one-day workshop focuses on practices of memorial restitution through sound. Participants are introduced to Radio El Wafa and Sawt al Muhajir – two Arab radios founded in Brussels in the 1980s, during a period when pirate radio stations were flourishing across the city. Drawing on fragments of sounds gathered through collective listening sessions in the Kitchen, Brussels, the workshop examines how translocal solidarities, that were once activated across these free radio networks, continue to resonate today.

By presenting sonic traces and working alongside testimonies from witnesses from the 1980s, the workshop opens a space to engage with ongoing conversations on collective imagination, memory practices, and solidarity work. The archives that are used in this process are part of First Waves – a collaborative open platform that proposes to share the often-silenced stories of the struggles for dignity of the Maghrebi and Black diasporas in Belgium.

Redistributing Solidarity is open to everyone, with no prior experience needed. It welcomes participants interested in how traces of political engagement can be redistributed and re-imagined over time, and how listening – both individual and collective – can act as a critical practice of memorial justice. During the workshop, English, French, and Arabic are facilitated as working languages.

Lunch is provided by Sonic Acts and included in the workshop price.

Part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, a collaboration between Paradiso and Sonic Acts, co-funded by the European Union.