RIOT! (Radical Imagination of Our Time!) | Queer Performing Arts Festival
Introducing RIOT! (Radical Imagination of Our Time)
We are beyond excited to announce that this year, in Riga, we are hosting RIOT! – a Queer Performing Arts Festival that dares to ask:
What does the world we want to live in look like? What could our queer future look like? And even more importantly, how can we start living it now?
Radošā rūpnīca Veldze, at the Katla māja (Boiler House) / Matīsa iela 8
Friday 26th until Sunday 28th September 2025
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► ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
Radical Imagination of Our Time is more than a festival. It’s a grassroots initiative in collective imagination. Rooted in the legacies of thinkers like Haiven, Khasnabish, Hooks, and Davis, RIOT! is a call to dream together: to resist limiting norms, to celebrate queer joy, and to begin creating the worlds we long for through performance, community, and radical creativity!
By materializing a queer present beyond constraining norms, the festival and the team behind it, invites us all to think of how more inclusive, colourful, caring and tender futures can be built, and to start making them, one performance at a time.
At the festival, queer artists, activists, and audiences from Latvia and across Europe will gather in Riga to share, co-create, experience and transform.
Through performances, workshops, panels, conversations, creative and expressive stations and more, we will explore how art is inevitable and how through performing arts, we turn imagination into movement, voice, and presence, shaping the futures and presents we long for!
The festival is self-organized and being co-designed and co-curated by 15 volunteers from all over Europe, working hand-in-hand with artists, mentors, and local queer communities based in Riga.
Together, we’re building not just a programme but a process, one that celebrates free expression, collaboration, imagination, and the power of being together.
Join us in Riga and be part of this act of Radical Imagination! Let’s gather for creativity, for community, and for the futures we dare to dream and act upon now!
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► ABOUT THE PROGRAMME
The programme is being crafted and it will be fully updated with all the times and hours in this post and additional posts, posters and information will be shared.
Friday 26.09
Festival opening at 18:00 pm
Saturday 27.09
Times to be announced
Sunday 28.09
Times to be announced.
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► ABOUT PRACTICAL INFORMATION
(Keep in mind - some practical aspects will be updated and added on the go!!!)
Entrance fee based on donation (to be updated)
Food/Drinks availabilities (to be updated)
The festival activities are going to be mainly in English. Latvian assistance will also be available.
The event will be photographed and video graphed for visibility and promotional purposes. At the entrance, there will be a consent form for guests to fill in.
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► ABOUT THE PROJECT
Humus - Co-creating a Festival for imagining Queer Futures project has welcomed 15 volunteers from European countries, who joined our team for co-creating of a Queer Performing Arts festival, made by queer people for queer community and allies.
The festival is part Humus project, a volunteering teams project in High Priority Areas. It is co-funded by the European Union and the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) via the European Solidarity Corps Programme.
