thursday 6th of august 2026
This year will be the fifth year Happy Crappy Queers hosts Bam Bam Slam. Our open stage happening during Antwerp Pride provided safer[r] space for our communities to gather, to provide support, a stage and a sympathetic audience for big and small acts of performance, try-outs or first steps in to the light. We've made showkes happen, radios heard, parades seen and parties explode. Since we joined forces, the local context has evolved and expanded, with collectives, initiatives and individual entities entering and fading out and in to the scene. We feel our selves being part of these fluid ecologies.
Your initiative, organisation or just you are also a part of this local scene and therefore you might share similar experiences and questions on what and who gets sidelined when maintaining forward propulsive motion in organizing for the next thing, the next Pride, the next protest, the next gathering? Which ways of connecting and recharging fall by the wayside? How do we run past each other and ourselves in our attempts to make intersectional communities happen? How can we keep on finding alliances and solidarities? How do we not only platform promoting but also documenting and remembering? How do we deal with diverse answers to these questions and don't fall in unresolved conflicts, pain, harm to each other and how do we care for and consolidate our communities? How do we stand together in our differences and keep on finding the energy to resist the more extreme world around us.
So, in 2026 we want to uphold our mission of being a low threshold for staging and gathering within our communities, but change how we bring it to life. We want to acknowledge the biodiversity of our community. Make space and - more importantly - time to meet each other, not to be productive, not to compete but to celebrate our local scene. We are creating together. Allowing histories, memories, stories to surface, about our individual and collective efforts & struggles, initiatives and performances. From the past, the future to the present. We will co-exist!
This is a signal sent through the mycelial network to let your bodies and mind come to fruit in the forest / @ Het Bos on Thursday 6th of August 2026. Please forward it to anyone you are entangled with and needs a BAM BAM SLAM!
WHY?
re-store
re-vival
re-living
re-connecting
re-igniting
re-sting
re-stage
HOW?
Support us to surface our own presences, histories and highlight our collective efforts. Bring an act, memory, story, an announcement, an anecdote, a snapshot - as grandiose or as intimate as you wish - to share on our multimodal stage: slideshow, mic, writing, drawing, massaging, tattoos, audio, video, ...
WHAT?
Thursday 6 aug 2026 - 19h @ Het Bos, Antwerpen
Food
Free contribution
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Send in your submission before Wednesday July 8 via happycrappyqueers@proton.me