To reclaim, to recover, to regain
RECLAIM is a plural, open, generative verb. It denotes a necessary and collective action: bringing back to the center what has been taken away, marginalized, or denied.
That is why we felt this was the right title for the first edition of the COSPE Festival: an “Issue Zero” emerging in a historical period of profound uncertainty—a time when fundamental rights are being violated everywhere, international law is being ignored and replaced by the law of the jungle and the bombs of new colonial wars. A time when non-conforming identities and bodies are denied, threatened, or excluded by unjust and obscurantist laws; when the planet is wounded by growing extractivist and capitalist violence; when the space for dissent is shrinking and being curtailed in every public square and every context.RECLAIM is a plural, open, generative verb. It denotes a necessary and collective action: bringing back to the center what has been taken away, marginalized, or denied.
Against this backdrop, the Festival aims to be a shared space for speech, imagination, and action. A place where we can collectively claim a different destiny, reclaim our space and voice, and assert our rights and identities. A place where we can work together to reclaim what we’ve been told is lost or compromised. The starting point is the peripheries—geographical, political, and social—not as margins, but as centers for the creation of visions, practices, and the future.
COSPE, an international organization active since 1983, has always worked alongside civil society and resistance movements to facilitate change aimed at eliminating inequalities and building social, climate, and economic justice, while promoting self-determination, rights, and shared care. Together with communities and movements around the world.
This commitment also involves dismantling neocolonial and patriarchal models and supporting the regenerative capacities of communities and regions, restoring dignity, resources, and opportunities to people and the planet.
RECLAIM was born out of this journey. To imagine, together, societies that are more just, supportive, and sustainable.