Unpaid labour is keeping Brussels grassroots events alive. We need community to keep it sustainable.
A call for support from Brussels-based organisers.
This article is co-authored by 11 event organisers in Brussels. Full list of signatories below. We take new signatures, just reply to this email if you’re interested.
People want to meet people. And it’s hard. Particularly in Brussels, and particularly now. The possibilities to build community are being eroded by the increasing economic instability and cost of living crisis, the persistent phenomenon of burnout and stress, and a geopolitical climate threatening to throw our futures into uncertain straits.
Most of us who organise grassroots events - meaning volunteer-led, largely unfunded community events that don’t constitute our day job - are familiar with the struggle to pull off events under increasingly challenging circumstances.
We feel the need to highlight how organising these events has always depended on both a tremendous amount of unpaid labour and time of the volunteers who organise them, and on the engagement and enthusiasm of those who attend - and that without that engagement, we struggle to sustain this level of work.
We organise because we know these spaces matter and we know people value them. Connection is an antidote to burnout, a tonic for individualism and a source of potential collaborations, friendships and new ideas. In the polycrisis, we need these spaces.
We organise around our full-time jobs, studies, personal commitments, travel for work, and around mental and physical health conditions. We often work through language barriers, as many of us are not native French or Dutch speakers, and while working in low-paid and stretched sectors. We often work alone or with one or two volunteers.
Despite this, because we are motivated and we care, we run events, often free or with an affordable ticket price. We contact venues, make space in our calendars two or three months ahead, organise volunteer meetings, source catering options, stay up late finalising graphic designs for promotional posters and social media, create the event pages, manage tickets and donations, field questions from potential attendees, find volunteer photographers or videographers, make posts every day or every other day on social media to promote attendance, pin posters up in our office buildings and distribute them in cafes.
We arrive early to set up the venue, we buy the necessary equipment and snacks and drinks - often out of our own pocket - host and facilitate the event, and stay at the end to help clean and thank the venues. We go home at midnight, exhausted, and get up at 7am for work the next day. Then we send follow-up emails with feedback surveys, invitations to follow more of our work, and requests to share photos on social media. Then start it all again for the next event.
We see that people are enthusiastic and think it’s a good idea but often don’t show up. Then they say When is the next one? And often don’t show up to that either.
We want to do more. We do. But it’s getting harder for us to sustain these events and spaces.
It’s hard economically, firstly. We as event organisers know the extreme struggle of finding funding or even 5 EUR donations at the door, and how quickly a token pricetag can drive away potential attendees. Venues that were free now charge hundreds just for the space, not including drinks or food. Third spaces are vanishing.
We pay for the volunteer travel costs and drinks ourselves, and cover the costs for low-income attendees.
Advice to look for ‘sponsors’ results in more work to email potential organisations that either don’t reply, or don’t see sufficient profit in sponsoring our activities. Community building is crucial, but it is not profitable, and our hyper-capitalist and neoliberal economic system is shrinking available funding sources and free spaces.
It’s also hard emotionally and psychologically. Free organising drives uncertainty. Average attendance is about 50% or less of those who register - and even less if the venue isn’t directly in the EU bubble, or the weather looks bad (or good), or it’s too close to the holidays or too close to deadline season. The time and capacity of volunteers is unpredictable and it is common to suddenly take on another person’s work last-minute.
We do this unpaid labour regardless, because we want to and because we believe it’s important and valued. And people ask again When is the next one?
The answer, of course, is that the next one depends on you, not just on us.
Free of cost does not mean free of commitment.
When an event is free, the only thing holding it together is mutual care. That means everyone who benefits from it should participate in some way: not just attend, but help, communicate, and take some shared responsibility. If we all show up, even in small ways, the work becomes sustainable. If we don’t, it burns out the few who are carrying everything.
Part of that commitment is communication. If you can’t come, tell us why. Not because we want to guilt you, but because silence erodes community fast. A quick message “can’t make it, here’s why” helps us plan, adjust, and trust that people actually care. Transparency and vulnerability keep community alive. If you can’t come, you can help us spread the word to your friends and online.
Everyone is a potential organiser, everyone is a potential villager. Building community is inherently reciprocal. In order to protect free events and free communities in Brussels, we need you to see yourself as co-creators, not just audience members.
Free events will not continue to exist if you don’t show up. What we need and crave as organisers is consistent, enthusiastic participation and involvement in initiatives that you think matter.
That means showing up, offering to volunteer, proposing collaborations (not just telling us what we should organise next!), inviting others to join the events, donating, sharing our events on social media, letting us know what you thought, posting about it afterwards, filling out feedback forms, asking if we need help with photos/videos/finding venues/promotion online, advocating for better funding for third spaces in Brussels, and ultimately offering to share resources, time and energy in whatever way you can.
We know you want community. We do too. Let’s start creating it.
SIGNED BY
Cass Hebron - The Green Fix
Tena Lavrenčić - Thinking Threads
Sara Hamedi (Zondra Sam) - multidisciplinary artist-researcher, activist for safer public spaces
Steph Yates - BarBichette
Christina Wunder - Idealists Quarterly
Kathryn Sheridan - PEOPLE PLANET PLACE
Charlie Stevens - Sidesplitters Comedy
Isabella Sofia De Gregorio, President of Eduxo.eu - European Network for Democracy and Equality and PCO and Events Manager (Professional Congress Organiser) for NGOs.”
Anna Gumbau - She Owns the Stage
Heli Pärna - Funny Women Brussels
Oleksandra Domagalo-Jacquemin - Union des Femmes Ukrainiennes en Belgique.
Brilliant as always, Cass (with acknowledgement and kudos to your co-authors on this piece too). As a community organiser in Australia, I can confirm it's exactly the same here. I wonder if any funders out there across the movements we organise for might like to support this kind of vital but under-recognised grassroots work somehow, and what that might look like.