As usual, this is an overly flamboyant title for what I plan to write about. Or maybe not? For the last 6 months or so I've been in the organisation of the first edition of the BAF camp, an activist festival in Belgium. It was incredibly intense, as I'm sure it is for most festivals when you're deep in the organisation, but there was something more to it, I think, and that was due to the self-organised aspect of the festival.

In the run up to the festival, the word "autogestion", disappointengly translated as "self-organisation" or "autonomy", was one of those buzzwords that was thrown around so much to me it felt like it lost a lot of its meaning. This was especially the case when we identified a problem and people would suggest that it could be solved with autogestion. Afraid of breaking even? Don't worry, "autogestion", we'll make announcements for people to donate more and all will be well. Self-organisation is a key part of anarchist, prefigurative politics, and I do believe in it, but I must admit that in the run up to the festival, when we were working almost non-stop to make sure the festival would run smoothly, this idea faded into the background of my mind.

And then the festival started. It's hard writing about it now, even just 3 days after, and to remember exactly what was going on and how it felt like, but I'll try. Often I would go to sort something out, like a projector, only to find out someone else had done it for me, and I'm sure I did the same for others too. At one point, on Saturday, I was so exhaused that I desperately needed a nap, and so I did so, despite being on shift, because when I walked around the tents I was supposed to manage they were all running smoothly. I had this suspicion that I had delegated tasks I didn't know I had to people I didn't know, and it was a relief to be able to trust in our collective efforts to keep the festival running.

Some more examples. At the end of the festival, we had an open space where people could discuss their ideas and upcoming initiatives. Aside from all the cool things people were planning, several groups discussed how to improve the festival by including more Dutch speakers, people with reduced mobility or avoid alcohol misuse and abuse. These were all issues we had raised internally with the organisation, and it just made me so excited to see participants taking ownership of them. We also, sadly, had a couple of cases of organisors leaving the festival because they were too overwhelmed. I really hope this doesn't happen in future editions, but it was also so reassuring to see how discussions around this were framed as a collective responsibility - we shouldn't be organising in a way that burns people out or overwhelms them, and we need to do better.

As I write this, these examples seem perhaps a little banal. Put differently, the overwhelming joy and love I felt for the festival and the people who made it seems dispropportionate to the reality I'm describing. Because it was overwhelming at times. I was on a high, not just from lack of sleep, but also because I was living the world I wanted to live in, which is another way of describing prefiguration. I keep writing and I am still disappointed with the result - there's only so many synonyms of "joy". I felt wonderous at what was going on around me, I felt like the best version of myself. I was not as afraid of taking on responsibilities as I usually was because I felt like I had the support and compassion of the entire festival when I did. So often in collectives I can feel paralysed at the thought that I will be criticised, and so I prefer to do nothing. I felt the opposite here, that everyone was doing their best and wanting to support others in that too, so I felt empowered.

There were so many small moments where I felt an expansive love and gratitude towards everyone around me. Where I had moments of clarity, where I understood what it meant to take responsibility, for example; how to be open to criticism and feedback; why intentions really don't fucking matter when it comes to being an (anti-sexist, anti-racist, ...) ally, only your posture and your actions. Moments where years of reading anarchist theory were condensed into a hug, a hand on a shoulder, or a kind word.

How to summarise all this? George Monbiot (and others I'm sure) frame political failure as a failure of the imagination, and its spaces like the BAF camp that crystallise this framing for me. For a brief, very intense period, I can see what's possible when we work together, when we take collective responsibility, when we respond to criticism with curiosity and a desire to improve. I don't just see, I feel it in my body which feels lighter and capable of so much more than I am used to. As I write this in my room, with my "to do" list weighing down on my body again, I want to make sure that I do not forget that feeling. I want to carry the gratitude and love that I felt during the BAF with me, even just a small part of it, with me until the next moment where my hope and imagination are replenished.

If you were at the BAF camp, if you're part of an activist collective in Belgium, if you're anywhere in the world and you're trying to work collectively to improve even the tiniest part of it, to empower people to support each other - thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You keep me going, you sustain me as much as toast and marmite in the morning does. Thank you.

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