Ecotopia 2025 has slowly started rolling forward….
This year we will be heading to Northern France and surrounding areas! The planning of the route is currently ongoing.
Ecotopia is a self-organised biketour riding across different parts of Europe every year creating community and connection on the road, learning together, organizing on consensus basis without hierarchies. We promote DIY culture, ecological lifestyle, queerfeminism, antiracism and intersectional values. The tour lasts 3 months and usually consists of 15-30 cyclists at a time. We visit different activist and social projects, hold workshops and skillshares on the way, fight injustice and support each other in many ways.
This year we will focus on the topic of antiracism, especially internally. We’d like to challenge the whiteness of ecotopia, as well as the general outdoors/camping scene and our queer, environmentalist, and leftist movements at large. We plan to do this by education, discussion, active listening, co-learning and action. For now we started with a pre-tour Antiracism reading circle, reading the book „Me and White Supremacy“ from layla F. Saad. As well as texts surrounding borders, passport privilege, racism within climate activism, outdoor scene and queerfeminist spaces – because we feel that these topics relate strongly to the biketour. This doesn’t mean there is no racism in the ecotopia community, or even that the bike tour is a safe space to people of color. It means we recognize there is white supremacy in our spaces and we are committed to unlearning it and making our spaces safer and more welcoming to people of color. Read more about our thinking on antiracism in our blog about the reading circle ( https://www.ecotopiabiketour.net/2024/antiracism-reading-circle-lets-learn-together )
During the tour we’d like to visit and connect with projects that align with our values. This could be community centers, squats, gardening projects, bike kitchens, co-operatives, land projects, collective spaces or whatever else. We’re also looking forward to hosting workshops, lectures, skillshares and other events during the tour. We’d like to invite for projects and people in Northern France and around to make this possible with us.
In particular, if any projects that are invested in antiracism, anticolonialism or that are BIPOC-led would like to host us and/or support us in our learning, we would be most grateful!
When we visit a project or a place or work with a group we usually give a small donation. This always depends on the ammount of funding we get and the financial situation of the tour (mostly from donations from participants) We can offer a donation and some reimbursements. We also like to support places with physical work and tasks to be done. We’re many hands!
If you know of an interesting project, a skilled space-holder or are yourself in a collective that would like to host us, you can let us know by writing an email to 2025@ecotopiabiketour.net