A new festival is addressing a critical issue within healthcare systems: limited access to care that can lead to illness or even death and the often violent, coercive, and humiliating experiences patients face when they do receive treatment.
In response, organizers are hosting a free and unconditional health village as part of the festival. This initiative will offer a range of healthcare services, educational workshops, and opportunities to learn self-care techniques alongside the festival’s broader program of popular education.
The healthcare professionals participating include those offering solidarity-based care, individuals sharing their knowledge and experiences related to specific illnesses or disabilities, and experienced peers in health, and wellness. This diverse approach aims to empower individuals to grab control of their health journeys.
Access to the health village will be entirely free, and no documentation will be required. Individuals can simply present themselves at the welcome and orientation stand from February 20 to 22, explain their situation, and sign up for waiting lists for care. They are also welcome to bring a companion.
Organizers emphasize that if any situation of violence, humiliation, or discomfort arises during care, the welcome and orientation stand is available to address it. They encourage anyone experiencing such issues to report them.
Accessibility information notes that the health village is located in a space that is not accessible to people with reduced mobility (due to stairs). However, consultations can still be conducted in the large room on the ground floor. Individuals with accessibility needs are encouraged to visit the welcome and orientation stand or contact organizers in advance to discuss accommodations and review the care schedule.
Friday, February 20
- 14h-19h: General medicine consultations and access to care provided by Doctors of the World.
Access to AME/C2S rights with the Leo association
PRIORITY TO EXILED PEOPLE (Accessible PMR)
- 14h-15h: Myofascial release consultation (individual session)
The John F Barnes method is a gentle manual technique to treat chronic pain.
- 14h-16h: Neurology consultations: migraines, epilepsies and other topics!
4 slots of 30 minutes, priority to people who have never had a neurological consultation
- 17h-18h: Myofascial release consultation (individual session)
Saturday, February 21
- All day (except 14h-16h): Individual doula consultations (Accessible PMR)
To talk and gain information on pregnancy, childbirth, IVF, queer fertility, medical violence
- 11h-12h: Workshop: treatment of vaginismus
Understanding vaginismus and reclaiming your body: the causes, differential diagnoses, and its treatment which can be multiple (psy, physiotherapy)…
- 11h-12h: Popular education – Asthma and shortness of breath
- 11h-13h: General medicine consultations (Accessible PMR)
- 11h-13h: First aid training workshops (30min slots)
- 11h-13h: Collective yogatherapy workshop for Black people* – _Rest room_ (not accessible PMR, stairs to climb)
As part of Black History Month and to work on the positive heritage and all that is good in our bodies (as opposed to the idea of listing all the traumas we inherit as Black people), let’s meet for this collective yogatherapy workshop led by Capucine de la Casaa (self-managed antiracist and anti-capitalist care community). Chosen mix between Black people.
- 11h30-12h30: Myofascial release consultation (individual session)
- 12h-13h30: Workshop – Kinesiology for transgender people
To understand the pre- and post-surgical treatments of gender affirmation surgeries in physiotherapy.
- 14h-17h: Sexology and/or sophrology consultations (Accessible PMR)
Non-medicalized sexology interviews, based on listening, information and guidance if necessary. It is possible to address topics of sexual health, body, intimacy, relationships and self-image.
In sophrology, the practice can aim to soothe stress and tension, better manage emotions and fatigue, or recreate a gentle relationship with your body.
- 14h-16h: Workshop – Filling out your MDPH file
- 14h-16h: Emotional Listening Consultations (Accessible PMR)
Une oreille pour tous is an association whose mission is to bring comfort, moral support and a benevolent ear to people in precarious situations or who are ill
- 14h-16h: Popular education – What happens in the gynecologist’s office?
“[…] what do you call, you, the fact of having to present your sex, of being touched and penetrated without any other reason than being a woman of childbearing age ? I call that a technical control.” Maud Le Rest, Eva Tapiero, The Patients of Hippocrates
Why and when to move to gynecological consultation ? What can happen there ? What examinations are necessary, which are never systematic ?
Exchange time between caregivers and patients, in order to answer these questions, and ask a lot of others.
In a chosen mix without cis men
- 15h-19h: Acupunk dispensary (Accessible PMR)
The acupunk collective proposes to experience the NADA method, an acupuncture method of the ear used in the 70s by the Black Panthers and the Young Lords as a community health method to treat cravings related to addictions.
- 16h-17h: Workshop – Hypnosis to quit smoking
- 16h-18h: Workshop – Testicular contraception
The thermal method is a method to self-manage contraception without medication or medical treatment. Otoko wishes to share all the tools necessary so that users are experts in their contraception, and actors in its development.
What we have is something rare in the world of health, where industrialization is the norm. This time, there is really room for personalization of devices to the needs and morphologies of each one.
popular education allows the dissemination of the thermal method to be accompanied by political messages that go beyond the medical aspect: we thus talk about contraceptive burden, contraceptive consent, we question the relationship to intimate life.
- 17h30-19h: General medicine consultations (Accessible PMR)
- 17h30-18h30: Myofascial release consultation (individual session)
- 20h-00h: Rapid STI screening tests by Maricolandia
Sunday, February 22 DAY OF WELL-BEING
All day: Individual doula consultations (Accessible PMR)
All day: Massages
- 11h-16h: Osteopath consultations
- 11h-13h: Workshop – Nervous system and emotions
This workshop aims to understand how the nervous and hormonal systems together form the body’s regulatory center. I will explain notions of physiology and anatomy, and the three branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), how it preserves health: calms our body, reduces stress and puts us in safety.
Putting understanding in our body is a political tool: in our self/co-regulation in collective, in conflict resolution and in our ability to take care of our mental health in struggles.
- 11h-13h30: Training in the NADA protocol by the Acupunk collective
The acupunk collective proposes to learn the NADA method, an acupuncture method of the ear used in the 70s by the Black Panthers and the Young Lords as a community health method to treat cravings related to addictions.
- 14h-16h: Learning Korean massage techniques in pairs
- 14h-16h: Workshop – Freeing yourself from food guilt: understanding the culture of diets and fatphobia
Zina Mebkhout is a therapist specializing in the accompaniment of eating behavior. She offers a participatory popular education workshop focused on our relationship to food and on the concrete effects of fatphobia and the culture of diets on our health.
Our difficulties with food do not relate to a lack of individual willpower, but are part of a social and political context that values control of bodies, pathologizes certain morphologies and produces guilt. These mechanisms have direct consequences on our mental, physical and emotional health.
Through tools of collective intelligence, individual reflection times and group exchanges, participants will be invited to start from their own experiences to understand how these norms have shaped their relationship to food. We will highlight the links between individual experience and systems of domination (fatphobia, injunctions to thinness, moralization of food), in order to transform individual guilt into collective understanding. The goal is to create a space where we can both deposit our experience, politicize it and open concrete avenues to build a more peaceful and freer relationship with food.
- 14h-17h: Acupunk dispensary (Accessible PMR)
- 14h-17h: Beauty village (Accessible PMR) – Free haircuts for precarious people by Wilson’s Barbers and manicures by Mina and Léa
- 16h15-17h00: Myofascial release consultation (individual session)
This festival aims to address systemic issues in healthcare access and quality, offering a space for alternative and community-based care.
