Degrowth Cabaret ft. YSI @ Degrowth Workshop Barcelona

The Degrowth Cabaret is a performative and participatory experiment that invites scholars, activists, artists, and local communities to engage with degrowth imaginaries through humor, art, and collective creation. More than a show, it is a shared stage, a space where post-growth futures are not just theorized but embodied, questioned, and played with. Themes like sufficiency, care, decoloniality, and utopia take center stage, not as abstract concepts, but as lived possibilities.

Following its successful premiere at the ISEE Degrowth Conference 2025 in Oslo (which brought together 15 young scholars and artists) the Cabaret has been invited to the Autonomous University of Barcelona’s Degrowth Programme in October 2025. This next iteration will deepen its hybrid format: a blend of theatre, music, satire, storytelling, and experimental performance-lectures, designed to challenge the boundaries between academia, activism, and art.

Why a Cabaret? Why Now?

The degrowth movement urgently needs spaces where critique meets creativity, where analysis dances with emotion. Traditional panels and papers alone cannot capture the depth of socio-ecological transformation, or reach those already building alternatives outside academia. The Cabaret answers this gap by foregrounding critical joy, embodiment, and collaborative imagination as tools for systemic change.

YSI emerged from the 2008 crisis to amplify critical voices in economics. We take that mission further by bridging theory and artistic expression, inviting young artivists to contribute not only through research but through performance, satire, and collective creation. This project expands YSI’s network into vital but underrepresented territories: artists, grassroots activists, and interdisciplinary practitioners who might not see themselves in conventional economics spaces, yet whose work is essential to pluralizing the field.