I don’t want to be your project.
In the world of social projects, art, and research, we see a pattern that keeps repeating: undocumented people, people in procedure are often brought in late – as “experts by experience,” as illustration, or to validate ideas others devised earlier. Their stories are told, quoted, exhibited, or used for fundraising – often without their say, without recognition, and without structural involvement.
We call that practice social washing: using the experiences of marginalized people to claim inclusivity without any real transfer of power, agency, or rights.
We exist to break that cycle. We don’t believe in projects for undocumented people, refugees, but in projects by them. We believe real change only begins when those most excluded also have the space to lead, create, and decide—inviting others to think along on their own terms.
That’s why this manifesto was written. Not as a set of rules, but as a living compass for everyone working on co-creation, action research, social, activist and artistic projects, for structural change. It is grounded in human rights, radical equality, intersectionality, and the belief that collective, shared knowledge is a powerful means for autonomy and social transformation.
Recognize the Right to Create
Everyone has the right to make, speak, write, dream, and shape the world – regardless of legal status. Work and creation is not a privilege; it is a human right.
Start Where It Hurts
We begin with the pinch points felt by those who are systematically excluded. Their experiences are not the problem; they are the key to change.
Let Those Affected Decide
Those most impacted by policy, exclusion, or stigma set the course. They initiate, decide, and create. We follow, support, and amplify.
Safe Places Are Radical Spaces
Safety means being free to be yourself, free from fear of surveillance, exclusion, or judgment. We build spaces where trust, equality, and calm are central – even when that means pushing back against systems.
Research Is Action
We don’t do research about people, but with people – as a means of self-determination, as preparation for action, and as a form of collective knowledge production.
Advocacy Is an Art Form
We combine activism with creativity and innovation. We don’t speak only in reports, but also through tools, performances, texts, images, events, installations, and demonstrations.
Create Outside the Lines
Formal rules, laws, and structures are often designed to exclude. We create in the margins, break conventions, and build new forms of community.
Let Ownership Flourish
Projects belong to their initiators. They choose with whom they work, how, and to what end. No tokenism, no appropriation of ideas—only mutual commitment.
Organize Horizontally, Live with Dignity
No hierarchies that reproduce power imbalances. On our board and advisory council, people with lived experience have structural decision-making power.
Rights Are Non-Negotiable
Human rights apply always, to everyone. Being undocumented does not mean being without rights. We use the human-rights framework as our compass in creation, collaboration, and struggle.
Keep Moving
Society changes. Our work changes. Our approach changes. What persists: the commitment to inclusion, justice, and autonomy.
Use Imagination as Strategy
What we can imagine, we can give form. Art and imagination are not luxuries—they are essential to making alternatives visible, tangible, and conceivable.
Slow Down to Listen
True co-creation takes time. Time to build relationships, to acknowledge trauma, to build mutual trust. Time is a form of respect.
Add to What’s Unfinished
This manifesto is not complete. It grows with the people who contribute to it. Anyone may rewrite it, add to it, or interrupt it.