Where We Belong: Claiming Rights, Space, and Representation project centers and amplifies the voices of Romani lesbian* communities through the co-creation of a zine as a strategic advocacy tool.
Building on pivotal EU research, we will host storytelling workshops to translate lived experiences into powerful visual and narrative content. This zine will be used to raise public awareness, fuel a targeted campaign, and directly engage policymakers in Brussels to advocate for concrete changes in law and policy.
The zine
Our latest research project on the experiences of Romani queer women navigating health, employment, housing, and political participation revealed something urgent: the deepest layers of our lived experience cannot be captured by interviews, surveys, or policy frameworks.
Something always remains outside the frame.
BEYOND THE FRAME was born from this realisation from the gaps, the silences, the untranslatable parts of our lives that refuse to fit into reports, policy categories, or institutional expectations.
To honour these invisible and immeasurable dimensions, the Romnja Feminist Library, together with MxCAT, organised storytelling workshops with Romani queer women across Europe. In these spaces, we spoke, wrote, cried, laughed, remembered, and dreamed beyond the frame, beyond stereotypes, beyond the white gaze, beyond what poetry “should” be, beyond the limits placed on our bodies, voices, and identities.
The title BEYOND THE FRAME is not a metaphor but a political and artistic refusal from Gitana, Romnja, Sinti*zze, Mestiza, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and non-binary women*:
a refusal to be reduced to data,
a refusal to be tokenised,
a refusal to be framed by narratives that are not ours.
To go beyond the frame is to reclaim the right to define ourselves.
To imagine freely.
To exist in fullness, not in fragments.
This zine was created as part of a collaborative project developed by the Romnja Feminist Library and MxCAT. It grew from a series of storytelling workshops with Romani queer women across Europe. The zine holds the parts of our lives that stay outside official frames and gives space to voices that are often pushed aside or simplified.
If you wish to contribute and gain access to the zine, you can do so here:
NAME: Asociatia Biblioteca Feminista Roma
IBAN: RO35BRDE441SV74621044410
The launch event
The Romnja Feminist Library and Shabbes24/7 invite you to a zine launch and community evening in Brussels. We are very happy to welcome Untold Asian Stories as our guests and to share this space.
January 29th, 2026
@PassaPorta, Rue Antoine Dansaert 46
The awareness campaign
Campaign video
ROM(A)MINFESTO
By partnering with EL*C, Equinox, and the European Roma Rights Centre, we aim to ensure that Romani lesbian rights are advanced and protected within the EU, fighting the intersecting discrimination of racism, sexism, classism, lesbophobia and transphobia.
Implemented by: Romnja Feminist Library | Funded by: E*LC network through EU funding
