WHAT'S ON
Full List
Get together before the summer holidays for our legendary annual party! Sunshine, good company.
Bring a friend or two – the more, the merrier. It will be a lovely, memorable night, so be sure not to miss it!
Launch Party | Season 14
2026-27
SEASON LAUNCH | Fri 11th Sept | 7pm
Welcome to a brand-new Season!
Let this one inspire you with its vibrant mix of thinkers, doers, authors, activists, artists, musicians, and more. We're unveiling our exciting new programme and introducing some of the brilliant hosts behind your favourite regular activities.
Come for a drink and a tasty bite, meet some new faces and soak up the warm, welcoming vibe of our place and community.
Not a member yet? No worries — you can join right there on the night!
*
Attendance is FREE, but please register.
FREE drinks for Members in the 1st hour.
OPEN TO ALL
ADDITIONAL INFO
ACCESS
Bar open with snacks
Topic Organised and led by: tech & democracy analyst Maria Koomen
Topic
Organised and led by:
tech & democracy analyst Maria Koomen
Ideas / Action | Sat 15th Sep | 2-4:30 pm
*Act On sessions offer quarterly action-oriented get-togethers on a specific issue, between experts and an audience willing to DO something about it.*
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Maria Koomen is a Democracy, governance & tech analyst and advocacy specialist. She is the former governance director at the Centre for Future Generations, working on the challenges at the intersection of emerging technologies, democracy, and governance. Her work focused on ensuring that governance systems evolve to keep pace with technological and societal change. Maria led the Open Governance Network for Europe, a joint initiative of Open Government Partnership and Democratic Society to drive connection, dialogue, and learning around public participation, transparency, and accountability with an eye to improving democracy and governance in and across the European Union. Prior to that Maria was senior programme manager on the Democracy Conflict & Governance program at the Carnegie Europe.
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Bar & snacks
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Culture | Thurs 17th Sept | 7:00-8:30 pm
Monthly meet up to discuss a great read, along with drinks & good company.
*Doors open at 6.30pm. The book club begins at 7pm.
“A sweeping page-turner [...] a kind of Romeo and Juliet story for a modern, globalized age.” —Publishers Weekly
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kiran Desai is an Indian writer and the bestselling author of three novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss, which won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is her latest work of fiction, shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. The judges described the novel as an epic of love and family, spanning generations and countries, that is the most "ambitious and accomplished" work by Desai. Born in India, she moved to the US when she was sixteen and now lives in New York City. In January 2015, The Economic Times listed her as one of 20 most influential global Indian women.
Social | Sat 19th Sep | 3-5 pm
Curious about Full Circle? Join us for a drink & discover what we're all about.
Whether you're already part of our community or simply intrigued, you’ll have the opportunity to meet the team, explore the house & hear more about our future plans – including what the different types of Full Circle memberships have to offer. It’s a relaxed & informal setting, ideal for asking questions & seeing if this is a place where you feel at home.
We warmly welcome current members & their guests too – so feel free to bring a friend or two along. It's a lovely way to connect with others who share a curiosity for ideas, culture & community. No pressure, just good company & a great conversation.
We're looking forward to welcoming you!
by Natalie Schroyens
*Hosted event
Ideas / Thurs 10th Sept / 9 am - 5.30 pm
Does your message resonate with the people you're trying to reach - or only with those who already agree with you?
Effective climate communication depends on understanding the audiences that matter for your goals - including which messages resonate, which fall flat, and which backfire.
Message testing is a research method that helps you bridge that gap: identifying which narratives, frames, and words land well with specific audiences, and which ones may do more harm than good.
In this session, Natalie Schroyens, analyst at the Climate Opinion Research Exchange (CORE), walks you through the essentials of message testing in practice - and shows how it can inform your communication strategies.
We'll explore real examples from recent studies on climate communications, and you'll have the chance to practice together in applying the method to your own work: defining your audience, clarifying the attitudes you want to shift, and identifying the narratives worth testing.
What you'll take away:
This session is for anyone involved in climate or sustainability communication: NGO staff, campaigners, institutional communicators, educators, policy advocates, and anyone who wants their message to land beyond the bubble.
PRACTICAL INFO
Free, but registration is required
Free networking lunch included
Format: Interactive workshop — max. 30 participants
Language: English
ABOUT WAVEMAKER
The Good Wave is a network of effective climate action. It organises networking activities, free Learning Labs, an exciting toolbox and thematic sessions named Wave Maker Sessions. The latter focus on a specific topic related to climate action and communication.
Book Launch / Sat 19th Sept / 5-7 pm
As a Palestinian woman who grew up in Israel, Eva Dalak's personal story is woven with the collective wounds of conflict, displacement, and inherited pain. Her memoir of transformation, Dancing in the Dark, is an exceptional, powerful journey through loss, identity and the reclamation of light in the face of darkness.
Eva does not just share a testimony of survival, but a profound exploration of healing. As she even lost her vision for two years, she had to navigate physical blindness alongside the unseen landscapes of trauma, belonging and ancestral memory. With honesty and poetic grace, she traces her path from disorientation to clarity, from fragmentation to wholeness.
She also introduces her Peace Activation framework, through which she weaves trauma-informed practices, intergenerational dialogue and embodied resilience into a new way forward - for individuals as well as for communities and nations caught in cycles of violence.
What if the reason we struggle to create lasting peace isn't what we think? What if our most well-crafted peace agreements fail not because we lack good intentions, but because we're missing something fundamental? Come hear Eva's powerful testimony of awakening, begin to see with new eyes and discover how to activate peace as a lived experience.
Eva Dalak is an Israeli Palestinian peacebuilder and peace activator with over 25 years of experience in conflict transformation. She is the founder of Peace Activation and co-founder of One Whole Peace, both soul-centred peace movements in Palestine and Israel bringing citizens of different faiths together in conflict transformation. She is passionate about activating peace, promoting gender equality, interfaith dialogue, and empowering communities to build peace from within. As a skilled conflict transformation facilitator, peacebuilding trainer, and gender advisor, Eva has amassed experience in over 22 countries in conflict zones across Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. She is committed to promoting individual soul-centred leadership and radical responsibility through innovative and entrepreneurial initiatives.
GOODREADS
Dancing in the Dark, How I found my True Vision for Peace (2025).
A news commentary with
James Kanter & guests
Ideas Festival / Wed 23rd Sept / 06.30-8.30 pm
Live & On the Record: A Podcast with James Kanter
Europe’s news is loud and moving fast. What’s Behind the News keeps up and cuts through the noise. Come join veteran Brussels journalist James Kanter and a stellar cast of journalists and reporters who break through the clutter and help make sense of it.
From EU power plays, to the stories that shaped the week and the ones that slipped past the front page, come hear what's really going on behind the headlines.
This is journalism doing what it's supposed to do: telling it as it is. Unfiltered and live in front of you. Join us and dig into the stories defining Europe right now.
James Kanter is an American and British award-winning journalist and Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. Previously at Herald Tribune and The New York Times. He's co-founder and editor of the Podcast EU Scream.
Guests to be announced soon
Ideas / Salon | Thurs 24th Sept | 6.30-8.30 pm
*Doors open at 6.30pm. The speaker will start at 7pm.
Not a Member yet? Join Full Circle now & come to events at the Members' rate!
Who really rules the world we live in? Not governments. Not voters. According to award-winning economist Cecilia Rikap, it's a small cluster of cloud hegemons (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) whose intellectual monopolies over knowledge, data and narratives now shape global capitalism itself.
Rikap reveals how even giants like Disney, McDonald's, Nike and Walmart depend on these tech rulers to extract value through AI and discipline their own workforces. States, too, are watching core functions slip from their hands. Innovation, in this telling, is not a free and neutral game - it's a hierarchy, and someone is always at the top of it.
To get there, Rikap went straight to the source: 112 interviews with people inside the world's largest firms, combined with hard data on venture capital, acquisitions, open source, AI conferences and patents - piecing together a vivid map of who holds power today and what's at stake.
However, this is not a story without an exit. Rikap's counterimage insists technology can still be developed by the people, for the people and the planet, through democratic planning rather than predatory concentration.
Come hear how we got here and how we might take the cloud back.
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Cecilia Rikap is an award winning economist and currently Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is also a researcher at the CONICET, Argentina's national research council and a researcher at University of Technology of Compiègne. Her research is rooted in the international political economy of science and technology and the economics of innovation. She currently studies the rising concentration of intangible assets leading to the emergence of intellectual monopolies, among others from digital and pharma industries, the distribution of intellectual rents, resulting geopolitical tensions and the effects of knowledge assetisation on the knowledge commons and development.
The Rulers, Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud (2026); Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered (2021); The Digital Innovation Race: Conceptualising the Emerging New World Order (2021).
We only have 120 tickets and we always sell out!!
It's time to dust off your dancing shoes and join a traditional Scottish ceilidh.
No previous experience or dancing skills required - the band will be calling out the steps as we go along. If you're a ceilidh regular then you know how much fun it is!
Bring your friends or come along but please, no spikey heels on our rather beautiful wooden floor.
* 7.30pm doors open - bar snacks available
* 8.00pm start dancing!
* 10.30pm Band finishes
*TICKET INCLUDES 1 DRINK (BEER, WINE OR SOFT)
BAR SNACKS AVAILABLE ALL EVENING
Bar & light food
The Hoggies are the original Brussels-based Scottish ceilidh band.
You already know us, you know what we do, and that by coming YOU make this a great event!
Get your EARLYBIRD pass for the entire weekend today!
FULL CIRCLE HOUSE
89 Ch. de Vleurgat, Brussels 1050, Belgium +32 (0)2 644 3777 I info [ AT ] fullcircle.eu
BOOK A VISIT
OPENING MON-WED & FRI 9AM-5.30PM THURS 9AM-9PMSAT 2PM-7PM (or 9PM) SUNDAY & PUBLIC HOLIDAYS - CLOSED
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