The Kompost Festival is created in the space between ecology, science, art and down-to-earth practice. It experiments with methods of living regeneration and the circular art of socio-ecological transformation. The festival deals with concrete actions and urgent questions for the survival of the earth. In response to the planetary crisis, we are approaching the planet from within. Everything turns and the end becomes the beginning: where have we ended up and what can we learn from compost?

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What does it mean to think about life through the lens of decomposition?

Between raised beds, compost toilets and Bokashi buckets, spaces emerge for encounter, exchange and learning with the soil. The Compost Festival brings together ecology, art, science and hands-on practice, centring on caring relationships between people and soil.

Registration is required for the 2-day-workshops. The language used in the programme description indicates the language of the respective event; translation will be available if needed. The festival is non-commercial & free of charge, though support is always welcome!

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Program

Thursday, July 2

13:00 – 16:00 Soil Chromatography Workshop, Part 1
(mikroBIOMIK, Spore Garden)
Using circular filter chromatography, soil is transformed into an image that reveals what lies hidden and invites reflection on soil, life, and our relationship with it.

14:00 – 19:00 Edaphonistas Radio Play Workshop, Part 1
(Weltacker e.V., Weltacker Treptow)
In soil ecology, the totality of soil organisms is called the edaphon—a term with surprisingly evocative sonic associations. In this workshop, you will become an Edaphonista, lending your voice to and with the living beings of the soil.

16:00 – 18:00 Critical Ecosomatics
(Alena Trapp, Spore garden)
The workshop explores how human and more-than-human bodies continuously shape and reshape one another. Through somatic research, improvisation, and collective reading, we experiment with modes of sensing, forms of reasoning, and practices of world-building.

ab 19:00 Festival Opening with Dinner & Compost Toilet Pub Quiz
(Bambi G. & kollektiv orangotango / Stadtlandladen SOLID)
A delicious gathering to kick off the festival. Following a shared dinner made from regional and seasonal ingredients, join us for a pub quiz on compost and dry toilets, full of wonderfully questionable questions about decomposition.

Friday, July 3

13:00 – 16:00 Soil Chromatography Workshop, Part 2
(mikroBIOMIK, Spore Garden)

14:00 – 19:00 Edaphonistas Radio Play Workshop, Part 2
(Weltacker e.V., Spore Garden)

 

Prinzessinnengarten
15:00 – 16:30 Compost Workshop 1×1
(BodenSchätzen, Kompost Zone, Himmelbeet, Vegan Bullerbyn)
A practical exchange on the diversity of composting—from worm bins and hot composting to the paca digestora from Colombia. All compost tribes are welcome.

16:30 – 17:30 Garden (Soil) Tour
(Prinzessinnengarten collective)
Who gardens here—and how? During this guided tour, we learn about the collective organization of the garden and the people who shape it. At the same time, we look beneath the surface: at the soil, its inhabitants, and what keeps it alive.

17:00 – 18:30 Open Soil research
(mikroBIOMIK & Open Agroecology Lab)
An open drop-in with microscopes, open-source soil testing tools, and an underground listening station. Come explore soil and compost. Feel free to bring your own samples.

Kiezkapelle (im Prinzessinnengarten)
19:00 – 22:00 We are Compost – Soilcare and Community
Collective compost experiences, images, videos, flavors, and sounds weave together into stories of soil care. With:

Soil Assembly Network
What is a Soil Assembly, and how can it become a space for collaboration between science, art, and ecological practice? This introduction reflects on what has happened so far, weaving together experiences and experiments from past events and encounters from the Andes to the Alpes and beyond.

DIY Open Source Soil Health Tools (Open Agroecology Lab)
How can farmers and communities monitor soil health using accessible, open-source tools? This talk presents the work of the Open Agroecology Lab in Mendoza, Argentina, including the development of low-cost soil monitoring kits and protocols for assessing soil function, fertility, and biodiversity.

BodenLabor Kalk (Lucy Allen)
An exploration of grassroots soil remediation and the Bodenlabor Kalk, a DIY soil care platform in Cologne (2024-2025). We’ll discuss the opportunities and challenges of integrating participatory and sensory methods into soil governance.

What if compost was a superfood? (masharu & Naida Culshaw)
A shared evocation, gathering edible earth, microbial life, re/membering, ancestral echoes, and the uncertain threshold of the mouth. Together we ask how compost unsettles what we have been taught to call nourishment, waste, health, and relation.

Visuals, Videos & Sounds from below
Multimedia perspectives on soil and decomposition: impressions from previous Soil Assemblies, the documentary “being compost time-lapse footage exploring the in-between of life and death, live microscopy interwoven with recordings of soil-dwelling organisms.

Saturday, July 4

Allmende-Kontor

10:00 – 13:00 Kompost Uprising! flight with the Aerocene Community
Renea Shadler, dancer and choreographer, together with Ewen Chardronnet and Joppe Schneider, will activate a collective flight of an aerosolar balloon on the field of Tempelhof. Join us for the early morning session.

From 15:00 Collective Compost Action
(Community action with Allmende-Kontor and Vegan Bullerbyn)
Hands-on composting! Together we will tackle the accumulated organic matter and transform large piles into humus. Along the way, we’ll learn a composting method from Colombia by building a paca digestora together. Please bring your kitchen scraps!

From 16:00 Open Family Program
(Micha Alt / mikroBIOMIK)
A lot is happening beneath our feet! Who lives in the soil, and what are they doing all day long in the dark? Let’s find out together—with our hands in the earth!

16:00 – 19:00 Soil Moisture Sensor Workshop
(Daniel Diehl / Wassermeisterei)
Together we will build sensors and install a monitoring station to measure soil moisture in gardens, meadows, or forests, contributing the data to the digital water map.

16:30 – 19:30 Miso, Microbes & Magic Soil
(Ayumi Matsuzaka / Dycle)
Join us for a delicious Terra Preta workshop: we’ll cook miso soup together using a small pyrolysis oven while making biochar at the same time. We’ll prepare fermented vegetable-crops for composting, which will slowly transform into rich Terra Preta soil substrate. A fun and tasty hands-on experience about food, microbes, and living soil. Please bring your kitchen waste!

17:00 – 18:30 Guided Tour on Soil Health
(Nora Lena Meyer)
What methods are used at Allmende-Kontor to promote soil health? During this tour we will explore different mulching materials, green manure crops, and homemade plant fertilizer recipes.

17:30 – 19:00 Open Soil research
(mikroBIOMIK & Open Agroecology Lab)
An open drop-in with microscopes, open-source soil testing tools, and an underground listening station. Come explore soil and compost. Feel free to bring your own samples.

From 19:00 Soil Art Picnic
Please bring your food, drinks and curiosity to this artistic gathering. With:

Soil Painting – Painting with Earth Pigments
(Schönfärberinnen)
Pigments made from earth, rocks, and charcoal are among the oldest colors known to humanity. But what color is the soil beneath our feet? Together, we will make paints from mineral pigments and experiment with different natural binders.

Meet Your Microbiome – Microbe Tattoo Workshop
(Ella v.d. Haide / quEErEcologiEscollEctivE)
Together, we will draw (washable) tattoos on one another’s skin as embodied symbols of our loving symbiosis with bacteria, fungi, archaea, and springtails. Along the way, we will exchange experiences as lovers of microbes and reflect on our shared role as habitats for microbial life.

Compost Credos – Poetry & Bokashi Workshop
(Cleo Wächter)
Words hold up our world. The way we speak about our world ends up shaping it. What happens when they wilt and wither? In this poetry workshop, we will compost words and thoughts. Can meanings be broken down over time, digested, and transformed? Tiny beings eating away at them.

Compost Tasting & Conversation – Lessons from the Heap
(masharu & Naida Culshaw)
An ongoing participatory installation and round-table tasting of earth and compost, offered at participants’ own risk. Through tasting, conversation, and shared reflection, we ask what compost can teach when it moves from metaphor toward mouth, body, microbes, safety, disgust, and desire.

Fluid Dictionary – Composting Capitalism
(Ivana Papić & Nika Grigorian)
We will play a card game! Drawing on feminist and decolonial perspectives and inspired by our local ecologies and situated knowledges, we will co-create a living glossary that challenges static Western epistemologies shaped by capitalist and patriarchal structures. The words that emerge through play will be composted in the garden.

Sunday, July 5

Floating Berlin
13:00 – 15:00 The Soils Farmed by Those Who Work Them
(Manuel Wagner / junge Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft)
Land grabbing also exists in Germany, and small-scale farmers often struggle to access farmland. This workshop explores the agricultural land market and ownership structures in Germany while discussing possibilities for a more equitable distribution and protection of land.

13:00 – 15:00 Fermenting Feminism Workshop
(Maya Minder in cooperation with the Berlin University of the Arts, Design Department)
At the intersection of design, natural sciences, and feminism, fermentation becomes a method of learning, embodiment, and collective thinking—a starting point for transdisciplinary experiments with human and more-than-human actors.

15:00–16:00 The Porous Self and the World of Dreams
(Wailea Zülch)
Beginning from the fluid boundaries between humans and their environment, and inspired by the connective role of fungi, this workshop invites participants into the world of dreams to explore the question: How do we relate as porous selves? Join us for a quiet hour in the liminal spaces beyond the everyday boundaries of space, time, and self.

16:00–18:00 Eating Earth – Re/membering What Feeds Us
(masharu & Naida Culshaw)
A workshop exploring the tastes of earth and earth-like substances, offered at participants’ own risk. Together we create space for sensory feedback, personal experience, and reflection on geophagy – the cultural, medicinal, spiritual, or sensory practice of eating earth.

13:00 – 18:00 Presentation of the UdK Students part of the Dirty Metabolism
with a special presenation by Louis Frey, Eva- Fiore Kovacobsky, Luis Widmer.

 

Feld Food Forest
18:00-22:00 Garden Soil Tour & Soil Testing
(Fenja/Open Soil Atlas)
During a guided walk through the forest garden, we will learn about the composting and soil-building methods used on site. Afterwards, we will test and analyze the soil together.

18:00-22:00 Ear Solar Ballon
(Joppe Schneider)
Who Owns the Air? – an inflatable structure, an interdisciplinary space. A research instrument for exploring the perception of space. Mobile and ephemeral, yet undeniably present. Jope Schneider lives and works in Zurich. His practice unfolds at the intersection of sculpture, installation, performance, fashion, and sound. Sampling—whether of sound or textiles—is a central working method that allows him to perceive and transform his surroundings. Everything is already there.

19:30 Compost Island Opening
(Friedrich von Uckro & Niklas Holzhauer)
Together we will bring the new community compost infrastructure of the Feld Food Forest to life.

20:00 Community Pizza and Dj Set (Torhaus Kochkollektiv & THF Radio)

20:30 Festival closing – Festival Closing – Reflection & Farewell
(Mit kollektiv orangotango, Soil Assembly, mikroBIOMIK)
In a delightfully dirty assembly of decomposition, we will reflect together: What are we taking with us? Where do we go from here on the road toward the European Soil Assembly in Berlin this January?

 

The festival is part of the international Soil Assembly, a network that has evolved from India (2024) to Ecuador (2025) and is now moving across Europe. In the summer of 2026, regional Soil Assemblies are held in Slovenia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Germany, and France, culminating in a joint gathering in Berlin in January 2027.

This event is part of the regional Soil Assembly series under the SoilTribes programme funded by the European Union.

The Compost Festival program at Allmende-Kontor is part of 48 Hours Neukölln.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the European Research Executive Agency (REA) can be held responsible for them.