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a Ulex Project Webinar with members of the Frente Amplio.
How do you build and sustain a broad political alliance that remains effective, united and transformative?
Join us for a conversation with Florencia Abbondanza and Mauro Conti from Uruguay’s Frente Amplio, one of the world’s most enduring progressive coalitions. Together, we’ll explore how the FA has managed to nurture participation across generations; remain collective, democratic and grass roots driven; and stay rooted in its founding values while adapting to changing times. We’re delighted to have the opportunity to explore how this kind of ‘concrete utopia’ – a real, lived experiment in collective transformation – can work, with two of its committed protagonists.
Across Europe, progressive movements and left-wing parties face a similar challenge: fragmentation and the rise of Far Right. Despite widespread discontent with inequality, climate breakdown, and democratic erosion, the left is struggling to work together, meanwhile, the right, driven by shared interests, has proven far more adept at gaining ground. To confront the rise of the Far Right and manoeuvre towards a viable future, a key strategy is to build strong and resilient alliances within the left and with those sharing a similar vision. The example of Uruguay’s Frente Amplio offers practical and inspiring insights to build strong alliances and sustain long-term participation in collective processes.
Through the experience of Florencia Abbondanza, And Mauro Conti, we will explore the structures, inclusive procedures, and the culture of values and principles that has allowed this diverse coalition to remain united and politically transformative for more than five decades. We will reflect on their experience, their challenges and learnings. We will learn how this concret Utopia works from two of its protagonists.
Founded in 1971, the Frente Amplio is a coalition of parties, movements, and social organisations that governed Uruguay for 15 consecutive years, implementing profound social, economic, and democratic reforms. Today, it remains a global benchmark for achieving unity in diversity and demonstrates how broad coalitions can remain effective without losing their values. You can read more about them here.
Florencia Abbondanza: is a film producer, grassroots organizer, and long-time activist with Uruguay’s Frente Amplio. She combines creative storytelling with political commitment, bringing fresh energy to one of Latin America’s most enduring left-wing coalitions. Currently serving as secretary of the FA’s 1001 list in the Chamber of Deputies, she’s part of a new generation helping to renew the movement’s participatory spirit and keep its transformative vision alive.
Mauro Conti is a political scientist, activist, and member of Uruguay’s Communist Party. Rooted in the student movement and grassroots organising in Montevideo’s Aguada neighborhood, he brings a strong commitment to collective action and democratic renewal within the Frente Amplio. As his committee’s delegate to the FA Coordinating Committee, he represents a generation working to strengthen the movement’s unity and deepen its participatory tradition.
Organised by: Ulex Project
This webinar builds on a year of research and interviews with key members of the Frente Amplio. You can read more about this project, and watch the interviews at Learning From Latin America: Building a Common Front.
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Ari’s activism began in 2002, at age 16, as a Bosnian refugee in Canada, where they founded and coordinated a group for LGBTIQ high school students and allies. They were a co-founder and leader at kolekTIRV in Croatia and Trans Network Balkan, involved in community organizing, advocacy, program management, team coordination, capacity building, education, media work, campaigns, events, fundraising, etc. In 2024, they joined the Supervisory Board of the Croatian Trade Union Collective of United Precarious Workers and Activists (SKUPA).
Beyond the Balkan region, Ari served as a Board member at Transgender Europe (TGEU), where they held roles as Secretary, Treasurer, and later Co-chair. They have also been a trainer with the Center for Artistic Activism and served on the Advisory Committee and since 2022 as a Community Care Facilitator at FRIDA — The Young Feminist Fund. Since 2024 they are the Operations Manager at Global Philanthropy Project.
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Sergio (all pronouns) was born in Romania and migrated to Germany in the early 2010s. In the past, he was a social worker with homeless people and a social consultant for Eastern European migrants for various organisations. Trained as a filmmaker, he spent two years making a documentary about the ‘civic reawakening’ in Romania and the waves of protest it brought with it. In connection to this, Sergio is currently co-steering the development of an online open-source participative knowledge production platform on activism in Romania. Over the past nine years, Sergiu has offered his skills to various journalists, grassroots collectives and campaigns, mostly working within the labour rights, climate justice, international solidarity and anti-authoritarian movements in Germany and Romania. Nonetheless, his biggest focus since 2020 has been his work as an organiser with the anarcho-syndicalist Free Workers Union, where he focuses mostly on organising Romanian migrant workers on construction sites, in factories and in the agricultural field.
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Linzy Na Nakorn is a movement director, politicised somatics practitioner, community organiser and facilitator. For the past decade she has been facilitating movement, body work and creating theatre, dance and participatory performance that advocates for and organises with communities in pursuit of housing, disability and racial justice. Her movement practice focuses on trauma-informed approaches to building resilience, capacity and joy via way of the body for personal, interpersonal and community sustainability. Linzy was a Co-Director of The Big Ride for Palestine in partnership with The Gaza Sunbirds, Native Woman Ride and Middle East Children’s Alliance; using cycling as a tool for mobilising active solidarity and in support of campaigning for the rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people. Linzy is part of a UK network of activists and artists advocating for Radical Care – supporting organisations, researchers and institutions to work towards system change in societal approaches to labour, leadership and access.
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Jeroen (he/him pronouns) has been involved in grassroots social movements for more than two decades now, starting back when he was fifteen. Throughout the years the fights for “climate justice” and “migrant justice” have been consistently on top of the list of struggles that make his heart beat faster. A key transformative moment for Jeroen was reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s revolutionary pedagogy gave him a language to support the creation of emancipatory learning environments, rooted in a desire for collective liberation. Jeroen has also been exploring in depth Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects among other methodologies to build his trainer’s toolkit. Inspired by the liberatory possibilities of these traditions, he started an organization with a friend, LABO vzw, based in Belgium, where he has worked as a trainer and campaigner between 2013 and 2023.
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Ella brings more than 10 years’ external experience working with not for profit and community based organisations across diverse themes including: advocacy for migrant communities; local community engagement in national policy making; and structural relationships between poverty and disenfranchisement, and education and poverty. Immersed in critical theory in her early 20s she brings a holistic and questioning approach, and is passionate about systemic solutions that centre relationship and interconnection between ecology and society. A long standing member of the collective, Ella has been part of the core team since the inception of the Ulex Project. Her work bridges facilitation, developing project partnerships, governance, strategy, operations, and project and programme evaluation. She has developed and overseen more than 70 partnerships with a range of different actors across European social movements.
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Alex has been facilitating courses geared towards social and personal transformation for the past 6 years. They have spent the last 10 years as a core member of the collective running the Ulex Project and has a deep experience of the integral approach we have developed. Their area of training expertise is sustainable activism and skills for developing ‘deeper resources’ for action. Their commitment to social justice and history of political activism have involved them in direct action and affinity group work focused on climate justice, anti-capitalism, queer politics and gender identity. A strong focus on the somatic dimension and embodied practice (informed by their work as a dance artist and yoga teacher) underpins both their approach.
Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
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a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
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building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
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strategies for weathering, surviving, and recovering from repressive actions by state and non-state forces.
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new stories for a different world.
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a holistic approach to activist training and education.
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exploring the deeper dynamics of collaboration, for transformation.
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strengthening and connecting transformative social movements.
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tools for effective and sustainable activism.
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Basic tools, methods and approaches for dealing with group and relational conflicts.
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Ulex: Latin (argelaga Catalan, gorse English) noun:
1. A thorny-evergreen flowering shrub, with a high capacity for regeneration and resilience. Its seedpods open in contact with fire and it reshoots from charred stumps. A successionary plant that grows well under challenging conditions. It improves soil fertility through nitrogen fixing, preparing the way for renewed biodiversity.
2. A traditional choice for igniting fires. Burns hot and bright.
3. A networked project adding nutrition and fertility to European social movements through training and capacity building. It kindles the realisation of social justice, ecological intelligence, and cognitive vitality.
