Please reach us at flowstrike@proton.me if you cannot find an answer to your question.
The Flow Strike campaign is a collective refusal by artists and cultural workers who reject the role of festivals as tools for laundering settler-colonial violence through entertainment. Our immediate demand is for Flow Festival to create and implement ethical guidelines that result in cutting ties with companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, including those affiliated with the state of Israel or Israeli firms.
More broadly, we are targeting Flow Festival’s owner, KKR—a private equity firm whose investments profit from arms, evictions, surveillance, and apartheid infrastructure. We demand full divestment from all Israeli companies and those doing business with the state of Israel.
If these demands cannot be met, we demand that the permits of Flow Festival to operate in Helsinki be revoked.
Flow Strike uses the collective power of artists to push the festival industry in Finland and globally toward decolonisation. Through its acquisition of Superstruct Entertainment, KKR now controls nearly 80 festivals across Europe and Australia. We aim to set a precedent—Flow is our starting point, but this is a global struggle.
At its core, Flow Strike exists to support the liberation of Palestine and the realisation of Palestinian human rights. We call for a permanent ceasefire, an end to Israeli apartheid, an end to the illegal occupation and settlement of Palestinian land, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and human rights for all. We stand against complicity and for the creation of ethically sustainable, decolonised cultural spaces—here and everywhere.
For us, decolonisation means refusing to let settler-colonial violence be laundered through culture. It means recognising that every festival, gallery, and venue operates within financial networks—and that these networks have political consequences. Decolonising culture requires cutting ties with capital that funds apartheid and investing instead in mutual aid, justice, and liberation. It means wealth must be redirected to those harmed by extraction and occupation.
Decolonisation is not symbolic—it is structural.
Flow Strike welcomes all artists who share the commitment to decolonising Flow Festival and transforming the festival industry from the ground up. This is not just about one event—it’s about refusing to let our scenes be co-opted by capital that sustains apartheid and colonial violence. Any artist can participate, regardless of whether they are booked to perform at Flow or not.
Artists who join Flow Strike take a public stand: they refuse to collaborate with Flow Festival until the campaign’s demands are met. This includes divestment from Israeli companies, cutting ties with apartheid-complicit partners, and structural change across the industry. The organising team offers support with public statements, social media messaging, or media challenges you may face. No one strikes alone.
Yes. Festivals rely entirely on the labour of artists. That’s why a campaign rooted in collective refusal—including the strategy of a labour strike—is one of the most effective ways to challenge complicity and demand structural change from Flow Festival.
We have seen this work before. In 2022–2023, artists organized a successful strike against Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. The campaign, known as Kiasma_strike, resulted in the Finnish National Gallery (including Ateneum, Kiasma, and the Sinebrychoff Museum) committing to new ethical fundraising guidelines that were developed through the strike itself.
Kiasma_strike succeeded because artists acted together. They wielded collective power to demand a more just cultural field. Flow Strike draws on the same spirit: refusal, solidarity, and a shared vision of an ethical, decolonised festival industry.
KKR is one of the largest private equity firms in the world, with vast and opaque investments across sectors and continents. According to its own website, it “supports high-growth technology companies” across North America, Europe—and Israel. This includes majority stakes in Israeli tech firms such as Artlist and Guesty.
Much of KKR’s investment activity happens through private funds, making full transparency impossible. But media reports confirm a pattern: in early 2024, KKR acquired the Israeli company UserWay for nearly €100 million. In 2021, it partnered with Global Technical Realty to build an underground data centre in Tel Aviv, following a €1 billion investment in 2020. Earlier investments include Israeli firms Clicktale (2019) and Optimal+ (2015).
KKR’s interest in Israel is not occasional—it is structural and long-term.
The Flow Strike campaign echoes the call of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement: Israel’s apartheid regime survives through international complicity. Global corporations, financial institutions, and cultural platforms all play a role in sustaining the occupation. Most Israeli companies are embedded in systems of apartheid and dispossession.
KKR has made no move to divest from these networks. Contrast this with KLP, Norway’s largest pension fund, which recently excluded Caterpillar from its portfolio over concerns about human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank. Ethical divestment is possible. What’s lacking is will on KKR's behalf.
In Europe, KKR also holds a major stake in German media conglomerate Axel Springer, where it maintains board-level influence. Axel Springer has long supported Israel—including illegal settlements, which it openly promotes through its Yad2 real estate platform.
Beyond Palestine, KKR’s record includes massive investments in fossil fuel infrastructure across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Middle East—as well as funding for surveillance technology used in China.
Flow Festival maintains partnerships with companies that profit from and support Israel’s apartheid regime. One of its main sponsors, Heineken, owns 40% of Tempo Beverages, an Israeli company included on the Canadian BDS boycott list. Tempo holds exclusive rights to distribute beverages in Palestinian Authority territories—territories under occupation. In 2023, Flow Festival briefly ended its partnership with Heineken over its continued operations in Russia. That partnership has since resumed.
Flow also partners with Google, which in 2024 signed billion-dollar contracts with the Israeli government. Alongside Microsoft, Google provides infrastructure to the Israeli military through Project Nimbus—a cloud computing deal condemned by workers and activists. The No Tech For Apartheid campaign has documented extensive internal dissent, including open letters from Google employees.
These are not neutral relationships. They are active ties to a system of dispossession, militarisation, and apartheid. If Flow Festival claims to stand for justice, these partnerships must end.
BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) is a Palestinian-led, nonviolent, and anti-racist movement for freedom, justice, and equality. Its goal is to end international complicity with Israeli apartheid by severing economic, cultural, and academic ties with the state of Israel. BDS exposes how global systems sustain the occupation—and calls for targeted pressure until Israel complies with international law and universal human rights.
The Flow Strike campaign stands in alignment with BDS principles and is supported by BDS Finland.
Audience members who no longer wish to attend Flow Festival due to its ownership or partnerships have every right to request a refund. We encourage all guests who stand in solidarity with Palestine to email Flow Festival directly and ask for reimbursement. This is one way to publicly withdraw consent and apply pressure on the organisers to respond to ethical concerns.
Sónar, also owned by KKR, reimbursed tickets earlier this summer.