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Indonesia

I wish it gets easier – Assembling chaos
 Open Call

In the corner of a book fair, a post-it note reads: organizing ourselves has never been anything else than loving each other.

I wish it gets easier © Goethe-Institut Indonesia

Labor in the arts has grown deeply political in the past decade. Amid democratic decline, environmental crisis, economic instability, and the rise of AI, the field is now expected to disrupt and reveal, not merely entertain or please the eye of the beholder. This raises urgent questions: how can our working modes adapt to current circumstances, how do we care for ourselves and our inner circles, and how do we keep building spaces that are healthy, manageable, and sustainable?  
  
A survey by Artnet and the Association of Women in the Arts (2026) found that nearly half of Gen Z and millennial women in the field are considering leaving within five years, a warning sign for an industry where women make up 80 percent of the workforce. Southeast Asia's art scene has grown rapidly, shifting from regional consumer to global tastemaker with new museums, biennales, art fairs and festivals across the region, yet formal training in arts and cultural management remains scarce, leaving workers reliant on on-the-job learning and personal networks that widen the gap between seasoned professionals and emerging talent.   
 
"I wish it gets easier – assembling chaos" is a leadership programme for arts and creative workers, namely community leaders, festival organizers, space managers, social entrepreneurs, programme facilitators, matchmakers, enablers, and advocates, built around soft skills and practical tools drawn from everyday case studies across Indonesia and beyond. 
 
Aimed at mid-career professionals, the programme offers tangible tools for building networks, practicing transparent decision-making, mentorship, and administrative relief, alongside room for personal growth.

Participants may choose from the following modules:

At the start, all modules will be delivered in a series of intensive sessions that are open to the public. Selected participants will then continue into additional closed sessions for deeper reflection, intimate exchanges, and practical exercises based on their submitted cases. The programme culminates in a collaborative publication that brings together stories from the public sessions, learnings from the participants, and directory of arts and creative facilitators that will be published on the Goethe-Institut website. Participants will also be encouraged to develop an (optional) offline presentation, designed and managed collectively, as a way of bringing the learnings back into their own communities and local contexts.

Further information

CO-Programmer

ND
Nin Djani
is a curator and writer based in Jakarta, Indonesia, with ten years of experience in interpretation, museum learning, artist incubation, audience engagement, exhibition development, and children's programming. Her practice explores interdisciplinary collaborations and artist-designer participation in community-based programming. She was Curator at ARCOLABS from 2017 to 2021, overseeing international artist residency exchange and incubation projects, before serving as Curator of Education and Public Programs at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN) from 2021 to 2026, where she led a team of museum educators and worked across departments to develop meaningful learning experiences for a diverse museum audience. She is also a mentor at the Atreyu Moniaga Project.

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