The Goethe‑Institut Jordan invites young writers to apply for the May edition of the Arḍ Writing Lab, a month‑long writing cycle exploring the theme Roots & Nurturing.

Across four weeks, participants will join writing sessions held in natural and communal spaces around Amman. The program includes guided workshops, reflective exercises, zine‑making, and a final experimental performance blending text, sound, and movement.

The cycle offers a space to slow down, reconnect with the land, and approach writing as an embodied, communal practice. No previous writing experience is required.
 

May 11— Writing Session
May 13— Writing Session
May 18— Writing & Zine Making
May 20— Final Performance

Who can apply:
Writers, students, artists, and anyone seeking creative reflection, ages 18–28.

Deadline: 2nd of May,2026 (23:59)

Apply here
Participation is free of charge. Spots are limited. Participants are required to attend all sessions.

This cycle explores how writing can reconnect us with what grounds, nourishes, and shapes us. Roots may refer to personal history, land, memory, ancestry, or emotional anchors. Nurturing invites questions around care, growth, community, and the practices that sustain us — inwardly and collectively.

Throughout the month, participants will write within natural and communal spaces — from gardens to shared creative rooms — allowing the theme to evolve organically. The sessions mix reflective writing, sensory exercises, collective dialogue, and small creative experiments, culminating in a final experimental performance and a self-made zine exchange.

The cycle draws inspiration from nature writing as a longstanding German poetic tradition. German literature has long approached nature as a outer counterpart to inner life — a space where perception, language, and thought unfold together. At the beginning of the cycle, participants will receive a brief introduction to this tradition, along with a selected literary example, not as a model to imitate, but as a point of resonance. This shared reference opens a dialogue between German literary heritage and the participants’ own lived, local, and embodied relationships to nature, place, and care.

The theme remains intentionally open, allowing each writer to engage with it personally, intuitively, or abstractly — letting roots and forms of nurturing emerge through practice, attention, and shared space.