Open Call 2025: Reimagining Community
Until 21 September 2025

About

For 2025, we are rethinking our project space at Goethe-Institut Singapore. The LAB becomes a site for community — as practice, as method, as provocation. What does it mean to be together? How do we practice belonging, solidarity, or difference? Can community be messy, tender, political — all at once?

We invite Singapore-based artists, collectives, and cultural practitioners to experiment, collaborate, and imagine new forms of being together.

The 2025 edition invites proposals that critically engage with the notion of community. We seek projects that interrogate, celebrate, or reimagine communal practices through artistic or transdisciplinary forms. Whether through participation, collaboration, co-creation, or reflection, we are particularly interested in how community—as an idea, a structure, or a lived experience—can be explored and expressed in artistic terms.

“Community is not the work of individuals forming a collective, but the space where being together becomes an experience.”
— Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community

Community can be messy, tender, political, spiritual, contested. This open call encourages proposals that challenge fixed definitions of belonging and solidarity, and that experiment with new ways of being with others through cultural practice.

We welcome formats that may include (but are not limited to):

  • Artist collectives working with specific communities to explore urgent or overlooked societal issues
  • Multidisciplinary performances, installations, or events examining the dynamics of communal life
  • Interactive or participatory processes that unfold over time, building relationships as part of the work
  • Dialogue-based practices such as reading groups, listening sessions, or open studios

Mechanisms & Requirements

  • Open to all formats across disciplines and sectors of civil society.
  • Proposals must include a public-facing component at 136 GOETHE LAB—this may be an ongoing activation or final presentation.
  • The LAB will be offered rent-free for selected projects running between 2 days and 2 months.
  • Project funding ranges between SGD 2,000 to 6,000.
  • A jury will shortlist applicants for in-person conversations prior to final selection.

Eligibility

  • Open to Singapore-based cultural practitioners, collectives, or civil society actors.
  • International or regional collaborators are welcome, within the project budget.
  • Applicants may secure additional external funding, to be disclosed to Goethe-Institut Singapore.

Selection Criteria

Proposals will be evaluated by Goethe-Institut Singapore based on:

  • Artistic and conceptual strength
  • Originality and criticality of engagement with the theme of community
  • Relevance to contemporary cultural and civic discourse in Singapore
  • Feasibility and clarity of execution
  • Cohesiveness and potential public impact
  • Projects taking place from December 2025 to February 2026 will be prioritised and notified first

How to Apply

Submit your proposal to Kristine.Ng@goethe.de with the following:

  • A two-sentence summary of the project’s goal
  • A project outline (max. one page), including:
  • Proposed duration
  • Use of the 136 GOETHE LAB space
  • Concept for public engagement or presentation
  • Preferred project dates
  • CVs of all participants
  • A basic project budget
Application Deadline: 21 September 2025
 

Let 136 GOETHE LAB become your testing ground for community—as practice, as method, as provocation.

We look forward to your proposals.