"Open House Tirana", Architecture Fund in Albania, Albania

Empowering young creatives and cultural professionals to reimagine cultural heritage through architecture, storytelling, and digital tools.

The project invites youth, local communities, and international visitors to explore architecture as a common good by engaging in a collaborative program of workshops, site-specific installations, and public events. Centered in Tirana with regional outreach, the initiative will activate underused, forgotten, or inaccessible spaces—transforming them through participatory design and cultural programming to become inclusive and accessible for all.

Participants will explore and interact with Tirana’s architectural heritage, develop temporary structures, curate architectural film screenings, and produce multimedia stories that reflect local narratives, urban memory, and environmental awareness. The program provides mentoring, capacity-building opportunities, and visibility for young talents, while strengthening civic engagement and raising awareness of spatial justice and sustainability. It aims to educate and inspire pride in Tirana’s architectural heritage.

The project builds on AFA’s experience with the Tirana Architecture Triennale, the “New Temporality” platform, and European cultural networks such as the LINA Community and the New European Bauhaus. It connects youth with professional and institutional actors, fosters cross-border collaboration, and promotes inclusive, transformative cultural action through architecture.

© Photo : Ina Omuri

"Watch#Talk#Change, The Box, Albania

Young filmmakers bring their stories to youth in conflict with the law, opening safe spaces for dialogue, reflection, and positive change. Watch#Talk#Change empowers young filmmakers to become peer educators, using their own short films to reach youth in conflict with the law. The project extends the successful Shif&Bej FILMA (4 editions) model beyond production and public premieres by bringing screenings and guided discussions directly inside juvenile justice institutions. Through film screenings, dialogue circles, and creative workshops, young people serve as cultural mediators, sparking open conversations about choices, resilience, and new opportunities.

Partnering with local justice authorities, educators, and youth workers, the project creates safe spaces where marginalized youth can reflect on their experiences, share stories, and imagine positive futures. By combining art, peer dialogue, and social reintegration, Watch#Talk#Change breaks cultural barriers, promotes inclusion, and builds a replicable model for using youth-made films as tools for social impact.

This innovative approach strengthens young creators’ voices while giving vulnerable peers hope, connection, and cultural access where it is needed most.

© Photo: TRIAD 1988 shpk

"Color the Court(yard)", Visual Voices, Cyprus

Nicosia-Cyprus remains Europe’s last divided capital. Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities live apart, separated by a UN Buffer Zone and the affected walled city of Nicosia is suffering in urban decline.

For the upcoming Art Explora program, we propose the next evolution of Color the Court.

Shifting from participatory murals on basketball courts to community-led art and design in public space, Color the Court(yard) will transform a deserted, dilapidated site in Nicosia into a vibrant pocket park.

A Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot artist will engage with residents through socially engaged art and tactical urbanism methods. Together, they will co-design and co-create the pocket park elements such as seating, play structures, and lighting, merging placemaking with public art.

Old and new residents, Cypriots and newcomers, young and old, will collaborate across divides to shape a space that reflects their shared life in the city.

Color the Court(yard) aspires to:

– Foster collaboration across divisions

– Bring art into the rhythms of everyday life

– Embed participation in artistic production

– Make public space more vibrant, and beautiful

– Encourage shared ownership of place

The project is supported by the Intercommunal Socially Engaged Arts Hub and long-time partner, the Municipality of Nicosia.

© Photo : Giorgos Stylianou

"Cabins", Paisanaje Association, Spain

Cabins is a socially engaged art project that brings together artists, designers, architects, and local communities to design and build shelters in Madrid’s Casa de Campo using local materials and bioconstruction techniques. Developed in dialogue with the park’s shepherds, each cabin serves as both a functional refuge and a site for learning, gathering, and connection with nature.

The project began in January 2025 with the construction of a first cabin involving university students. It now enters a new phase, engaging teenagers from local vocational training centers and a group of unaccompanied minors (MENA) from the nearby reception center. Participants are involved in every stage of the process, gaining hands-on experience while reimagining their relationship to the environment and to one another.

Cabins is conceived as a space for horizontal exchange, where practical, traditional, and artistic forms of knowledge are valued equally. It challenges conventional hierarchies in cultural production by centering voices often excluded—particularly youth—and cultivating collective creativity rooted in care. With a deep respect for the ecological integrity of the park, Cabañas offers a grounded, participatory model for how art can build community, foster belonging, and imagine more hopeful, shared futures.

© Photo : Paisanaje

"Meeting Points, Off Stream, Greece

"Meeting Points" is an inclusive, participatory art project that brings together persons with and without sensory impairments to engage with contemporary art through a multisensory and co-creative process.

The project connects artists, museums, cultural professionals, social workers and diverse audiences to explore selected artworks in a way that values all senses and encourages active participation. Through a series of ten interactive public events (Meeting Points), five in museums and five in artists’ studios, participants discover contemporary artworks using touch, sound, smell and dialogue. These events foster a safe, creative space where participants collaboratively craft the creative description and offer feedback on tactile (relief) representations for each artwork.

The outcome of each Meeting Point forms the basis for the production of a universally accessible postcard featuring the artwork, resulting in a final collection of ten. These postcards will be available in museum gift shops, artists’ studios and other selected venues.

Launched in 2023 and currently ongoing, the 2026 edition introduces an exciting new dimension by integrating artists’ studios as creative spaces, bringing audiences closer to the artistic process.

'Meeting Points' reimagines accessibility as active participation, making contemporary art open, collaborative and meaningful for all.

Photo credit: Hichem Merouche

"Golden Age - Performing Art Education for inmates and children", Teatringestazione, Italy

Golden Age is a theatre education, programming and production project for adult prisoners and their teenage children involving international artists, students, citizens. It restores political transformative power to artistic work in the social sphere, turning an act of relational mending into an act of social weaving, poetically reconstructing the parent-child and society-prisoner relationship. The programme includes ongoing theatre education, accompanied by intensive workshops conducted by international performing arts professionals; complemented by a period of professionalisation based on the production of a play, presented during a final event open to the public.

In conjunction with the intensive workshops, the international artists will present their repertory work staged in the prison and open to the public, making up a programme of events. Golden Age gives rise to a hybrid space with social, artistic, poetic and political values. The presence and rotation of professional figures in the field of performing arts, active at an international level, dropped into the local dimension of the prison, creates a short-circuit that unleashes new energies and inspires good practices and new interactions, renewing the artists' aesthetics and the atrophied imagination of the inmates, activating unprecedented relational and collaborative dynamics and finally attracting a transversal and heterogeneous public.

© Photo: Roberta Ruggiero

"KomshiLOOK Zhelezara: A neighborhood in three Acts", KomshiLOOK Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia

KomshiLOOK Zhelezara: A Neighborhood in Three Acts is a two-day, site-specific cultural festival that transforms a block of six cascading 1980s residential buildings in Skopje into an open-air stage for opera, film, and community-led events. This rare modernist structure - now surrounded by unplanned urban development :/ becomes both backdrop and protagonist in a celebration of overlooked architecture and civic life.

Building on a successful 2024 pilot, the 2026 edition introduces a full narrative experience: a reimagined version of La Traviata performed in three acts (30–20–30 minutes) across three locations within the block. The opera retains its original libretto but is adapted to local context—a gossiping neighbor replaces the strict father, and the tragic ending becomes a wedding celebration. As the audience moves with the story, the music evolves from classical to Macedonian evergreens, folklore, brass bands, and techno-folk dance fusion.

Between acts, visitors engage with exhibitions, film screenings, dinners, and workshops scattered throughout the neighborhood. On the second day, residents host a communal breakfast and public reflection. With neighbors as hosts, performers, and co-creators, KomshiLOOK reclaims everyday space for culture offering a living model for participation, presence, and urban belonging.

© Photo: KomshiLOOK Archive, 2024

"Queer Freedom, NOMANTINELS, Slovakia

Theatre has always been a space for imagining new realities. Queer Freedom builds on this tradition, reimagined through a radical queer lens. This experimental performance responds to the emotional, social, and political precarity faced by LGBTI+ people in Slovakia and Central Europe. Inspired by findings from the 2025 Queer Vibes survey—where 76% of LGBTI+ respondents felt rejected by society the project seeks to transform trauma into collective healing and hope.

At its heart is Trauma Anatomy, an immersive theatrical experience blending live acting, movement, poetic language, and therapeutic storytelling. Surreal scenography and absurd humor evoke the fragmented nature of trauma while inviting audiences to reflect and interact. This isn’t just theatre, it’s a ritual of resilience.

Target audience includes LGBTI+ individuals especially youth, trans and nonbinary people, and those in rural areas as well as parents and relatives seeking to better understand their loved ones. The project also engages allies, educators, mental health professionals, and general audiences open to exploring queer realities in nuanced, intimate ways.

Led by NOMANTINELS with partners like Cultural Centre P*AKT, Queer Freedom fosters connection and visibility, offering tools for replication and long-term cultural impact.

© Photo: Jakub Kováč

"Homefront Affairs: Artists' engagement in times of war", Cultural Agency "Liniya Vtechi", Ukraine

"Homefront Affairs: Artists’ Engagement in Times of War" empowers Ukrainian artists to engage with vulnerable communities through art practices, fostering inclusive recovery and long-term collaboration across cultural and civic sectors.

Through a trauma-informed, two-month educational program that combines psychological training, artistic mentoring, and community engagement, the project equips artists with the tools and knowledge to design and implement socially engaged art projects.

The program will run in five waves throughout 2026, each involving lectures, field visits to partner institutions, and artist residencies at the Lviv Municipal Art Center. Selected participants will co-create art interventions in collaboration with local communities and support organizations.

The project’s final phase includes a design-thinking workshop, public presentation, and the creation of a best practices catalogue to be disseminated among institutions and NGOs across Ukraine. A network of trained artists and partnering organizations will be established, ensuring lasting impact after the project.

© Photo: Volodymyr Voznyy

"ALASKA: a play about the pursuit of happiness in an abusive world", Mariupol theatre of Ukraine in Exile, Ukraine

An umbrella project that includes: 2 residencies and the recreation of the award winning performance ALASKA with locals every time, a toolkit-booklet detailing our methodology, three documentary films (two local, one final) and a digital dissemination strategy across Europe, powered by our team that is based in 10 EU countries.

A multilingual, documentary-based performance created with young people from Mariupol, Ukraine, ALASKA explores war, trauma, love, loneliness, and the universal search for meaning. In each country (Italy, Poland) the project invites local youth and displaced Ukrainians to co-create and perform the play after a seven-day devising workshop. Each version features a new mixed cast, offering a safe space for self-expression, healing, and connection.

Local directors and theatre-makers are invited to observe the entire process, learning the tools we use to engage emotionally affected participants. After the residency, we stay in contact with them for one year, offering mentoring and support as they adapt the method in their own projects.

Born in Mariupol’s Theatre before its destruction in 2022, ALASKA is a living, evolving message of peace. The project includes audience engagement through surveys, three documentaries, and a Toolkit–Booklet to share our trauma-informed methodology across Europe, ensuring scalability and long-term legacy.

© Photo : Jacek Klejment

"Dreams of the Future", Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium - Odin Teatret, Denmark

DREAMS OF THE FUTURE unleashed the creative energy of 2500 students aged 5-13, inviting them to reimagine music through bold, rule-breaking performances during Holstebro Festuge 2024. Building on NTL's tradition of youth-led cultural experiments, this project transformed the traditional choir format into a vibrant, interdisciplinary spectacle where participants fused singing with urban intervention. The unconventional concert spilled out of venues into public spaces – challenging perceptions of music while fostering ownership of cultural expression. Young Wild Dreams prioritizes playful rebellion, with a innovative focus on reinventing performance for TikTok-generation audiences. The project targets both participating youth, their teachers, friends, families and curious community members, creating bridges between generations through daring artistic encounters. By empowering youth to "hijack" and reinvent established art forms, NTL cultivates tomorrow's cultural innovators today. The second edition of DREAMS OF THE FUTURE 2025/2026 will turn Holstebro into a rhythmic playground, as students transform everyday objects into percussion instruments through STOMP-inspired performances. This explosive edition includes a replication strategy for empowering youth to reimagine urban soundscapes. Approximately 6000 students will co-create pulse-pounding public performances—turning the city into a stage where trash cans, brooms, and bodies become instruments of wild, joyful rebellion.

© Photo: Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium

"La Grande Parade #2", Centre National pour la Création Adaptée (CNCA), France

Enabling wider access to artistic practices for audiences of all ages, with or without disabilities, from city centers to rural areas, and highlighting the creativity and uniqueness of each individual during a festive and inclusive event in public spaces.

The GRANDE PARADE places as much emphasis on the creative workshops leading up to the event (in dance, visual arts, writing) as on the big parade on the day itself. It is an opportunity to engage together, in a diverse setting, in creative processes and to celebrate our uniqueness.

© Photo : Alain Derrien

"Rossy de Palma Invites Toulouse", Le Nouveau Printemps, France

Rossy de Palma invites Toulouse and infiltrates a neighborhood of the city through a well-established, collaborative festival and artistic and mediation projects involving residents and users of the neighborhood.

In 2026, the Le Nouveau Printemps festival invites multidisciplinary artist Rossy de Palma for an edition resolutely focused on the public. The festival takes over the Matabiau and Bonnefoy station neighborhood, its interstices, its public spaces, its artistic and unusual venues, and invents new artistic formats in a neighborhood and city undergoing rapid transformation, the beating heart of the metropolis and a region at the heart of Mediterranean Europe.

Le Nouveau Printemps is introducing a new, enhanced method of audience engagement: involving the neighborhood, connecting with artists and local communities, promoting heritage and creativity, and encouraging residents to participate in numerous projects in the program or in the organization of the festival itself.

We believe that a festival of this size and renown bringing together an international artist and a city is innovative, original, and well-suited to current challenges. The whole project already serves as a model of shared and demanding cultural development for other localities.

© Photo : Théa Drouin

"Turning the Tide", Thames Festival Trust, United Kingdom

Turning the Tide is a major cultural engagement project by Turner Prize-nominated artist Catherine Yass, designed to challenge perceptions of disabled people in public space and empower disabled young creatives. Key elements include:

Partners: Delivered with Thames Festival Trust, disabled-led theatre company Graeae, and the City of London Culture Service.

Main Installation: A site-specific film installation projected onto the iconic, abandoned old Blackfriars Railway Bridge columns over four nights in September 2026, featuring young disabled performers and reaching an estimated 10,000 viewers.

Creative Development: Collaboratively developed with a disabled-led artistic team including Artistic Director of Graeae Jenny Sealey, promoting excellence in work by D/deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent artists.

Education Programme: A UK-wide series of visual art workshops (June 2026–March 2027) in filming, photography, and projection, co-designed for disabled and SEND children, young people, and adults, led by Yass.

Exhibition: A month-long riverside display featuring community-created artworks and insights into the creative process, with an expected audience of 390,000.

Final Film: A standalone artwork film by Yass and videographer Hugo Glendinning, to be screened nationally in 2027 at venues such as ICA and Whitechapel Gallery, with wide scope for national & international touring potential.

© Photo : Catherine Yass

"Clarion - an instrument for everyone", Open Up Music, UK

Across Europe, disabled people remain underrepresented in cultural life. Despite the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and inclusion mandates, many still face structural and practical barriers to accessing or making music. Traditional instruments are often physically inaccessible, and most digital music tools have not been designed to be compatible with assistive technologies.

Clarion offers a transformative solution. Co-designed with disabled young people, Clarion can be played expressively with any part of the body - including the eyes. Available on iPad and Windows, it offers a highly adaptable, joyful entry into music-making. This isn’t just about access - it’s about artistry. Clarion enables users to shape sound with intent and emotion. It invites exploration, improvisation, and performance.

With support from Art Explora, we will:

Make Clarion available to individuals (currently it is only available to organisations)

Develop training materials to equip music teachers with the confidence and knowledge to teach Clarion effectively

Build relationships with music institutions interested in inclusive practice, offering entry points for collaboration and shared learning

This work directly supports Art Explora’s aim to broaden access to culture and empower communities through innovative, inclusive models.

© Photo : Jon Furley

"Future Heritage: A MakerLab and Roleplay Experience for Creating the History of Tomorrow", EESTI AJALOOMUUSEUM SA, Estonia

"Future Heritage" is an innovative educational project by the Estonian History Museum that empowers young people to explore, create, and define their own heritage through artistic expression, hands-on making, and immersive storytelling. The project combines two powerful learning formats: a new MakerLab space and a series of immersive roleplaying games (larps). In the MakerLab, students will work with historical objects and themes, using modern tools like 3D printers, laser cutters, and craft materials to replicate, reinterpret, and design artefacts that reflect both the past and their personal identities.

The roleplaying experiences, inspired by Nordic larp traditions, invite participants to engage emotionally and imaginatively with history through stories that connect archaeology, rituals, memory, and the future. One such experience, “Underwater Heritage”, lets students embody both the creators and discoverers of lost objects.

The project particularly focuses on engaging underrepresented youth, including Ukrainian students and children in foster care. Through a series of workshops, co-creation sessions, and inspirational meetings with practitioners and historians, participants will develop a deeper understanding of heritage as something they shape, not just inherit. Culminating in a youth-led exhibition in late 2026, Future Heritage positions young people as active storytellers and future-makers within the museum and society.

© Photo: Vahur Lõhmus

"Micro School Inspire, La Collection Lambert, France

The "micro-école Inspire", a unique initiative in France created in collaboration with the French Ministry of Education, gives students who have dropped out of school the opportunity to rediscover a love of learning through art, thanks to total immersion in the art centre and encounters with artists from diverse backgrounds.

Permanently located in the heart of the museum, the Inspire micro-school offers Year 5 and Year 6 pupils who have dropped out of school a new methodology: the works on display and encounters with artists from all disciplines are the guiding thread for learning the fundamentals.

The museum becomes a place of exploration and emancipation, a space to be inhabited differently and together: with visitors, staff and artists... As the exhibitions come and go, the children reveal themselves, reclaim the world and build themselves up as sensitive citizens, far from stigmatisation.  

Today, the challenge is twofold: to ensure the sustainability of the programme and to prepare for the transfer of this experience to other cultural institutions, both in France and in Europe. This network of partners in arts and cultural education will enable this promising model to grow.

© Photo: Pauline Abascal - La Boîte Orageuse

"Les mallettes culturelles", Cité de la musique - Philharmonie de Paris, France

The "cultural kits"offer seniors living in nursing homes the opportunity to explore the collections of the Musée de la Musique through participatory workshops led independently by the staff of the establishments.

This set of four kits provides clear and detailed activity materials in which music is both the subject of the workshop and a tool for well-being and memory support.

In addition to the activity sheets, there is a multisensory box containing items to touch, handle, and smell, a puzzle, a photo gallery, and rich multimedia content.

This first edition will explore music through the theme of the four seasons, a unifying theme capable of evoking emotions, sensations, and memories. Each kit will be dedicated to a season, creating a dialogue between music and other arts.

The kits aim to involve all staff at the establishments, through activities that foster a collective dynamic to enrich the daily lives of residents.

For the first time, the museum is designing educational materials adapted for independent use by activity teams. Training and remote support will enable beneficiaries to make the most of the kits.

© Photo : Gil Lefauconnier

"Cinemini Europe: Including All", Eye Filmmuseum, Netherlands

Cinemini Europe: Including all is a film education project, designed in collaboration with several European partners, aimed at children aged 3 – 6 with a hearing impairment to introduce them to cinema in a playful and meaningful way and to offer them a new language to express themselves. The Cinemini Europe consortium was originally founded in 2019 and developed a toolkit for educational and film professionals across Europe and the rest of the world, to provide them with practical tools to design high-quality film education activities for the young age group of 3 - 6, which is currently underserved. Through creative activities, children explore film as an art form and experience a carefully curated selection of short European films – ranging from early cinema classics to contemporary animations and experimental works. While Cinemini is technically accessible for children with a hearing impairment, it is not yet truly meaningful or empowering for them. With support from the Art Explora Prize, we aim to co-create new inclusive tools and film selections in collaboration with this target group – ensuring the programme is not only accessible, but genuinely relevant and impactful for children with a hearing impairment.

© Photo : Eye Filmmuseum

"New Horizons: Disabled-led change and representation in European outdoor arts festivals", FESTIVAL.ORG, United Kingdom

FESTIVAL.ORG proposes a ground-breaking international project to grow Deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent (DDN) audiences for outdoor arts, through a collaborative, replicable model rooted in local lived experience, alongside a tour of a new disabled-led participatory show Dancefloor Activist. This pilot will be a collaboration between Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF) (UK), Festival dos Canais (Portugal), Zomer van Antwerpen (Belgium), and La Mercè (Spain).

While Europe has made important strides in improving disability representation and access within performing arts, DDN audiences still remain underrepresented and underserved.

This award would support three strands of activity:

The presentation and access costs of touring an exceptional new piece of disabled-led performance Dancefloor Activist.

A programme of community-led audience engagement to connect with DDN communities across the four festivals, with a particular focus on Dancefloor Activist.

A programme of training, development and capacity building to strengthen the partners’ ability to engage and warmly welcome large and diverse DDN audiences at their festivals.

Our overarching aims for this project are to increase DDN attendance to outdoor arts across Europe, through building trust and relationships with these communities, and to develop the capacity and ability of European cultural organisations to engage and welcome these groups.

© Photo : David Levene