(UN)LEARN, CREATE & PRESENT AT OFF-BIENNÁLE BUDAPEST 2025
SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITY
“A safe space is not a sticker. You can’t just call a space “safe” and expect it to be so. A label, a declaration, even the best intentions—none of these guarantee actual safety. And what feels safe to you might not feel safe to me. Safety is not a fixed state; it’s a continuous, negotiated process. During this masterclass, we will critically engage with urgent and complex topics such as safe spaces, trigger warning, hierarchy, authority, separation, distinction, responsibility, and the overuse of buzzwords like “radical empathy” or “politics of care”. We will reintroduce the notion of frame—not as a limitation, but as a structure that protects rather than restricts. A frame sets conditions, creates clarity, and offers a foundation from which risk, experimentation, and transformation can emerge. We will challenge the mainstream discourse of horizontality, questioning how its rhetoric, while often well-intentioned, can paradoxically become an obstacle to the emergence of contemporary leaders. Leadership does not have to mean domination or oppression. We will reimagine it beyond capitalist individualism, seeking new iconographies of leadership and management that are true to our ethics—rooted in sincerity, generosity, and integrity.”
Anna Ádám
The OFF Biennale Budapest, Company Gray Box, and School of Disobedience are offering two fully funded scholarships for an intensive “The Art of Holding Space” Masterclass (2025 May 5-30), designed for artists, makers, creatives, and cultural practitioners seeking to expand their practice into socially engaged art, community facilitation, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Participants will receive comprehensive training, mentorship, and the opportunity to present their collaborative practice or community art work at OFF Biennálé 2025, Hungary’s largest independent contemporary art event. This program is intended for professionals who wish to move beyond individual creation and develop projects that foster collective experiences, participatory methods, and meaningful social impact.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
“The Art of Holding Space” Masterclass is designed to equip artists, makers, creatives, and cultural practitioners with the skills, confidence, and strategies necessary to design, implement, and lead participatory projects, transformative experiences, design and hold creative spaces, build communities.
The program focuses on:
- Acquiring tools for facilitation, community engagement, and participatory practices
- Develop your own toolbox with exercises, objects, images
- Setting a frame, leading a group, and enjoy leading
- Understanding how to create and hold brave spaces for artistic exploration, critical thinking, and empowerment
- Developing a participatory art project with active audience engagement (workshops, spaces, multi-sensory experiences, community actions, etc.), testing it in a small group setting, then a bigger group setting within OFF Biennial 2025
- Extending existing work (pieces, performances) with an educational or community aspect that shifts audience participation from passive to active
- Receiving individual mentorship Gaining professional visibility through a final presentation at OFF Biennial 2025
PROGRAM STRUCTURE
Week 1: Theory & Discussions
- Critical perspectives on socially engaged art
- Addressing sensitive topics, taboos, rhetorics, and mainstream discourses
- Introduction to facilitation methods and radical pedagogies
- Development of an individual project outline
Week 2: Testing & Piloting
- Conceptualizing a pilot version of the collaborative practice or community project (workshop, experience, space, interactive dispositive…)
- Testing ideas in a small group setting
- Refining artistic and theoretical approaches
- Creating exercises, toolbox, methods
Week 3: Practice & Implementation
- Individual mentorship and hands-on facilitation practice
- Holding spaces and leading group experiences
- Key topics:
- Creating a frame and making sure it is respected
- Differentiation and separation of spaces, roles, functions
- Assuming responsibility: finding our leadership style and redefining authority
- Discussing copyright and ownership in collective work
- Exploring alternative financial models to build and sustain artistic spaces, practices, and communities
- Evening sessions dedicated to group facilitation
Week 4: Documentation & Follow-Up (Online)
- Archiving and reflective practice
- Planning next steps for project sustainability
SCHEDULE
May 5-30, 2025
WEEK 1 – 1111 Gallery (Kende u. 1) May 5, 6, 8, 9: 10:00–13:00
WEEK 2 – 1111 Gallery (Kende u. 1) May 12, 13, 15, 16: 17:00–20:00
WEEK 3 – 1111 Gallery (Kende u. 1) May 19, 20, 22, 23: 17:00–20:00
WEEK 4 – Online May 26, 27, 29, 30: This final week, conducted online with daily prompts, offers five days of guidance for documentation, reflection, and connection.
WHO SHOULD APPLY
This program is designed for artists, makers, creatives, and cultural practitioners who are interested in expanding their work into community engagement, facilitation, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Ideal candidates include:
- Artists looking to integrate community-based approaches into their practice
- Dancers and movement practitioners interested in workshop facilitation and interdisciplinary methodologies
- Cultural workers, educators, and facilitators aiming to develop participatory artistic experiences
- Activists and organizers using art as a tool for social transformation
APPLICATION PROCESS
Applicants must submit the following:
- A short biography outlining their background and experience
- A project description detailing their artistic vision and objectives
Deadline for applications: March 23, 2025
Eligibility: Open to people living and working in Hungary
Scholarship coverage: Full tuition for all four weeks of training (attendance required)
Program language: English