Patrons: Rema Hedr, Nadja Madani, Ria Moudarres, Anjali Mukherji, Ayon Mukherji, Julia Safiyya Mokni

Commission: We, a group of people from different generations, some born here, some who migrated here, are asking ourselves questions of “belonging.” We would like an artistic work that takes up these questions and also involves local resources and talents in its realization.

Mediator: Leyla Jagiella

Period: From 2026

Partner: Kulturstiftung des Bundes

Program: Citizen-Commissioned Dance and Performance

Heidelberg has a lot of art and culture. But who is part of it? And who gets the stage to tell their own stories? A group of people from Heidelberg has made these questions the starting point of their commission.

The patrons come from many different generations and were born in different countries. Some grew up in Heidelberg, while others came to Germany much later. Their life stories do not fit into simple categories.

For all of them, the exploration of belonging runs like a red thread through their lives. They know contexts in which one might like to belong but is not granted it. Then there are also moments when belonging is demanded from the outside, but one would rather be free of it. And one can also have multiple belongings and thus refuse to be sorted into simple boxes.

“When do I feel I belong, and when do I not? And what about the right not to have to belong?”

From the Commission

Accompanied by mediator Leyla Jagiella, they are commissioning a dance or performance work devoted to their questions of belonging. It is important to the group that the commissioned work also broadens the view of which culture “belongs to Heidelberg,” which art is regarded as a matter-of-course part of the city, and which is not.

Together with an artist, they want to create space for experiences, contradictions, and questions that otherwise rarely become visible locally or end up in a cultural niche. Places, people, and structures from Heidelberg are to be involved. 

Out of personal questions about belonging, the group uses its commission to form a shared question to the city: How can space emerge here for the many stories that make up Heidelberg?