Our Dates

What happens when children assert their right to leisure, play, and freedom of expression? And what happens when they use artistic and performative means and strategies to seek out spaces of their own in their city, claim them, and make them their own? Taking these questions as a starting point, choreographer and performer Antje Velsinger has developed a choreographic audio walk for the New Patrons of Schwelm.

In the Amberg neighborhood of Am Bergsteig, New Patrons are working towards a positive image of their neighborhood and new forms of community and solidarity for the future. For them, Julian Warner is developing “Kampf am Berg”, a spectacle featuring two wrestling shows in cooperation with local clubs and initiatives. Warner uses wrestling as a stage to make the contradictions and forces at work in the neighborhood visible and bring them into sharper focus. The event will take place in a specially constructed circus tent.

The Bergsteig quarter in Amberg loves sport—from football, mixed martial arts, boxing, and Greco-Roman wrestling to rhythmic gymnastics, people here are actively involved in local clubs and initiatives. “Kampf am Berg” brings this passion together with that of local athletes, musicians, and professional wrestlers. The people of Bergsteig themselves become hosts and authors of their own stories.

In the Amberg neighborhood of Am Bergsteig, New Patrons are working towards a positive image of their neighborhood and new forms of community and solidarity for the future. For them, Julian Warner is developing “Kampf am Berg”, a spectacle featuring two wrestling shows in cooperation with local clubs and initiatives. Warner uses wrestling as a stage to make the contradictions and forces at work in the neighborhood visible and bring them into sharper focus. The event will take place in a specially constructed circus tent.

We warmly invite you to the inauguration of the village garden in Wietstock! A group of people from Wietstock designed and created the village garden together with the artist Antje Majewski: as a snack garden with berries and old apple varieties for children, as a bird garden with a bird bath, and as a place for celebrations and conversations around the fire.

On Sunday, September 13, 2026, "Performing the Unfinished" continues with a performative rose parade and an interactive tea salon. Unfolding in three parts, the work connects local history with global contexts—from the ceremonial inauguration of the Square of Children's Rights to the working conditions behind Pinneberg's rose industry and the entangled histories of colonialism and care embedded in Northern Germany's tea culture.

The first presentation within "Citizen-Commissioned Dance and Performance" takes place on June 27, 2026, on Ummanz, near Rügen. Here, Amanda Piña will present the opening event of her three-parted piece "Atlantic Undercurrent Circulation" honoring coastal Bodden fishermen and marine life. Her work is conceived for the New Patrons of Ummanz.

In "Ecology of Care", we draw on impulses from Sonja Leboš and Hannah Mevis to explore how social and ecological responsibility can be brought together. Care is understood here as a systemic, ethical, and political attitude that extends beyond humans to include plants, animals, and other non-human actors. Feminist and posthumanist perspectives on everyday, often invisible care work form a central focus. Kunstverein Rügen e. V. and Circus Eins Projekte present this workshop as part of "Art Living Lab to Repair the Land", a collaboration between international New Patrons initiatives.

Within the series of talks at Radialsystem, organised by the OnCurating Academy Berlin and Dorothee Richter, Lea Schleiffenbaum, New Patrons mediator, speaks about "Artistic Production Reconfigured: Actor Constellations and Knowledge Exchange in the New Patrons Model".

Mediator Diana Wesser is a guest at the “Botanical Salon” of the Botanical Garden/University of Leipzig. In this edition of the Botanical Salon, participants will discuss on site how art in public space comes into being. Who commissions such works, and what possibilities do artists have to realize their ideas? How long does such a process take, and what does “public space” really mean when private interests and societal expectations come into play? Practical examples from Leipzig will illustrate these questions.

"The Art of Assembly" is a nomadic series of talks on the potential and limits of assemblies in art, activism and politics, curated by Florian Malzacher. Guests of the XXXI edition "The arbitrary constellations of neighbourhood" are Ulf Bohmann (Technische Universität Chemnitz), Alexander Koch (New Patrons) and Anna Rispoli (artist). The event takes place within " Chemnitz European Capital of Culture 2025".

The “Repair the Land” conference brings together researchers, mediators, local residents, and artists on May 24 and 25, 2025, in Ponferrada and Barruelo de Santullán, Spain, as part of the project "Art Living Lab to Repair the Land" by European New Patrons organizations. The conference focuses on the role of participatory art as a tool for repair in territories marked by industrial legacy, extractivism and abandonment. From Germany, Susanne Burmester — mediator and chair of the Society for Citizen-Commissioned Art and Mediation — will participate.

The German Association of Cities and the German Association of Towns and Municipalities support Neue Auftraggeber's participation model for public artworks and recommend it as “a cultural, social and urban policy model that can complement and enrich cultural life in the city.”

The State Capital Kiel is the first municipality in Germany to implement the New Patrons model in its own local structures. In the Mettenhof district, a three-year participatory process for a public artwork has now been launched, commissioned by local residents and accompanied by mediator Pascal Simm. In connection with the district and in the spirit of the community, the commission is intended to address site-specific local issues, wishes, pressing concerns or challenges.