OPEN CALL
Who Walks Here

Artistic Residency at OvestLab Modena, Italy
supported by Culturale Moves Europe

supported by Culture Moves Europe

Who Walks Here is a residency hosted by Amigdala within Culture Moves Europe, the mobility scheme funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and implemented by the Goethe-Institut. Culture Moves Europe supports the mobility of artists and cultural professionals across Architecture, Cultural Heritage, Design and Fashion Design, Literature, Music, Performing Arts, and Visual Arts.
Amigdala is looking for three artists to take part in Who Walks Here, a 28-day residency at OvestLab, our civic centre in the Artisan Village, in the outskirts of Modena.

RESIDENCY DATES
 The residency will unfold in the period of May 2027 (28 days) — slight shifts are still possible as long as the residency ends before 7th June 2027. The 28 days are continuous: it is not possible to split the residency into separate periods.

WHO CAN APPLY — ELIGIBLE COUNTRIES
This call is open to artists and cultural professionals residing in a Creative Europe country other than Italy. As a mobility scheme, Culture Moves Europe supports artists moving to a country different from the one they live in — so applicants based in Italy are not eligible for this call.
Eligible countries: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, Ukraine — as well as their Overseas Countries and Territories and Outermost Regions.

THE PROJECT

The Artisan Village was built in 1953 by craftspeople who designed their own live-work spaces. For seventy years it has been shaped by shared labour and mutual values — but it now faces decades-long deindustrialisation and increasing real estate pressure.
Who Walks Here invites three artists to explore this context through a transfeminist urban lens. The construction of public space is never neutral: shaped by patriarchal logics, it produces inequalities, leaving some bodies more visible, safe and welcome than others. Places undergoing deindustrialisation are living laboratories for these questions — how can the social fabric of a neighbourhood in transformation be reimagined through care and proximity, through artistic and relational practices, rather than top-down planning?

The residency continues an inquiry Amigdala opened with Transfemina: Intersectional Landscapes, a Creative Europe project through which the collective spent two years investigating the neighbourhood and the city from a feminist perspective.
Explore and create are the two inseparable movements of this process: the artists will conduct situated research on feminist urban practices in this specific context, and from that research — together with the communities who live and work here — a new site-specific piece will take shape.

HOW THE RESIDENCY IS STRUCTURED

Phase 1 — Getting to know the context. Gender walks as a practice of listening and immersion; research through PerMeA, Amigdala’s digital archive of oral histories and performative practices rooted in the Artisan Village; meetings with the communities and spaces Amigdala has been working with in the neighbourhood.

Phase 2 — Co-learning and artistic development. Alongside Amigdala’s territorial curators, the artists develop their work in dialogue with the communities and relationships that emerged in Phase 1. Other people from Amigdala’s extended network may join for moments of exchange and collective reflection.

Phase 3 — Creation and public restitution. An outcome of the process, open to the neighbourhood, first shown at OvestLab in June 2027. A public presentation within Periferico Festival 2027 (October) — www.perifericofestival.it — is a possibility we will evaluate together with the artists and the festival’s artistic direction, depending on how the process unfolds.

LANGUAGES AND PRACTICES WE’RE LOOKING FOR
Who Walks Here is open to a wide range of practices that can meet at the intersection of performance, urban research and public space: performing arts, choreography and movement, dramaturgy, vocal and sound research, visual and public art, architecture and civic design, oral history and documentary practices, participatory and community-based methodologies.

We are not looking for a finished discipline, but for a way of working that is curious about bodies, space and the people who inhabit it. Proposals that involve local communities in participatory processes are especially welcome.

APPLYING AS AN INDIVIDUAL OR AS A COLLECTIVE
You can apply either:

• as an individual artist. If selected, you will be asked to collaborate with the other two artists chosen through this call — the piece will be built together, even if you don’t know each other yet; or
• as an existing collective, of no more than 3 artists.

In both cases, the residency will host a maximum of 3 artists.

SUPPORT PROVIDED

• Hosting allowance, daily allowance, and travel allowance, as set by the Culture Moves Europe scheme
• Accommodation at OvestLab’s guesthouse, within walking distance of the workspaces
• Three territorial curators as mentors, following the residency through all three phases
• Visa support, with particular attention to the structural barriers faced by artists from non-EU countries
• Linguistic mediation whenever needed, so that language is never a barrier to participation

Fully accessible workspace (step-free, accessible bathrooms); accessible accommodation arranged on a case-by-case basis where needed

WHO WE’D LIKE TO MEET
Amigdala is committed to building a space where different bodies, histories and positions can genuinely take part. We warmly encourage applications from people with disabilities, racialised people, queer artists, artist-mothers, and anyone whose presence in public space is made harder by the very dynamics this project wants to question.

HOW TO APPLY
Please send the following documents, in English:

• a letter of intent, we are not asking for a predefined project, but for what moves you: your connection to the themes of this residency, and the desire that brings you to apply
• your CV
• your portfolio

Send everything to: laura.p@collettivoamigdala.com – Laura Petrucci (hosting coordinator)
Deadline: 7 September 2026
Selected artists will be notified by 20 September 2026.

After the selection, the chosen artists will be contacted, and there will be one or two calls to get to know each other and align before the residency begins.