WAYS: Towards Fair and Sustainable International Partnerships. Cultural institutions or independent artists’ groups can now submit applications to the Initiation Fund.
(Organisations that focus exclusively on education, training and academic research, as well as cultural (umbrella) associations, solo artists and researchers are not eligible to apply.)
Many cultural organisations in Germany are intensifying their collaboration with international partners. There is a growing demand to organise these partnerships in a more fair and sustainable way. In addition to joint artistic work, it is becoming more and more important to engage in an equal dialogue about different expectations, resources and complex decision-making processes. For example, how do German and international theatre-makers select plays together when much of the material has never been adapted for the stage? How can exhibition architects learn from each other when certain standards of their work are different? How is the budget managed? Who holds the rights to collaboratively developed works? How do partners find a common approach to sustainability despite having differing views of what sustainability means? And what does a culture of openness and understanding look like in practice?
What is funded?
A key factor in such processes is time. To enable cultural institutions in Germany to find new partners in non-European countries and implement long-term artistic projects, the German Federal Cultural Foundation has launched the programme WAYS – Towards Fair and Sustainable International Partnerships (formerly: Transcontinental Partnerships). WAYS helps cultural institutions and independent groups in Germany to establish long-term artistic collaborations with non-European partners especially from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Oceania, and Central-, South- and Southeast Asia and to carry out joint projects over a period of years. A central focus of collaboration concerns fairness and sustainability, the terms of which the partners will jointly define in addition to developing their artistic projects in an equitable manner.
Please read the Funding guidelines and FAQs on the Initiation Fund before submitting an application. These contain detailed information on the programme and application process.
If you have any technical problems, please send your questions by email to antragssupport(at)kulturstiftung-bund.de or call us on +49 (0)345 2997 444.
deadline: 1 Oct. 2025, 12 p.pm. CEST
more info: https://www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/en/programmes_projects/sustainability_and_future/detail/ways.html
