Dortmund Nordstadt – Community Curating (2026)

Who actually decides which stories are told on stage? Who selects the artists who are invited? And why do some people feel at home in cultural institutions – whilst others do not?

The Dortmund Nordstadt – Community Curating project explores artistic methods that combine independent theatre work with perspectives that have previously been underrepresented. It is a building block for opening up the Theater im Depot to the neighbourhoods of Dortmund’s Nordstadt district.

In partnership with Train of Hope Dortmund e.V. and Stadtteil-Schule Dortmund e.V., a research group was founded in May 2026 to address the questions mentioned above. Its members include, amongst others, young women from Moroccan families and people who have fled to Dortmund from Syria since 2015. The group is led and supported by Ayşe Kalmaz, author, director and process curator.

Through dialogue with artists, cultural institutions and stakeholders from the Ruhr region, questions and artistic concepts emerge that develop from the participants’ experiences. Topics such as cultural participation, representation, neighbourhood, belonging, migration, family histories and the question of a diverse urban society are explored.

What matters here is not the ‘provision’ of participants, but the joint development of a curatorial practice that takes communities seriously as artistic co-creators.

In 2026, shared spaces of experience and viable concepts will initially be developed through meet-up formats, labs and workshops, and showcased in a public interim presentation. The aim is to lay the groundwork for two presentations/performances of national significance in the following year.

Voices of Curation - Making Processes between Community and Art Visible

In the first phase of the programme’s main focus, the sub-project “Voices of Curation – Making processes between community and art visible” is developing a media education format that accompanies, reflects on and makes publicly accessible the curatorial process of the overall project.

In artistic and media labs, audiovisual contributions are created that highlight both personal perspectives and collective negotiation processes. In addition, participants acquire fundamental skills in conceptualisation, camera work, interviewing, editing and audiovisual narration.

The initial findings of the research process will be presented to the public on 11 July 2026 and discussed with visitors.