Name: Open Call: Together In Labour – Strategies for sustaining small arts organisations
Start: 2026-02-11T23:45:00+01:00
Location: Rådhusgata 19 (Anatomigården), 0158 Oslo, Norway

$Open Call: Together In Labour \u2013 Strategies for sustaining small arts organisations$

Interdisciplinary Research Residency 33
Together In Labour
Research agenda: In precarious times, what strategies can small-scale arts and cultural organisations adopt to sustain themselves and support one another?
Application deadline: 11 February 2026, 23:59 CET
Residency dates: 1–14 June 2026
Developed by Nicholas J. Jones, artistic director of PRAKSIS, and Giovanna Esposito Yussif, artistic director of Museum of Impossible Forms, in collaboration with Tenthaus
Work in small arts organisations is often cast in the language of reproduction: organisers’ projects are “brainchildren” that need to be “grown,” “nurtured” and “kept alive” via labour that demands sustained personal commitment. Presenting arts organisations as passion projects and arts workers as instinctive, unstoppable givers of social gifts, this kind of language obscures the punishing economic and labour conditions most small arts organisations face.
This two-week residency in Oslo offers an opportunity to unpack the situation and discuss sustainable solutions. It is proposed by PRAKSIS (Oslo), the Museum of Impossible Forms (Helsinki), and Tenthaus (Oslo): small independent arts organisations sustained by passion, solidarity and a commitment to cultural change. Like many of our peers we inhabit an increasingly unstable socio-economic environment and face insecure funding structures, rising costs, shrinking political support and increasing pressure to produce more with less.
Together In Labour invites fellow organisers, artists, curators, educators and activists who are similarly tackling the tensions of small-scale cultural work to share experiences, map obstacles, and imagine strategies for survival, continuity, and more workable conditions.
Priority will be given to applicants whose practice is materially connected to small organisational work.
Visit www.praksisoslo.org to read more and find the application form.