Organizer Information
Scuola Piccola Zattere is an independent non-profit center for continuous education and research working across the expanded field of contemporary arts, housed at Palazzo delle Zattere in Venice's Dorsoduro district. Founded in November 2024 and gaining visibility during that year's Biennale, it is a project of the Foundation for the Development of Contemporary Art Victoria, an Italian organisation established in 2014. The institution is open to the practices of international cultural practitioners, with a particular focus on artistic communities active in Venice and beyond. Its programme integrates exhibitions, commissions, residencies and fellowships, workshops, seminars, and discursive and performative events. Each year the institution also hosts three established artists as invited residents for roughly three months of artistic research and work on a specific project, commission, or exhibition, alongside the fellowship program described here, which is aimed instead at emerging artists, curators, and authors from the local, national, or international scene.
Title & Description
International Fellowship Open Call — Living Document (Scuola Piccola Zattere)
Scuola Piccola Zattere is calling for applications for two 3-month fellowships aimed at artists and cultural practitioners, including curators, researchers, architects, choreographers, performers, and writers. The fellowships form part of the institution's third season of activity, titled Living Document, and take place in Venice, Italy, in either an early-January-to-early-April 2027 slot or a mid-April-to-mid-July 2027 slot. The program allows fellows to focus on their own research and ongoing projects while engaging with the Scuola's artistic community, working alongside practitioners from different cultural contexts and disciplines, and contributing to the institution's public programs through formats such as workshops, presentations, seminars, screenings, or performance events. The timing places fellows in Venice right before or during the 2027 Architecture Biennale.
The season's research theme, Living Document, evolves from the Scuola's previous research seasons and centers on three interwoven lines of inquiry: practices that revisit or reactivate archival traces and regulatory documents, revealing them as living and constantly evolving devices; rules understood both as generative tools of custom, ritual, and play and as constraints to be circumvented; and the forms of aggregation, conflict, and negotiation that shape social dynamics, explored through the relationship between space and body, architecture and performativity, instruction and action.
Theme
Living Document — practices that reactivate archival and regulatory traces as living, processual devices; rules as both generative and constraining tools; and forms of social aggregation, conflict, and negotiation examined through space, body, architecture, and performativity.
Categories
- Curatorial Practice
- Performance
- Architecture
- Choreography
- Research
- Writing / Literature
- Interdisciplinary Arts
Eligibility
- Open to artists and cultural practitioners, including curators, researchers, architects, choreographers, performers, and writers
- No age restrictions or age limit, though the program is especially intended for those in the post-academic phase of their career (typically under age 40)
- Good knowledge of English required to facilitate research activities and public programming
- Open to applicants of any nationality; non-EU citizens must hold a valid passport for foreign travel
- Applications from collectives or duos are welcomed; the grant amount and accommodation remain the same regardless of group size; all members of a collective/duo must individually meet the eligibility requirements
- For collective applications, the application must be submitted by one member holding a proxy signed by the other members
Program Benefits
- Grant: total of €5,000, covering the entire fellowship period
- Research budget: €2,000
- Individual study space in a shared studio at the Scuola Piccola Zattere building for 3 months
- Accommodation in Venice
- Round-trip travel to Venice
- Reimbursement of visa fees, where applicable; letter of invitation available on request
Application Fee
None
How to Apply?
Online Application
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 4 September 2026
- Deadline for Clarification Requests: 31 August 2026
- First Fellowship Slot: early January – early April 2027
- Second Fellowship Slot: mid-April – mid-July 2027
- Results Communicated: by the beginning of December
Location
Venice, Italy
Additional Details
- Fellows must maintain continuity of presence at Scuola Piccola Zattere studios throughout the fellowship
- Fellows are required to participate in the institution's activities and to propose contributions to the public program
- Fellows must grant reproduction rights for images and texts resulting from their authorship during the fellowship, for use in communication, promotion, and a possible end-of-project publication
- Candidates are responsible for obtaining any visas, residence permits, or insurance required for their stay; Scuola Piccola Zattere can provide a letter of invitation if needed and will reimburse visa fees
- Incomplete applications, or applications from candidates who do not meet the eligibility requirements, will be considered invalid
- Unsolicited material will not be examined
- Evaluation will take into account the quality of the research and its coherence with the call's themes