Organizer Information
Amigdala is a social promotion association and art collective based in Modena, Italy, working in contemporary and performing arts with a strong interest in urban regeneration and civic innovation. Since 2017, Amigdala has directed OvestLab together with the Archivio Cesare Leonardi association and the Modena Municipality — a former workshop in the city's Artisan Village (Villaggio Artigiano), an area created in the mid-1950s as one of the first models of a craftsman's district in Italy. OvestLab operates as a multicultural center where training, artistic production, civic experimentation, and urban and heritage regeneration intersect, aiming to improve the territorial quality of life for residents of the district. Amigdala's programming at OvestLab includes the long-running Periferico festival, the AFOr archive of oral histories of the Artisan Village, and prior multi-year research and residency projects — including Transfemina: Intersectional Landscapes, a Creative Europe-funded inquiry into the neighborhood from a feminist perspective that Who Walks Here directly continues.
The residency is supported by Culture Moves Europe, the mobility scheme funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and implemented by the Goethe-Institut, which funds the mobility of artists and cultural professionals across architecture, cultural heritage, design and fashion design, literature, music, performing arts, and visual arts.
Title & Description
Who Walks Here — Artistic Residency at OvestLab, Modena
Who Walks Here is a 28-day artistic residency hosted by Amigdala at OvestLab, its civic centre in the Artisan Village on the outskirts of Modena, Italy, taking place in May 2027. The residency invites three artists to examine the Artisan Village — built in 1953 and now facing decades of deindustrialisation and rising real estate pressure — through a transfeminist urban lens, investigating how the construction of public space is shaped by patriarchal logics that determine which bodies are visible, safe, and welcome. The residency continues an inquiry Amigdala began with Transfemina: Intersectional Landscapes, a two-year Creative Europe project studying the neighborhood and city from a feminist perspective.
Participating artists will conduct situated research into feminist urban practices specific to this context and, working with the communities who live and work in the district, develop a new site-specific piece. The residency welcomes performing arts, choreography and movement, dramaturgy, vocal and sound research, visual and public art, architecture and civic design, oral history and documentary practice, and participatory and community-based methodologies — Amigdala states it is looking for a way of working curious about bodies and space rather than a single finished discipline, with particular interest in proposals that involve local communities in participatory processes.
Theme
Exploring the Artisan Village of Modena through a transfeminist urban lens — examining how public space, shaped by patriarchal logics, produces inequality, and how the social fabric of a neighborhood in deindustrialisation and transition can be reimagined through care, proximity, and artistic and relational practices rather than top-down planning.
Categories
- Performance
- Choreography
- Interdisciplinary Arts
- Public Art
- Site-specific
- Architecture
- Research
- Residency
- Multiple Disciplines
Eligibility
- Open to artists and cultural professionals residing in a Creative Europe country other than Italy (applicants based in Italy are not eligible, as Culture Moves Europe supports mobility to a country different from the one the applicant lives in)
- 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, and their Overseas Countries and Territories and Outermost Regions
- Open to individual artists or to existing collectives of no more than 3 artists
- If applying individually and selected, the artist will be asked to collaborate with the other two artists chosen through the same call, even without prior acquaintance
- Applications especially welcomed from people with disabilities, racialised people, queer artists, and artist-mothers, and from anyone whose presence in public space is made harder by the dynamics the project questions
Program Benefits & Awards
- Hosting allowance, as set by the Culture Moves Europe scheme
- Daily allowance, as set by the Culture Moves Europe scheme
- Travel allowance, as set by the Culture Moves Europe scheme
- Accommodation at OvestLab's guesthouse, within walking distance of the workspaces
- Mentorship from three territorial curators, supporting the residency through all three phases
- Visa support, with particular attention to structural barriers faced by artists from non-EU countries
- Linguistic mediation provided whenever needed
- Fully accessible workspace (step-free, accessible bathrooms)
- Accessible accommodation arranged on a case-by-case basis where needed
- Possible public presentation of the resulting work within Periferico Festival 2027 in October, to be evaluated jointly with the artists and the festival's artistic direction
Application Fee
None
How to Apply?
Send all application materials by email to laura.p@collettivoamigdala.com (Laura Petrucci, hosting coordinator)
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 7 September 2026
- Notification of selected artists: 20 September 2026
- Residency period: May 2027, 28 continuous days (with possible slight date shifts, provided the residency ends before 7 June 2027)
- Public restitution at OvestLab: June 2027
- Possible public presentation at Periferico Festival: October 2027
Location
OvestLab, Artisan Village (Villaggio Artigiano), Modena, Italy
Additional Details
- The residency host will facilitate one or two introductory calls between selected artists after selection, to allow the group to get to know each other and align before the residency begins
- The 28-day residency period must be continuous — it cannot be split into separate stays
- The residency has a maximum capacity of 3 artists, whether applying individually or as a collective
- The process is structured in three phases: context immersion (including gender walks and research through Amigdala's PerMeA oral history archive), co-learning and artistic development with Amigdala's territorial curators, and creation culminating in a public restitution