Roodkapje is Rotterdam's local laboratory for
ART X LIVE X FOOD and everything in between
OPEN CALL
OPEN CALL for the Hamburger Community 2026
an Interdisciplinary and Collective Laboratory for Happenings.
Tuesday 6 January 2026, 23:59 (R’dam time): application deadline
Sunday 14 december 2025: information session from 15:00-17:00
16-20 February 2026: interview week
April 2026 – December 2026 (9 months): dates residency
Roodkapje invites interdisciplinary artists (visual artists, musicians, performers, theatermakers, designers, food artists) to our laboratory for collaborative practice, collective fun and direct interaction between artists and audience.
Are you looking to dive into an experiment involving 4 collaborators, several mentors and a place full of dynamic possibilities?
Hamburger Community 2026
For Hamburger Community 2025-2026, Roodkapje invites interdisciplinary artists (visual artists, musicians, performers, theatermakers, designers) to our laboratory for collaborative practice, collective fun and direct interaction between artists and audience. Are you looking to dive into an experiment involving four collaborators, several mentors and a place full of dynamic possibilities?
The Hamburger Community are five artists in residence that collaborate for 9 months to develop a series of Happenings together. They do so collectively, guided by mentors and by inviting in other collaborators. At Roodkapje we believe collaboration is a muscle that needs to be trained. The residency depends on collectivity for all artistic, organizational and public matters. Production budgets, conceptual development, program planning and mentor trajectories are managed and decided on together. Aside from collaborating with each other, the Hamburger Community also collaborates with Roodkapje’s team, who offer concept, production, financial and communication support. Residents of the Hamburger Community get access to Roodkapje’s collective working space and communal living room, a monthly stipend, production budget(s) and free access to all of Roodkapje’s program.
Read the full information folder on Hamburger Community here.
The Hamburger Community is:
- A collaborative residency with 5 interdisciplinary artists
- Collectively developing a public program in the shape of Happenings
- A wild learning experience
The Hamburger Community Members get:
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A shared studio- and workspace
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A monthly stipend of € 850
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Production and artist budget(s)
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Opportunity to use all Roodkapje’s facilities for presentation
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Try-outs with professionals from the cultural field
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A weekly meeting with a budget for lunch included
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Conceptual and practical guidance and support from Roodkapje’s curator and team
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Free access to Roodkapjes’ cultural program
The Hamburger Community runs from April 2026 – December 2026
Happenings
Roodkapje is interested in the intersections of art, activism, and wonder. Here, we see the Happening as an art form full of playful, disruptive and subversive potential. The Happenings are core to the public program developed by the Hamburger Community, and Roodkapje’s anarchive also evolves from them. In light of today’s dire social and political circumstances, we ask: how would contemporary artists reimagine, reshape, and organize a Happening?
Need more info?
For further questions you can send an email to our curator Wan Ing Que through ying@roodkapje.org
We also organize an information session on the 14th of December, 15:00-17:00 at Roodkapje West, Keileweg 10A. This information session is open for anyone that is thinking of applying.
During this session you can meet Roodkapje’s staff responsible for the Hamburger Community, ask all your questions and get a tour through our new location. Find more information about this evening on our website.
Happenings
The Happenings are core to the public program developed by the Hamburger Community, and Roodkapje’s anarchive also evolves from them. Roodkapje is interested in the intersections of art, activism, and wonder. Here, we see the Happening as an art form full of playful, disruptive and subversive potential, that calls for a radical imagination. Modeled on the unpredictable moments initiated by Allan Kaprow in the 1950s, they reappeared in different forms ever since. They produce clashes, confront and require adaptability, negotiation and empathy. We also take example and draw inspiration from Happenings organized by the Provos in the 1960s: their pragmatic approach to art and public space offered creative solutions to problems the state refused to tackle (or created..) such as the housing crisis or climate issues. We believe Happenings can help address contemporary developments in society and shake up people’s consciousness and perception.
In light of today’s dire social and political circumstances, we ask: how would contemporary artists reimagine, reshape, and organize a Happening?
anarchief/anarchive:
Although the impact of a Happening continues to simmer with the audience, the time-based form actually determines that it is fleeting. This presented Roodkapje with the challenge of archiving these moments for the audience visiting our location at other times. Roodkapje aims for the preservation of the moments and relations created in the Happenings to go beyond traditional documentation and beliefs. That’s why we began experimenting with anarchival practices in 2024. Young makers outside of the Hamburger Community transform the spirit of the Happenings into anarchival pieces, works to hold, discuss and do.
What’s new in 2026?
In 2026, Roodkapje has freshly landed in their new location at de Keileweg. Three months after opening, we will be busy finding our feet in our new house. What are the possibilities of the building and our new environment? How can we use the space? What kind of program do we want to run there? With whom? We are looking forward to discovering and experimenting with the potential of the place together with the Hamburger Community.
The Hamburger Community will have access to the Working Memory. This is a working space shared with the rest of Roodkapje’s community of programmers and volunteers. The Working Memory will be a big room with flexible furniture, where Roodkapje’s community can work, rehearse, make things and hang out. The Hamburger Community will have private use of the space one day a week and a reasonable storage space for their things. The other days of the week the room will function as a shared working space, unless residents reserve the space in advance. Neighboring the Working Memory is the Hocus Bogus Publishing House, a riso studio run by Dennis Muñoz Españada.
Furthermore, the starting rhythm of the residency will differ from previous years. In the last few years, the Hamburger Community kicked off their residency with a mentor of Roodkapje’s choosing with whom they organized a Happening within two months after they started. This year we will give space for grounding and collective envisioning to allow the first Happening to grow out of the group process more organically.
Lastly, considering the rise of fascism and the destructive forces of capitalism and imperialism, now more than ever we feel the urgency to think about the meaning of solidarity. What does it mean to be in solidarity? How can we, as a cultural institution that is home to many artists, musicians and other kinds of cultural workers practice solidarity? Who needs our solidarity and what is it they need? How do we build and sustain the relationships it requires? What can we do to sow fertile ground for solidarity to take root and flourish? We hope the future Hamburger Community can work together with us to answer these questions, so we may move beyond performative gestures and take collective action towards an embodied form of solidarity.
