Support for artists and cultural professionals

This evaluation will compile findings from three different Goethe-Institut projects:

• Space for Freedom and Feminism (Bangalore, India/Germany)
The project leverages progressive feminist thinking to create and support communal “spaces” in Bangalore as platforms for knowledge exchange and networking. The aim is to empower women, gender minorities, and marginalised people to occupy and reclaim spaces in art and aesthetics that have historically been denied to them, thereby offering a safe space for egalitarian, intersectional, and inclusive feminist perspectives.

• Dealing in Distance (Southeast Asia – Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam/Germany) This participatory project brings together Southeast Asian artists and the diaspora in Germany in focus groups, network meetings, and residencies (in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam in 2025) to explore identity in the context of migration and homeland through artistic exchange and to create new connections. The process will be concluded with a mobile mini festival in all three countries, presenting the resulting works and perspectives as well as other artistic contributions from an open call.

• Kulturgarage (Alexandria, Egypt) Since 2024, the Kulturgarage has been offered as a short-term work, training, and event space for artists of all disciplines, similar to an artist residency, in a historic air-raid shelter near the Goethe-Institut Alexandria for periods of 3–8 weeks. Equipped with an office, library, multifunctional hall, and basic technical equipment, the Kulturgarage aims to strengthen the local cultural scene and its resilience.

All three projects share the common goal of supporting artists, cultural practitioners, and civil society actors who work in illiberal contexts or belong to the diaspora. Despite this common goal, the projects differ in their approaches and target groups in order to best achieve the overarching goal of providing support. In addition, the projects are located in different regional contexts. The evaluation focuses on the question of whether and how the three subprojects contribute to strengthening artists, cultural professionals, and civil society actors in their respective contexts and approaches. On the one hand, the evaluation aims to examine the immediate results the projects have already achieved; on the other hand, it seeks to identify approaches for achieving a lasting impact. In addition, the evaluation aims to show the extent to which the Goethe-Institut, with its measures and project activities, contributes to promoting cultural scenes and civil society structures in general. The methodological approach uses the situation analysis developed by Adele Clarke to reflect the diversity and complexity of all three projects.

This results in

1. situation maps that inventory central elements (actors, discourses, locations, rules, materials),

2. social worlds & arenas maps that structure these elements according to spheres of action (e.g., local scene, transnational networks) and lines of conflict,

3. position maps that visualize different points of view on key issues (e.g., freedom, empowerment, resilience).

This flexible approach reveals informal power relations, institutional frameworks, and divergent interpretations, thus laying a solid foundation for comparative findings and transfer recommendations.