Our work & offer

zusa’s activities include cultural collaboration programmes and projects, as well as learning and reflection spaces in the format of workshops, online encounters, and the ongoing nurturing of our communities, including networking activities.

Besides our own programmes, we also offer our experience and expertise as service to support organisations and their communities. Since the foundation of our Tandem programme in 2011, we have developed and adapted more than 55 Tools and Methods that are used to facilitate and develop partnerships and collaborations.

navigating partnerships

We offer consultation sessions with the partners to mediate relational aesthetics of their organisational partnerships that are newly built or in crisis

develop teams & organisations

We offer mentoring / facilitation to map and identify the roles in teams, their needs and offers / expectations within organisations

design projects & learning cycles

We offer project design for different regional and topical clusters of funders, consortium of partners from our network.

meeting organisation & facilitation

We offer meeting design, logistic and content organisation and facilitation of relevant sessions. We have an extensive experience in meeting curation, selection of venues, working on local programmes together with local hosts, including visits to organisations and facilitation on common topics of interest

Currently, together with our partners we implement the following programmes:

Tandem

Tandem is a cultural collaboration programme that strengthens civil society in Europe and its neighbouring regions. Tandem offers a space to build real, meaningful and sustainable relationships that can grow through shared interests, enthusiasm for creative discovery and the joy of making things happen together. Since its inception in 2011, Tandem has supported long-term collaborations, knowledge development and networking opportunities for more than 400 cultural managers from over 200 cities across three continents. Tandem is an initiative of the European Cultural Foundation and MitOst e.V.

Website

VAHA

VAHA (meaning “oasis” in Turkish) is a two-year programme made with and for the empowered voices of independent arts and culture spaces, advocating for public discussion and dialogue in cities across Turkey, Europe, and their neighbouring countries. Bringing together the diversity of hybrid spaces and contextual responses to the crises of democracy the regions are currently facing, VAHA explores the power of learning from local practices to develop tailor-made support for platforms of free expression and cultural programming.

Website

All-Around Culture

All-Around Culture Programme aims to foster a vital cultural ecosystem as an enabling environment for social and economic inclusion of young people in seven countries across the Arab region including Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Libyan and Syrian communities in these countries. Co-funded by the European Union, All-Around Culture is a collaborative and interconnected programme which consists of 5 components implemented over a 4-year period.

Website

AiR zusa

The residency aims to provide a safer space for artists and cultural professionals who have faced psychological distress after having lived in war-torn countries. By offering a supportive, interdisciplinary environment, the goal is to help them build resilience and networks, especially focusing on those affected by the conflict in Ukraine over the past two years. The majority of residences place emphasis on the final result, but we recognise that part of being creative also implies being unproductive or taking breaks, even more so when external factors affect us emotionally generating certain blockages.

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Culture Helps / Культура допомагає

“Culture Helps / Культура допомагає” is an EU co-funded project aimed at assisting people who have been forced to move to safer regions of Ukraine or abroad because of the russian invasion of Ukraine. The project provides grant support to cultural managers and organisations that help displaced people integrate into new communities through culture. “Culture Helps” focus on (displaced) cultural professionals and organisations that can enable this process.

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The Big Green

The Big Green is a 4 year long project that brings environmentally-engaged artists under one large-scale umbrella initiative and experiment with innovative ways of using art to promote sustainability. Together with 14 other partner organisations, we aim to highlight the potential of the environment and the creative and cultural sectors to work together. Our role as zusa in the project is to foster exchange about sustainable communication practices among the partners.

Partners website

What's Next?

What's next? is a project that aims to foster creativity and courage within the cultural sector and create space for reflection on new formats of residencies and cross-border collaboration. The goal of What's next? is to develop European multidisciplinary collaboration through international residencies and educational programmes to broaden the awareness of a strength of co-creating together as well as exchanging ideas and values.

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zusa connects

zusa connects is a project for providing safer spaces for reflection, peer-to-peer exchange, and career development of transcultural arts and cultural professionals from SWANA region and Ukraine, who have moved to Berlin within the last few years. We offer up to 20 cultural professionals an opportunity to get to know Berlin’s cultural organisations and how they work (i.e., their structure, team, and programming, etc.) through short (up to 10 days) “shadowing”.

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art of collaboration

With years of experience running international exchange programmes, we are pretty good in designing and facilitating various learning processes. We are keen on sharing our knowledge about collaborative work! Whether it is a project design, series of workshops, a facilitated knowledge exchange – you name it – send us a message!

Most of our work takes place in the European Neighbourhood, North Africa and West Asia. As we face global challenges, we are always interested in broadening our scope and deepening our impact. Please reach out to hello@zusaculture.org if you want to collaborate!