WAYS – Towards Fair and Sustainable International Partnerships
Organization: German Federal Cultural Foundation
Deadline for Submissions: 1 October 2025
Many cultural organisations in Germany are intensifying their collaboration with international partners. There is a growing demand to organise these partnerships in a more fair and sustainable way. In addition to joint artistic work, it is becoming more and more important to engage in an equal dialogue about different expectations, resources and complex decision-making processes. For example, how do German and international theatre-makers select plays together when much of the material has never been adapted for the stage? How can exhibition architects learn from each other when certain standards of their work are different? How is the budget managed? Who holds the rights to collaboratively developed works? How do partners find a common approach to sustainability despite having differing views of what sustainability means? And what does a culture of openness and understanding look like in practice?
What is funded?
A key factor in such processes is time. To enable cultural institutions in Germany to find new partners in non-European countries and implement long-term artistic projects, the German Federal Cultural Foundation has launched the programme WAYS – Towards Fair and Sustainable International Partnerships (formerly: Transcontinental Partnerships). WAYS helps cultural institutions and independent groups in Germany to establish long-term artistic collaborations with non-European partners especially from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Oceania, and Central-, South- and Southeast Asia and to carry out joint projects over a period of years. A central focus of collaboration concerns fairness and sustainability, the terms of which the partners will jointly define in addition to developing their artistic projects in an equitable manner.
WAYS comprises three funds divided into two application phases. The programme starts with the Initiation Fund that finances research and partner-scouting in non-European countries and in Germany. Cultural organisations awarded financing through the Initiation Fund can subsequently apply for follow-up funding through the Fellows-at-Large Fund (for two-year work stays) or the Tandem Fund (for four-year artistic projects).
Funding is awarded to contemporary projects in the areas of the performing arts, visual arts, literature, music, architecture, art and cultural history and cross-disciplinary combinations of these fields. The Executive Board of the German Federal Cultural Foundation is responsible for making the final funding decisions based on the recommendations of a jury of international experts.
