2026 Program
BİRİKTİRDİKLERİMİZ (What We Carry)
Facilitated by İpek Çınar and Ece Gökalp, conducted in Turkish.
What We Carry aims to bring together and support FLINTA* artists and cultural workers from Turkey who are navigating the arts and culture field in Berlin. The seminar is intended for early- and mid-career artists, academics, and cultural practitioners whose creative work has been interrupted by migration or gender-related challenges.
The program seeks to create a space where participants can express their needs and collectively develop responses. Sessions take place at various art and community venues across Berlin; the curriculum will be co-created with participants and will focus on artistic, legal, and bureaucratic strategies for sustaining a practice in Berlin.
Dans etmek için bir düğün mü bekledin?
(Were you waiting a wedding to dance?)
Facilitated by Dr. Gizem Aksu, Aslı Melisa Uzun and Buğra Büyükşimşek, conducted in Turkish & German
Dans etmek için bir düğün mü bekledin? (Were you waiting a wedding to dance?) understands the wedding not only as a ritual focused on marriage, but as a space of encounter where different forms of love come together, are shared, and celebrated. Diverse bodily practices connect with music and dance traditions from various regions of Turkey, as well as different ethnic backgrounds and social contexts. In this way, dance becomes a living practice of togetherness and loving.
The program begins in July with free and public group workshops and continues with individual workshops in August. Based on the idea of a wedding, participants will develop individual choreographies together with the workshop leaders, using music of their own choice.
ANLAT AŞKO (Tell My Love)
Facilitated by Karin Karakaşlı and Platform by GAPO, conducted in Turkish
“Anlat Aşko” focuses on text- and visual-based storytelling. Turkish-speaking LGBTQ+ individuals living in Turkey or Germany come together in online meetings over two months to explore different ways of telling their own stories. Participants can choose to join only the writing workshop, only the visual storytelling program, or both. The aim is to enable personal stories to be shared in a safe, inclusive, and pluralistic space.
The workshops are conducted under the guidance of Karin Karakaşlı and PLATFORM by GAPO, with guest instructors from various disciplines. In the writing workshop, we explore the possibilities of queer narrative, while in the visual program we investigate ways of making personal experience visible.
Orta Okul 2025 Theme: What Does Your Community Need?
What Does Your Community Need? responds to the growing exclusion of marginalized communities from arts education in Berlin. The rise of far-right politics, shrinking cultural budgets, and a weakened civil society at the end of 2024 have made access to inclusive and culturally relevant education increasingly urgent.
What Does Your Community Need? supports community-rooted, participatory, and socially engaged artistic practices. The goal is to move away from institutionalized, Eurocentric models of arts education by asking: What do communities actually need? What spaces, tools, and knowledge systems are missing today—and how can we co-create them?
We are working with five facilitators to develop educational formats rooted in their communities. Through mentorship, training, and coordination support, we aim to foster artistic spaces that respond directly to local realities.
ZU ALT FÜR DIE ZUKUNFT
(TOO OLD FOR THE FUTURE)
Facilitated by Jennifer Frank, conducted in German.
Zu Alt für die Zukunft is an intergenerational dance program, created with inpatient elderly participants in a Berlin-Spandau hospital, that challenges the Western narrative of progress by exploring aging, illness, and menopause as vital parts of life, using dance to express dignity beyond language and drawing on cultures that value elders and stories from often invisible aging communities.
Kollektivbibliothek & Plakatearchiv
Facilitated by Kollektivbibliothek, conducted in English & Spanish.
Kollektivbibliothek, a self-managed open library with a collection focusing on social and political movements hosts a series of community-building activities, bringing their collections to life through collaborative book cataloguing and art-making sessions. The workshops focus on preserving the memory of the city of Berlin as for facing the challenges of the global city.
HERZLICH WILLKOMMEN
(A WARM WELCOME)
Facilitated by Oda Projesi, conducted in German, Turkish, English, French.
Oda Projesi's program is inspired by the adaptive strategies of rootless air plants, in collaboration with Berlin’s Wilkommenklassen, to explore the emotional and cultural complexities of migration through artistic and embodied practices, challenging integration narratives and highlighting the transformative potential of transnational moments for children and communities alike.
un/learning Sessions
Facilitated by Kollektivbibliothek, conducted in English & Spanish.
un/learning group is a counter-pedagogy collective and alliance of activists, artists, and social and cultural workers committed to critically un/learning violent, oppressive, and colonial structures. As a part of their program, they lead collective un/learning sessions featuring text, sound, and video materials focused on care, healing, and burnout in the context of activism and political movements
Beyond Vibration
Facilitated by Alice Kahei Yu, conducted in English.
This program invites participants to explore how sound evokes memory, resilience, and displacement. Through collective sonic mapping, we will engage in listening, storytelling, and archiving within the context of a city shaped by migration and exile. Together, we will reflect on how our sonic landscapes are shaped not only by personal memory but also by political forces such as class, race, gender, and state violence.
Orta Okul's 2025 program was realized as part of Impact-Funding 2025, supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.
Orta Okul 2024 Theme:
Urgent Needs of Berlin
In 2024, Orta Okul focused on The Urgent Needs of Berlin, exploring the city's pressing issues and developing a seminar program designed for diverse groups. Our aim was to engage those often excluded from the arts and culture scene due to linguistic, social, or class barriers, as well as to connect with art educators and activists.
We organized five seminars in different languages. While this page is in English, you can click on each seminar to access more details in its original language.
OPEN FRAME
Facilitated by Mohamed Badarne, conducted in Arabic.
Open Frame was led by Palestinian photographer and human rights activist Mohamed Badarne, working with unaccompanied refugee children at Yekmal e.V. The seminar, conducted in Arabic, focused on using the camera as a storytelling tool with eight boys aged between 9 and 14. Since the participants did not speak German, the workshop aimed to help them socialize and use visual language as a means of communication.
CRRRRRACKS
Facilitated by İpek Çınar, conducted in English.
CRRRRRACKS: Artivism in the Face of Censorship explores guerilla methods of artistic production, focusing on strategies to express ourselves and navigate the challenges posed by authoritarian regimes. It seeks ways to create cracks to expand social and political messages. How can we create counter-hegemonic interventions to reclaim our spaces and disrupt the polished image that authoritarian states strive to project? What balance can be found in the complex relationship between art, activism, collaboration, and participation? How can we use the tools and spaces we already have—humor, social media, public spaces, and beyond—to envision alternative futures?
GRUPA PODRŠKE
Facilitated by Jelena Fuzinato, conducted in BCMS.
The workshop brought together a diverse group of women artists living in Berlin, connected by their Balkan backgrounds, shared BCMS language, and varied experiences in the arts. Designed for women who had paused their careers, the workshop offered a space to explore approaches to working and collaborating that transcend formal, bureaucratic, and competitive frameworks. Participants engaged in discussions and hands-on activities, emphasizing relationship-building, knowledge-sharing, and the creation of new collaborative practices rooted in trust and mutual support.
RECLAIMING DIALOGUE
Facilitated by Alejandra Camacho Nieves, conducted in English.
The workshop series wasdedicated to improving communication skills in community building processes through non-violent communication tools. These workshops are designed primarily for art mediators, educators, and cultural workers focusing on participatory art practices and community building.
BİLİNMEYEN HİKAYELER
Facilitated by Orta Okul, conducted in Turkish
This collaboration celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin, the city's first migrant women's association. Drawing from the archive of unpublished documents, participatory workshops, and informal interviews, we aim to celebrate the resilience and activism of migrant women, many of whom are from the working class.
Orta Okul's 2024 program was realized with the support of Urbane Praxis Berlin.