2020-2023

VAHA I: Building Common Ground for Spaces of Public Discussion & Dialogue

2023-2024

VAHA II: Common Ground Through Culture in Times of Crises

VAHA (meaning “oasis” in Turkish) is a 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.

Our aim is to bring together the initiatives that create public discussions through their cultural and artistic activities under challenging and oppressive conditions, to multiply spaces of encounter and critical thinking, and to support transnational solidarity. With this approach, VAHA hopes to provide a framework that allows local cultural venues to form a socially prominent ecosystem of interconnected oases, expanding as fertile landscapes for open discussions and creative actions.
“VAHA is exchange, is space for possibilities, is enthusiasm, is inspiration, is getting involved, is demanding, challenging, and learning at the same time, is thinking about one's own privileges in one's own bubble and the challenges and impressive work elsewhere, is getting in action under a common roof.” (VAHA round I participant)



WHY?

At a time when uncertainty and censorship have come to characterise the political environment of our contemporary societies, a growing number of arts and culture workers are struggling to preserve open spaces for critical discussions and collective actions on burning issues in Turkey, Europe, and their neighbouring countries.
 
Public access to independent cultural programming is, in the meantime, made possible by the players standing outside the mainstream. Thanks to their resilience and energy, cultural workers keep producing new community formats to voice the narratives of the oppressed, the forgotten, the marginalised, and the censored. Libraries, cafés, social venues, and cultural houses are becoming so-called hybrid spaces, offering alternative settings where the right to free thinking and free speech can be exercised through arts and culture activities.
 
Yet, their unconventional position makes them vulnerable to a higher degree of instability since few opportunities are available to support their creative actions. Many risks, such as shrinking funding, institutional control on public programming, and oppression on the intellectual practices, are narrowing the spatial standards for thinking, production, and outreach.
 
VAHA is a solidarity platform to explore creative and collective practices of cultural hubs and expand their works by building strategic transnational alliances. VAHA sets out to reclaim open spaces for critical public discussions in pressured societies and to situate micro-resistances in a broader political context.
WHO?

Representatives of culture and art spaces and organisations that offer public cultural programming, which are based in one of the Council of Europe member countries, are invited to form cultural hubs. Two or three different organisations come together to form a “hub” to apply the programme. Hub partners can consist of cultural venues, art initiatives, and civil society organisations with different structures, profiles, and fields of interest, with the condition that at least one of them is an officially registered non-profit organisation, and ideally at least one of them having a physical space. 
 
In VAHA round I, we supported 16 local hubs formed by 48 organizations across Turkey and Europe. In VAHA round II, we receive applications firstly from Turkey hubs (in July-August 2023), and then make a separate call (in March-April 2024) for the applications from outside of Turkey. 
HOW?

In VAHA round I (2020-2023), the programme was divided into phases. The first phase (defining the ground & seeding) mainly focused on the activities and sustainability of all local hubs. In the second phase (planting), the hubs were invited to scale up their works through transnational collaborations, and a series of meetings supported their partnering and scaling process. In the third phase (harvesting), the hubs were offered the opportunity to further disseminate their outputs in new contexts with new partners within and beyond the VAHA network.

In VAHA round II (2023-2024), the programme flows in parallel currents. Firstly, the local activities of the hubs selected from Turkey will start, and later on the transnational partners from other Council of Europe member countries will be invited to join in the ongoing cultural programming of Turkey hubs.

For weaving links between independent arts and culture organisations and enabling cultural workers, VAHA offers:

Local Activity Grants for the hubs to explore new formats of local partnerships and organising public cultural programs.
• Transnational Exchange Grants to scale-up the local activities and events through partnerships with other geographies.
• Learning & Mobility Grants to support professional development of cultural workers.
• Psychosocial Support Grants to support the well-being of cultural workers especially working in difficult conditions or with traumatised groups.
• Thematic Workshops and Transnational Networking Meeting to foster knowledge and practice exchange among participants and to engage them with other networks.
• In addition to being part of the VAHA Solidarity Network, participants also gain access to other transnational networks such as iac Berlin - Bosch Alumni Network and Stiftung Mercator’s Alumni Network - Mercator Globe, which offer extensive opportunities.
Background Story

All partners and funders behind this programme are long-standing players of empowering civil society and enhancing open debate and cultural dialogue in Turkey. The core consortium of the programme has approached civil society development particularly through arts and culture but also addressing contemporary challenges in Turkey and its neighbouring regions. The broad spectrum of experience tackling larger public and social issues has substantially informed the formation of this new programme.
 
The Tandem Turkey programme, which lasted from 2011 to 2019, is one of the long-term collaborations of VAHA partners. Around 150 participants representing cultural and civil society organisations from Turkey, Europe, and the neighbouring region participated in the programme, which supported a total of 65 collaborations. Following in the footsteps of Tandem Turkey’s nearly decade-long legacy, we continued our collaboration to develop a new programme targeting active cultural spaces that promote public discussion and dialogue in Turkey, Europe and in the wider region. We visited several cities across Turkey and met with recently emerged initiatives in the winter of 2019, and then involved them in co-designing the programme through a meeting in March 2020. We are pleased to introduce you the resulting VAHA programme, and thank everyone involved in the making of it.
 
VAHA is an initiative of Anadolu Kültür and zusa, funded by Stiftung Mercator and the European Cultural Foundation. VAHA partner consortium is in a collaboration with the iac Berlin

We thank the Chrest Foundation for its support of travel related expenses in the VAHA round I (2020-2023).
Visuals by Julia Hoffmann