Peer-to-Peer Programme

Peer-to-Peer Programme 2026: Professional exchange on how to be an artist in Switzerland

➜ REGISTRATION CLOSED

 

Peer-to-Peer is a professional exchange programme within the Here ! Am project, designed to support cultural practitioners with refugee and migration experience who recently relocated to Switzerland. The programme creates a space for dialogue, knowledge-sharing, and mutual learning between newly arrived artists and cultural professionals with migration experience who have already built their career in Switzerland.

The focus is on strengthening artistic practice, navigating the Swiss cultural landscape, and building sustainable professional networks. The programme is process-oriented and responsive to the individual needs of the participating artists.
 

WHAT WE OFFER

  • Work in a small group tailored (max 3 artists with one expert peer) to your artistic and professional needs with one of our four expert peers, Maricruz Peñaloza, Nika Parkhomovskaia, Dandara Modesto, and Parvez (see their biographies below)
  • Exchange with experienced artists and cultural professionals in Switzerland
  • A supportive, peer-based learning environment
  • Access to professional networks within the Swiss cultural landscape
  • Visibility through national meetings and programme presentations
  • In case the collaboration results in a presentation or other concrete outcome: access to a (project presentation) budget
  • Invitations to attend in-person workshops organised within the Here ! Am project.

 

HOW IT WORKS

Each peer group works online and/or in person over a period of up to 10 months. Two pre-defined online meetings at the beginning and end of the cycle serve to introduce participants and gather feedback, respectively. A mid-term evaluation takes place halfway through the cycle.

Each group defines its own impact focus. The collaboration is process-oriented, but may result in a concrete outcome or project. These results may be presented at the Here ! Am National Network Meeting in January 2027 and the Here ! Am Symposium in 2028.
 

WHO CAN APPLY

The open call for the peer-to-peer programme is addressed to cultural practitioners with refugee and migration experience who have arrived in Switzerland within the last five years (exceptions can be granted in special cases). It is open to artists working in the following disciplines:

  • Performing Arts
  • Music
  • Visual Arts
  • Transdisciplinary practices.

Events

  1. Peer-to-Peer Programme 2026

    Submission deadline
    28.02.2026 | 23:30

    Timeline

    • 28th of February 2026 – submission deadline

    • First week of March – selection results

    • Mid-March to July 2026 – Phase 1

    • July 2026 – Mid-term evaluation

    • August – December 2026 – Phase 2

    • January 2027 – A possibility to present the results at the Here ! Am National Network Meeting

    Application

    Applicants are invited to submit to anastasia.alexandrova@artlink.ch a CV/short portfolio & a motivation letter (max 1-2 pages) as one PDF file in English, answering to the questions below:

     • Why do you want to participate in the Peer-to-Peer programme?
    • What kind of professional or artistic support are you looking for?
    • Do you have a specific project idea in mind, that you would like to develop?
    • Which expert peer(s) (see below) would you like to work with? 

    Artists may apply to work with more than one expert peer. The common language of this programme is English, but each of the group leaders speaks several languages including her/his native language. Read carefully the information about our expert peers below. 

ABOUT OUR EXPERT PEERS

 

Dandara Modesto is a Brazilian transdisciplinary artist: singer, performer and music producer based in Zurich/Switzerland. A researcher of the body and sound, she works with memory, rhythm, displacement, reverberations, spatiality, counter-coloniality, ancestrality and radical imagination. Throughout her career, she has collaborated on various music, dance, theater, visual arts and performance projects in Brazil and Europe. Dandara has produced, composed and directed soundtracks for films and performances, such as 'Movimento III_Celebration, post tsunami foams' (Mario Lopes), 'Afrotranstopia (Mario Lopes, David Muñoz, Mahal Pita), 'Die Schwarzen Brüder' (Mbene Mwambene, Theater Basel). She was awarded with the Performancepreis Schweiz prize for her work 'Neon Bush Girl Society'. In her latest album, 'Estrangeira', Dandara reverberates the female body in transit, migration and the power of otherness.

 

Nika Parkhomovskaia is a Russian-born curator, producer and researcher in the fields of theater, dance and performance arts. She has been published in various Russian-speaking and European media, gave lectures and talks on the history of theater and dance, cultural management and mediation in a dozen of European countries. In addition, she has produced and curated more than 75 international projects, festivals, residencies and workshops, also for migrants. Nika is currently writing a dissertation on theatre in exile at the University of Zurich.

Parvez is a conceptual artist, curator, filmmaker and writer of Indian origin, living in Switzerland since 2015. His engages with identity politics, political economies and (neo)colonialism through performance art, Installations, Video Art, Text, Print and Sound etc. He received the Kunstkredit grant (2025), served on Advisory Board of Visarte Region Basel (2022) and is currently on the board of DOCK Archive and Artspace, Basel. He studied medicine and worked in Psychiatry before moving to filmmaking and arts. He recently completed 'Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art', a one year, continuing education course at HDK Valand Institute, Gothenburg University, Sweden.

Maricruz Peñaloza is a Mexico-born artist, working nationally and internationally as a curator and researcher based between Zurich and Mexico. She studied Political Science at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-I (UAM-I) in Mexico City and Photography as well as Fine Arts at the F+F School of Art and Design in Zurich. She is a board member of PANCH – Performance Art Network CH, mentors diploma thesis projects at F+F Zurich, and is a founder and member of the collective Las Errantes. Alongside her artistic practice, Maricruz also works as a writer.