Quarantine and ASA-FF would like to meet artists based in Greater Manchester who are interested in being part of a cross-border intergenerational exchange with artists based in Chemnitz, Germany.
Chemnitz and Manchester have been twin cities since 1983. The last 40 years have treated both cities differently, and this has had a significant impact on the demographics of their populations. The median age in Manchester is 31 years, in Chemnitz it’s 52 years – a whole generation older.
In response, Would Like to Meet (WLTM) will pair artists from Chemnitz, Germany, with artists in Greater Manchester, UK, with an age gap of at least 20 years.
This edition of WLTM is one part of Quarantine’s new project The Questions, part of Chemnitz 2025: European Capital of Culture.
Manchester call out: who our Chemnitz artists would like to meet
We’ve now selected our 5 Chemnitz artists.
Our Chemnitz artists would like to meet:
- Someone with decades of practice working with embroidery or other textile crafting skills, who perhaps has knowledge of old tools and techniques for mending or making
- A 52+ transdisciplinary artist with lived experience of marginalisation, whose art responds to socio-political issues
- An artist aged 18–20 who creates visual narratives or comics in any technique
- A master of their form – possibly in painting or photography, with more than 20 years’ experience
- A 48+ migrant working with handicrafts – such as ceramics, glassblowing or carpentry – who likes to improvise as they work
Please read about our Chemnitz artists and a more detailed picture of who they’re hoping to collaborate with before applying.
The opportunity
- To be paired with an artist in Chemnitz, Germany, for two residencies together – seven days in Manchester and eight days in Chemnitz (including travel days). The residency time is for sharing practice, framed by the questions that you have for one another across generations, and across cities. The invitation is to spend time together in a determinedly open-ended way, engaging in conversation, experimentation and shared experiences. There is no expectation to produce something concrete as a result (though you might choose to of course!).
- The residencies are self-directed, but support and provocations will be offered from Quarantine and ASA-FF throughout the process, and there will be facilitated time with the wider WLTM artist cohort in each city, as well as opportunities to see other parts of the wider The Questions project.
- Access to an artist hub in each city for the duration of the residencies.
- A total fee of £1800 per artist to cover both residencies, plus we’ll cover the cost of travel, accommodation, and per-diems when visiting the city that is not your home base.
- A budget of £500 per pair of artists, per residency, to spend in whatever way feels relevant to what you want to explore together – perhaps to invite in an expert on a subject you’re interested in, or to visit somewhere together, or to cover materials…
Artists must be available on all of the following dates:
Manchester: 6 – 12 October 2025
Chemnitz: 24 November – 1 December 2025
Information session
We’re hosting an online information session for artists interested in applying on Tuesday 29 April at 6pm.
Sign up here – we’ll be in touch closer to the time with a Zoom meeting invitation.
Access
Access and inclusion are at the heart of how Quarantine and ASA-FF operate. We recognise that institutional racism, discrimination and inequality exists in our sector and are dedicated to helping to address this. We particularly welcome applications from people with lived and intersectional experience of racism or marginalisation, including working class, disabled, neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+, global majority individuals and other marginalised groups.
We have a separate access budget to support these residencies and are happy to discuss with you anything we can do to make the application process or residency experience more accessible for you.
Application questions
Please apply by sending your answers to the following questions either in writing (no more than 2x A4 pages) or as a video or audio file (no longer than 5 minutes), along with a website or social media link (if possible) to sarah@qtine.com by Friday 16 May, 12 noon.
- Who are you and what is your artistic practice?
- How old are you and how do you feel about that?
- Which of the Chemnitz artists are you applying to work with and why are you interested in this collaboration?
- What starting questions would you have for them?
- How does your practice resonate with the work of Quarantine and ASA-FF?
- Do you have any access needs?
- Are you available for the interview and residency dates?
- What languages do you speak? We will try to pair artists with a shared language.
Interviews will take place online via Zoom on Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 May. If these dates are not possible for you, please let us know this at the point of application.
Please also fill out a monitoring form – here. These are submitted anonymously to help us gather data on who our open calls reach and, critically, who we are missing.
Successful applications will be selected by Quarantine and ASA-FF. The selection process is based on curating a group of artists who are diverse in age and art-form to enable a rich exchange and sharing of knowledge and experiences across the group.
About
In 2025, Quarantine (Manchester, UK) will collaborate with ASA-FF (Chemnitz, Germany) on our new project The Questions, which will create intergenerational encounters with people both locally and across borders – between our cities, which have been twinned since 1983.
The project forms part of the programme for Chemnitz 2025: European Capital of Culture.
The Questions is in 4 parts: Building of spines, hosted in libraries, a book is handmade over seven days in response to conversations with library users, published and added to the library collection; Telescope, a new performance work, co-created with teenagers on the cusp of adulthood and older adults entering the final chapter of their lives; and Would Like to Meet an intergenerational exchange which will pair five artists from Chemnitz with five artists from Manchester, each with at least a 20-year age gap between them, to explore what questions they have for each other.
The Questions will culminate with Florian Malzacher’s The Art of Assembly, which brings together artists, activists and thinkers as part of a longitudinal research study into how and why it matters that we physically assemble. Here, the focus will be on what might be enabled – socially and politically – by intergenerational assembly.
In collaboration with ASA-FF
Supported by the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025. Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Free State of Saxony and the City of Chemnitz
In cooperation with Allianz Foundation
Supported by Cultural Bridge and Manchester City Council