The Unschool of Curating: Repair as Method

Art Encounters Foundation (Timișoara) and Cluj Cultural Centre (Cluj-Napoca) are launching the open call for the Unschool of Curating, looking for 20 emerging professionals in the field of contemporary art curating. 

The Unschool is taking place in Timișoara and Cluj, Romania between June 19–26, 2026. The programme—developed collaboratively by the two organizations—aims to strengthen curatorial networks in Romania and internationally. The Unschool of Curating focuses on informal methodologies, alternative pedagogies, and practice-led curatorial discourse.

Its 8th edition, led by renowned curator Antonia Alampi, offers emerging curators an international platform for dialogue, knowledge exchange, and learning. Over the course of the program the participants will be immersed in the artistic context that both cities have to offer while exploring concepts and conversations around the theme Repair as Method:

This edition proposes “repair” not as a moral slogan but as a working method for curatorial practice.

In a cultural landscape shaped by acceleration, fragmentation, precarity, and asymmetrical access to resources, curating often risks reproducing the very dynamics it seeks to critique. Extraction of context. Instrumentalization of communities. Reinvention for the sake of visibility. Exhaustion disguised as productivity.

This edition of the Unschool asks: what would it mean to approach curatorial work as an act of repair? Repair of relations between institutions and communities. Repair of cultural memory and its silences. Repair of communal life fractured by individualization. Repair of methodologies that consume more than they contribute.

Repair does not mean reconciliation without tension. It does not deny difference, historical injustice, or structural power. Instead, it insists on working within these realities consciously — designing processes that are slower, more accountable, less extractive, and rooted in existing ecologies rather than imposed frameworks.

The week will combine keynotes, embodied practices, collective cooking, contextual grounding, visits and conversations, and peer-to-peer organised group exchange. Romania is not treated as a theme but as a situated context: a place whose specific histories, transitions, and cultural infrastructures will inform the discussions without being reduced to case study.

Participants and contributors alike—local and international—will engage in an intensive laboratory exploring how curatorial work can move from spectacle toward maintenance, from authorship toward relation, from novelty toward responsibility.

The programme of the Unschool of Curating is split between four days in Timișoara (June 19–23, 2026) and four days in Cluj (June 23–26, 2026) and includes lectures and working sessions with the course leader, presentations and workshops with Romanian and international guest speakers, visits to local galleries, art venues and exhibitions, and meetings with curators and artists. Two public events are organized as part of the programme—a public lecture of the course leader in Timișoara and an open conversation with participants in Cluj.

Who can apply
Emerging professionals in the field of contemporary art curating, with at least three years’ experience. The Unschool of Curating is free of charge and open to international candidates. We strongly encourage Romanian curators to apply to the programme, as well as professionals from the wider region. 

The courses will be held in English. Availability in person for the entire course is required in Timișoara and Cluj.

What is covered by the programme
The programme is free of charge. Organisers will cover:
–Accommodation costs for the sessions scheduled in Timișoara  and Cluj (arrival: June 19 in Timișoara, departure: June 26 from Cluj), in double rooms
–Transport costs from Timișoara to Cluj (June 23, by bus)
–Two collective dinners throughout the programme

Organisers can also support participants with recommendation letters or official invitation letters in support of visa applications or scholarships that participants apply for independently. 

 What is not covered by the programme
–International and local travel for participants, others than what is mentioned above
–Meals for the whole duration of the programme, others than those mentioned above
–Visa costs or any other costs related to the participation in the programme
–Any personal costs that might be incurred throughout the programme

Application deadline: April 23 (11:59pm EET), 2026. Selected participants will be notified by May 4, 2026.

How to apply
Applications for the Unschool of Curating #8 can be submitted until April 23rd, 2026 at the form here. The application form includes the following:

–Personal information about the applicant
–Short reflective responses on your practice, motivations, and relation to the programme’s theme
–Short summary of a topic or an exhibition theme applicants are currently researching
–A short resume (max. three pages)

Selection process
The applications will be reviewed by Antonia Alampi and representatives of both organisers, Art Encounters Foundation and Cluj Cultural Centre. 

About the course leader
Antonia Alampi is a curator and cultural organizer from Southern Italy, based in Berlin. She is the founding Artistic Director of Spore Initiative, a platform exploring cultural practices and knowledge systems rooted in eco-social justice, community collaboration, and intergenerational learning.

Her work moves between exhibitions, public and educational programs, and long-term collaborations with practitioners from different fields. Often working within small-scale, socially engaged institutions, her practice reflects on how cultural work can support shared forms of knowledge, strengthen cultural ecologies, and cultivate relationships between communities and the environments we inhabit.

She previously served as Artistic Co-Director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin (2016–2020), was part of the curatorial team of sonsbeek20→24, and held curatorial positions at Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp (2017–2019) and Beirut in Cairo (2012–2015). She also co-founded collaborative initiatives such as Future Climates and Toxic Commons, bringing together cultural practitioners and scientists to address environmental injustice and the politics of toxicity. 

Across these contexts, her work explores how cultural institutions can be shaped as spaces for collective learning, ecological thinking, and the slow work of repairing cultural relations.

About the organisers
Art Encounters Foundation is an independent cultural initiative, founded in 2015, oriented towards supporting the contemporary art scene in Romania. The Foundation’s activities follow three main directions: organizing the Art Encounters Biennial and the permanent exhibitions program, fostering education and audience development through public programs and developing a solid series of artistic and curatorial residencies. 

Cluj Cultural Centre is a non-governmental organisation for culture and sustainable development. The Centre has over 140 members: from cultural institutions and organisations, universities, to the local and county administration in Cluj. The Centre manages programmes for the development of the cultural sector and the impact of culture in society, in the fields of education, health and well-being, urban development. Cluj Cultural Centre coordinates the programme for Contemporar - a space for contemporary art, as well as residencies for artists, cultural mediation activities or training and mentorship for cultural workers. 

For any inquiries about the program, please write to school.curating@gmail.com. More information can be found here.