Our Projects/
The Participatory Stage.
A 6-week residency in Malmö exploring participatory theatre, public space & collective storytelling.
This residency explores Participatory Theatre and Participatory Urban Design as tools for civic engagement and spatial activation within today's complex global political and social climate. At a time when many individuals feel disconnected from decision-making processes that shape their lives, the project investigates how artistic participation can create meaningful spaces for agency, and collective imagination.
This project has been made possible with the support of the Culture Moves Europe scheme from the European Commission.
About the project.
Summer residency 2026
Hosted at STPLN, the residency activates indoor and surrounding public green areas during peak visitor season (July - August 2026). Using co-creation, prototyping, and reused materials, temporary spatial interventions will remain as public gathering points beyond the performances, reflecting STPLN's commitment to circularity and experimentation.
Multidisciplinary collaboration
A multidisciplinary group of three artists and cultural professionals will collaborate with local audiences to create inclusive platforms for dialogue, shared storytelling, and democratic exchange, inviting audiences as active contributors, not spectators. Facilitating the process will be mentor Annita Douka.
Outcomes
The residency is primarily process-oriented and exploratory in nature, with the concept determined by the selected residents. However, a tangible outcome from this project will be a physical structure inspired by the ethos of Participatory Theatre and Design.
Selected Residents
Tangmo Ladapha | Portfolio
Tangmo Ladapha S. (b.1991) is a Bangkok-born performance artist based in Finland. Her artistic practice centers on live interaction and audience engagement as a way to explore memory, with a particular focus on state violence, abuse of power, and repressed memories. Working with the body as both medium and site, her work addresses questions of identity, positionality, and the relationship between personal and collective memory. Through participatory and experimental approaches, she practices working with and engaging audiences in a variety of modes and settings, where she aims to explore gestures of collective sharing and community gathering.
Performance Artist 
Sarah Kaushik | Portfolio
As a scenographer, dramaturg, and immersive storyteller, my practice lies at the intersection of performance, spatial dramaturgy, and pedagogical approaches informed by an animist worldview. I engage with place as a primary collaborator, understanding landscapes as dynamic archives shaped by human and more-than-human histories, material processes and embodied memory. Working through listening, walking, performance, poetry and installation, my participatory projects draw on oral traditions, cultural mythologies, and personal belief systems as forms of embodied knowledge and living theory. Audience members are positioned as co-creators, activating sites through personal reflection and interaction, contributing to collective, sensory mappings of place. My work investigates how participatory scenography can reconfigure relationships between body, memory, ecology and community, reframing place not as a static backdrop but as an active, relational field.
Scenographer, Dramaturg, and Immersive Storyteller
People, Product & Play Designer Nidhi Jacob | Portfolio
Most design solves for function. I design for care. My mission is to build inclusive, emotionally intelligent experiences that serve communal growth. I see design as a tool for healing, equity, and systemic change.
Through my practice, I want to democratise and decolonise possibilities: using design to spark joy, reimagine futures, and challenge monotony through play. I use play theory to unlock how teams think, how organisations change, and how products earn genuine engagement rather than just usage.
Funders
