The microgrant supported the delivery of the workshop Voids and Voices, which was aimed at members of the third and fourth generations of Holocaust survivors. The project explored familial silences, transgenerational memory, and biographical ruptures, creating a space for participants to reflect together on the transmission of memory across generations. Through creative methods, participants developed individual approaches and a personal language for expressing what often remains unspeakable, thereby contributing to a vibrant, intergenerational culture of remembrance.

Project contributors: Dina Wyler (Political Scientist, Project Lead), Anna Fersztand (Anthropologist and Filmmaker).

The microgrant supported the development of a publication project centred on the potato as a medium of memory, economic relationships, and social organisation. Drawing on the Bolivian context, the project established connections with European debates on cultural heritage, knowledge transmission, and societal concepts. At its core was the question of how history, identity, and collective knowledge can be narrated and reimagined through an everyday food staple. As part of the microgrant, an initial body of texts and visual materials was developed, laying the foundation for a joint publication within the context of the CPPD.

Project contributors: Swantje Lichtenstein (Author and Project Lead), Claudia Pacheco Araoz (Author and Curator).

The microgrant supported the development and delivery of the project Situation Room – Collecting Memories of the Not-Yet as part of the fluctoplasma Festival in Hamburg. This performative conversation format brings together remembrance culture and future imagination, inviting artists, activists, researchers, and audiences to collectively remember a future that has not yet come to pass. By sharing fictional yet plausible memories of the future, the project opens up new ways of thinking about and acting in the present, framing remembrance as a political tool for shaping a democratic and pluralistic society. The resulting future memories are documented and preserved as a growing archive, providing a resource for future artistic and educational projects.

Project contributors: Muhammet Ali Baş (Artist and Project Lead), Dan Thy Nguyen (Curator, fluctoplasma Festival), Herbert Justnik (Curator, Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art Vienna).

The microgrant supported the delivery of the Möllner Rede im Exil 2025 (Mölln Speech in Exile 2025) at the Münchner Volkstheater. Developed by survivors of, and family members affected by, the racist arson attack in Mölln, the event series represents a self-determined approach to remembrance, placing the perspectives of those affected by racist violence at its centre. The Möllner Rede im Exil offers an alternative to official commemorative formats by creating space for the experiences, demands, and voices of survivors and bereaved families. In 2025, the event featured writer Deborah Feldman and journalist Alena Jabarine in conversation about remembrance, responsibility, and social cohesion.

Project contributors: Kutlu Yurtseven (Social Worker, Musician, Actor and Activist), Chana Dischereit (Researcher and Education, Press, Culture and Science Officer), Deborah Feldman (Writer), Alena Jabarine (Journalist).

The microgrant supported the further development of the Jew Where initiative, an interactive platform dedicated to mapping and documenting Jewish life and heritage. The project makes visible places, objects, stories, and memories that are often absent from public awareness, creating a digital knowledge base that brings together individual, family, and institutional perspectives. By collecting photographs, documents, research findings, local traditions, and personal recollections, the platform presents a multifaceted picture of Jewish history and contemporary life. It invites people around the world to contribute their own materials and to collaboratively build an open, living culture of remembrance.

Project contributor: Luciano Waldman (Historian).

The microgrant supported the development of the official accompanying texts for the anti-racist memorial on Keupstraße. As part of the project, a comprehensive introductory text and accompanying texts for the multimedia video and mapping installations of the #Mapping_Keupstraße project were produced to guide visitors through the memorial site. The texts provide the political and historical context of the NSU nail bomb attack, foreground the perspectives of those affected, and situate the cartographic video works within the broader context of remembrance culture. All content was originally written in German and translated into English and Turkish, making the memorial site more accessible to a multilingual audience.

Project contributor: Ulf Aminde (Artist and Filmmaker).

The microgrant supported the production of a digital audio collage that gives voice to overlooked memories and experiences of migration in Europe. Drawing on texts by Gilda Sahebi, Marko Dinić, Eşim Karakuyu, Senthuran Varatharajah, and Lin Hierse, alongside an original musical composition by Tayfun Guttstadt, the project resulted in a multi-layered audio album interweaving personal and collective memories. The collage explores themes of displacement, migration, familial trauma, and transnational lived experiences, while asking whose stories become part of collective memory and whose voices are heard. In doing so, the project highlights how stories often perceived as distant have long shaped the everyday realities of European societies. The narratives have been released as a digitally streamable album, with all streaming proceeds donated to the Initiative 19 February.

Project contributors: Gilda Sahebi (Author), Marko Dinić (Author), Eşim Karakuyu (Author), Senthuran Varatharajah (Author), Lin Hierse (Author), Tayfun Guttstadt (Musician and Composer).

The microgrant supported the production of the lecture performance Zeitenwende as part of the SUPERZART* Festival in Hamburg. The project explored the intersections of masculinity, violence, militarisation, and remembrance culture, examining the societal narratives that enable and shape current political developments. Drawing on both historical and contemporary forms of violence, Fikri Anıl Altıntaş and Katharina Wisotzki investigated the tensions between the commemorative commitment of “Never Again” and present-day social and political trends. Combining artistic, political, and personal perspectives, the lecture performance created a space for critical reflection on anti-feminism, right-wing ideology, and democratic responsibility.

Project contributors: Fikri Anıl Altıntaş (Author and #HeForShe Ambassador), Katharina Wisotzki (Festival Producer and Social Justice & Radical Diversity Trainer), Micha Krause (Artistic Director, SUPERZART* Festival), Insina Lüschen (Project Lead).

The microgrant supported the production of the publication accompanying the Permanent Live series of works, bringing together the project’s various installations in a single volume for the first time. Complemented by contributions from Nora Sternfeld, Stephanie Kloss, Eleonora Frolov, and Julia Heunemann, the publication offers in-depth perspectives on the artistic and socio-political questions explored throughout the series. It documents the installations while expanding them through theoretical and curatorial reflections that continue the dialogue between art, remembrance, and critical engagement with society.

Project contributors: Nora Sternfeld (Author), Stephanie Kloss (Author), Eleonora Frolov (Author), Julia Heunemann (Author).

The microgrant supported the production of the film essay series Atemräume (Breathing Spaces), which translates literary texts on plural remembrance into poetic documentary short films. The project weaves together language, movement, and sound to create layered explorations of memory, opening up new perspectives on histories of violence, migration, and healing. Drawing on texts and performances by Barbi Marković, Marko Marković, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, and Frida Robles, the films connect personal experiences with broader questions of remembrance, belonging, and social responsibility. The series was produced by the Erinnern in Zukunft (Remembering into the Future) initiative at Brunnenpassage Vienna.

Project contributors: Mikal Maldoror (Director), Barbi Marković (Author and Performer), Marko Marković (Author and Performer), Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński (Author and Performer), Frida Robles (Author and Performer), Erinnern in Zukunft (Remembering into the Future) initiative, Brunnenpassage Vienna.

The CPPD micro-grant supported the development of a long-term knowledge exchange project entitled “The Glasgow-Berlin Summer Institute on European Urbanism: Colonial Modernity, Memory Culture and Anti-Racism”. The Summer Institute, a 10-day educational format and action platform for around 20 artists, activists, academics, policy makers and journalists, will alternate between Glasgow and Berlin on an annual basis.

Project participants: Dr. Ibou Diop, Dr. Noa Ha (Scientific Director of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), Dr. Giovanni Picker (Glasgow Project Leader, Jun. Professorship, Sociology, University of Glasgow), Nelson Cummins (Curator, Glasgow Museums – Project Leader of “Legacies of Slavery and Empire”)
Amy Rich (Project Manager, CRER – Coalition for Racial Rights and Equality,
Glasgow), Graham Campbell (Councillor, Chair of Glasgow City Council
Slavery Working Group)

The “Möllner Rede im Exil” is a commemorative event that remembers the arson attack in Mölln on November 23, 1992 in a critical confrontation with the official commemoration of the city of Mölln. It has been taking place in different cities since 2013. The ten- and 14-year-old girls Yeliz Arslan and Ayşe Yılmaz and their 51-year-old grandmother Bahide Arslan died in the Mölln murder attack. Ibrahim Arslan, seven years old at the time, survived. Arslan criticized the city of Mölln for not giving the victims’ voices enough of a voice in the commemoration. His concern is to put the perspective of the victims of right-wing extremist and racist attacks at the center of remembrance and commemoration. For this reason, the speech has been held in exile since 2013, each year in a city chosen by family and friends, in 2024 in Mannheim. The 2024 speaker was the author, journalist, activist and speaker Şeyda Kurt.

Speakers and other participants: Şeyda Kurt, Kutlu Yurtseven (planning and organization of the event and support of the Arslan family, social worker and board member of Lückenlos e.V., musician, actor and activist), National Theatre Mannheim, Chana Dischereit (researcher, consultant in the field of education, press, culture and science)

The “februarsturm” project is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the racist terrorist attack in Hanau on February 19, 2020. Based on the poem of the same name “februarsturm” by Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç, a lyrical short film is being made that brings together performative, lyrical, musical and cinematic arts in order to reach a broad public via digital channels, artistically process the memory of Hanau and strengthen empowering discussions about solidarity, resistance and remembrance. The project makes an artistic, aesthetic contribution to the pluralistic culture of remembrance by working in an interdisciplinary way and bringing poetry, music and film into dialog with each other.

Project participants: Tayfun Guttstadt, Kamil Bahtijar

The Micro-Grant supported the participant fees for this event: On October 7, 2024, the Grüner Salon invited participants to a special event entitled »Gegenwart Erinnern: Eine Nacht der Trauer«. On the occasion of the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas in Israel exactly one year ago, on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, the focus of the event was on the complex and ambivalent topic of mourning, which was considered on this night in its complexity and multidimensionality, which constitutes its unique tension: as a cultural phenomenon that shapes collective memory, remembrance and identities, and as an individual, profound emotion. The aim of the event was to achieve a shared understanding of the complex interconnections and facets of mourning. The focus was on the question of how societies mourn and whether collective mourning can be a unifying force in the face of conflict and polarization. With this event, Hamze Bytyçi and RomaTrial e.V. built on the good cooperation with the CPPD to place October 7 in the context of remembrance politics.

Speakers, artists and other project participants: Max Czollek, Ahmad Dakhnous, Shai Hoffmann, Atalya Laufer, Hannan Salamat, Samuel Stern, Hadija Harouna-Oelker, Ariel Reichmann, Furkan Yüksel and others.

The work “Frohes Neues Jahr” at the Museum Berlin-Karlshorst is a freely accessible, hexagon-shaped “time capsule” consisting of eighteen HD monitors mounted above and below one another. On these, New Year’s speeches by heads of government from the Soviet Union, Ukraine, Russia and Germany from the last 43 years can be seen and heard in a continuous loop. The work addresses the disintegration of the familiar historical narratives and politics of remembrance of the Second World War. Since the second invasion of Ukraine, the need to deal with the sometimes divergent and national politics of remembrance of the Second World War, its contradictory pre- and post-histories, has become more urgent than ever. The time capsule is intended to update the fundamental conflicts of interest that underlie the nationally connoted concern for a particular people and a particular country, whose well-being and prosperity are to be secured as a priority. The central aim is to transfer the hollow eloquence of the political address to the level of physicality and initially to make the competition of interests, the vying for legitimacy and the urgency physically tangible for the viewer.

The multi-year project will train young people from different communities to become newsfluencers and journalists in order to generate coverage and publicity for relevant but neglected political and social issues. The CPPD micro-grant enabled the implementation of the third project phase, in which a kick-off workshop and three further workshops were held for the participants to gain basic knowledge on the topics of “Panel and interview training”, “Tik Tok as a means of remembrance culture” and “Remembrance work in social media”. By sharpening media awareness and learning tools for dealing with history in journalistic contexts, the project aims to contribute to the pluralization of remembrance culture in Germany and beyond.

Project participants: Kim Ly (workshop leader, qualification: host of a TikTok format of RTL, journalist), Emily Laquer (workshop leader, founder of the activist agency), Denise Brechbühl-Diaz (social media support, qualification: language skills (German, English, Spanish), experience in social media management)

The CPPD Micro-Grant was used to fund a panel on December 12, 2023, which examined the role of contemporary art and literary production in the context of current and past conflicts and wars. The focus was on two artistic positions from the fields of performance, photography, literature, theater or visual arts that deal explicitly with the topic of war in their work. In a three-hour discussion, the two positions were confronted with each other in order to shed light on the respective approaches in dealing with such a topic. In particular, the panel raised awareness of how to deal with the contradictions that arise in contexts of remembering violence and war and tied in with the topic of “Gegenwart erinnern”.

Speakers and artists: Wolf Böwig (war photographer and visual artist), Ronya Othmann (writer), Darija Davidović (theater scholar, CPPD), Marko Dinić (writer, CPPD)

The micro-grant was used to fund the event “Unser Denkmal bleibt! (K)Eine Frage deutscher Verantwortung” (“Our Memorial Stays! (Not) a Question of German Responsibility”) on December 16, 2023. Experts discussed the plans of the Berlin Senate and Deutsche Bahn to build a new S-Bahn line under the memorial to the Sinti* and Roma* of Europe murdered under National Socialism. They explained the current state of planning and the irreparable damage this would cause to the memorial and placed the debate, which is painful for many, in the context of Germany’s historical responsibility. The event was used as an opportunity to launch a crowdfunding campaign to preserve the monument.

Speakers and artists: Hamze Bytyçi (RomaTrial e.V., CPPD), Leah Carola Czollek (Institute for Social Justice & Radical Diversity), Kelly Laubinger (Managing Director of the Sinti Union Schleswig-Holstein, CPPD), Jana Mechelhof-Herezi (Stiftung Denkmal, Head of the Remembrance of Sinti* and Roma* Department).

The long-term project will train young people from different communities to become newsfluencers and journalists in order to generate outreach and publicity for relevant but neglected political and social issues.

The CPPD Micro-Grant enabled the implementation of the first project phase, in which the year-long project was conceived, the website was designed and two workshops on the topics of “Newsfluencer Interview and Panel Training” and “TikTok” were prepared. By raising media awareness and learning tools for dealing with history in journalistic contexts, the project aims to contribute to the pluralization of remembrance culture in Germany and beyond.

As part of the Fluctoplasma Festival – Hamburg’s Festival for Art, Discourse and Diversity, the CPPD micro-grant enabled the realization of three event formats. These included the lecture performance “The Missing Book of Lillith & Judith”, the event “Producing Discomfort – Perspectives on the Intersectional Cultural Sector” and a workshop on “Solidarity with Jewish Communities in Political Activism”. The events complemented the festival program with intersectional perspectives on pluralistic remembrance and revealed concrete possibilities for action to the audience.

Speakers and artists: Clara Laila Abid Alstar (conceptual artist, CPPD), Felisha Maria Carenage (artist), Melissa Kolukisagil (curator, CPPD), Nina Prader (artist, CPPD), Quyen Vo (journalist), radical_Jewish education collective.

“Standing Together” is a Jewish-Palestinian grassroots movement committed to peace and social justice in Israel. Two activists were invited to Germany after October 7 and the subsequent Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. The speakers took part as panelists in the event “Where there is struggle, there is hope” on November 27, 2023 in the Grüner Salon of the Volksbühne and in the event “Den anderen Weg suchen” on December 6, 2023 at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. CPPD members and network partners were given the opportunity to network and discuss the events following October 7.

Speakers and artists: Alon-Lee Green (Standing Together), Rula Daood (Standing Together), Dinah Riese (journalist, CPPD).

In literary reportages, Olesya Yaremchuk investigated the fate of Crimean Tatars*, Roma* and Jews* from Ukraine who have found refuge in Germany.

The micro-grant enabled the research and conception phase as well as the journalistic implementation and follow-up of the reports. The articles were written in German and Ukrainian and will thus be able to raise readers’ awareness of migration and refugee movements in the contexts discussed.

İç İçe – Festival for New Anatolian Music is a festival for contemporary Anatolian music in Germany. From July 13-15, 2023, a small version of the Berlin festival took place in Munich, which included numerous music acts, workshops and panel discussions.

The CPPD micro-grant provided long-term support for the festival concept and curation. This enabled İç İçe to anchor music as a medium of collective memory for the visualization of a pluralistic culture of remembrance in Germany and in its event formats.

In the context of the emerging anti-racist learning and memorial site on Keupstraße in Cologne, which commemorates the NSU nail bomb attacks, six people were invited via the CPPD Micro-Grant to develop texts that will be integrated into the memorial site as future digital formats. The contributions diversify the future place of remembrance and are intended as a concrete implementation of multi-perspective remembrance in the urban space.

Contributors to the text: Ibrahim Arslan (education advisor, CPPD), Max Czollek (poet, writer, curator of the CPPD), Bassam Ghazi (theater director, CPPD), Bengü Kocatürk-Schuster (Domid), Seyda Kurt (writer), Deniz Utlu (writer, CPPD).