Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website
Accept allRevoke all
  • MANIFESTA
  • About
  • Principles
  • Organisation
  • Become a host city
  • Contact
  • Editions
  • News
  • Education
  • Publications
  • Press
  • Vacancies

Sign up for our newsletter

  • MANIFESTA
  • Editions
  • News
  • Principles
  • 3 April 2025
    Looking back at Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana

    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana closed its doors on Sunday the 24th of November 2024 after its successful 12 week period.

  • 14 January 2025
    Casa Gomis Acquired by Ministry of Culture: A …
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana

    Yesterday, Spanish Minister of Culture Ernest Urtasun announced the Ministry’s acquisition of Casa Gomis, ensuring its preservation as a cultural …

  • 2024
  • 18 November 2024
    Final Days of Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana

    With just one week remaining, Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana has almost reached 250,000 visits. Spanning 15 unique venues across 12 …

  • 26 September 2024
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana is open
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana

    The highly anticipated 15th edition of Manifesta is now open to the public across Barcelona and its wider metropolitan region. …

  • 12 June 2024
    Tickets for Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana are now …
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana

    Running from the 8th of September to the 24th of November 2024, Manifesta 15 invites you to rediscover the region …

  • 4 April 2024
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana announces participants!
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana

    At today's press conference, Manifesta 15 unveiled its forthcoming programme, revealing 43 participants hailing from diverse disciplines and corners of …

  • 2023
  • 14 December 2023
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona announces Artistic Team
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana

    The Artistic Team includes 11 representatives from the different cities of the metropolitan region, Manifesta’s Artistic Creative Mediator and the …

  • 14 December 2023
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona announces new venues!
    Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana

    On the 13th of December, Manifesta 15 Barcelona held a press conference to announce some exciting news for the upcoming …

News, 29 April 2025

Manifesta 16 Ruhr announces its urban conceptual framework

Related to Manifesta 16 Ruhr

At a press conference organised in Essen, Germany on the 29th of April 2025, Manifesta 16 Ruhr’s director Hedwig Fijen and Manifesta 16’s First Creative Mediator, Josep Bohigas presented the initial findings of the urban vision and the conceptual framework which forms foundation of the 16th edition of the European nomadic biennial.

In line with Manifesta’s core mission, the biennial will investigate how culture can inspire civic engagement and instigate positive social change through inclusive and participatory practices.

The Ruhr Area, with its rich industrial heritage, experienced widespread destruction during the Second World War due to its strategic significance as a centre of coal and steel production. In the post-war period, the region underwent rapid reconstruction, with new architectural and social models reshaping city centres and neighbourhoods. In preparation for Manifesta 16, the team has explored this history through the lens of urban transformation that played a central role in rebuilding neighbourhoods in the region.

A key feature of this research concerns the role of churches in the post-war reconstruction of the Ruhr Area. These buildings, often constructed by local communities, came to symbolise civic identity and democratic participation. Today, however, many of these churches face redundancy. In Germany alone, nearly half of the country's 40,000 churches are expected to be closed, demolished, or sold within the next decade.

Photo © Manifesta 16 Ruhr / Dirk Rose

Manifesta 16 Ruhr will explore how these former places of worship might be repurposed as inclusive cultural and social spaces. By reimagining these vacant structures as sites for community gathering and artistic exchange, the biennial aims to promote intercultural dialogue and social cohesion—especially in response to current global tendencies of polarisation and nationalism. Historically, churches and other religious buildings have not only served spiritual purposes, but also acted as civic spaces — sites of gathering, exchange, and support within communities. From a civic and urban perspective, the church inherits the function of a public space from Roman basilicas and the Agora, which were centres of community life. Drawing on this legacy, the Manifesta 16 Ruhr collaborative process seeks to explore the potential of these vacant neighbourhood axis points.

This conceptual framework and especially the relation to these sites will be further developed by the Second Creative Mediator(s) in the autumn of this year.

Find the conceptual framework via this link.

← Meet the Manifesta 16 …
Join the Manifesta 16 … →

Manifesta
Sarphatistraat 470, 1018 GW Amsterdam, NL

+31 20 672 14 35
office@manifesta.org

  • Press
  • Contact
  • Partners and Sponsors
  • ANBI
  • Legal
  • Instagram ↗
  • LinkedIn ↗
  • Facebook ↗
  • Youtube ↗