Program Overview

"From & To People" is a 10-month training program that brings together contemporary arts, crafts, and sustainable design in what can be described as an ecology of creative practices in an open collective laboratory for experimentation and research. The program targets emerging artists, designers, and craftspeople residing in southern Tunisia, offering them comprehensive professional training that connects technical and manual skills with critical thinking and responsible environmental practices.

The program provides practical laboratories, professional mentoring, the possibility of obtaining a vocational competency certificate from the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training, production grants to support five selected workshops, and the opportunity to exhibit works in national and international exhibitions.

This program aims to contribute to building a new generation of practitioners capable of reimagining the future through a renewed relationship between humans, materials, and nature.

The program also aims to:

• Train participants on how to research and explore authentic knowledge and shared techniques and repurpose them in contemporary contexts.
• Enable participants to acquire shared techniques and understand their historical and cultural roots while enhancing their awareness of local raw materials.
• Develop participants' capacity for critical thinking, rethinking, and innovation based on imagination and experimentation.
• Connect participants with design tools and link them to a practical understanding of utility and aesthetics.
• Enhance participants' ability to provide contemporary solutions and products inspired by authentic knowledge and shared techniques that respond to contemporary challenges.

*By authentic knowledge and shared techniques, we mean knowledge rooted in our local traditions and techniques that are collectively shared by people and transmitted among them without individual ownership.

Program Background

The world today is witnessing rapid transformations that push towards exploring new approaches to reimagine the future and find alternative ways to face environmental, social, and economic crises, not only through scientific discourse but also through creative and cognitive practices as means to renew our awareness of the world and reconnect humans with their natural surroundings.

This program was born from a long research path undertaken by the Southern Citizen Dancers organization since 2021 within its experimental project "No Name Eco-Lab" under the supervision of artist Mohamed Amine Hamouda. This laboratory served as an open experimental workshop, starting from a careful observation of the reality of southern Tunisia and its natural and craft potential, responding to the general objectives set by the organization to build a new relationship between humans and the environment, between material and place, within a vision aimed at rediscovering our relationship with the earth and the things that grow around us, and promoting sustainable practices that preserve resources and ensure their continuity for future generations.

With the development of field practice, the laboratory became a space for free experimentation with authentic knowledge and shared techniques, experimenting with everything available in the surrounding environment through research and direct interaction with materials, and understanding their potential for development, transformation, and creativity. Through these experiments, the laboratory accompanied a new generation of local actors including artists, craftspeople, and designers, opening new paths for learning and production, and providing them with opportunities for exhibition and participation in exhibitions held in Gabes, Tunis, and several European cities.

As a result of this knowledge/field accumulation, the "From & To People" program was established as a natural extension of this research path to frame all these experiences in a clear training path, providing an educational and experimental environment where participants interact with authentic knowledge and shared techniques, developing new skills that enable them to produce materials, designs, and innovative approaches that respond to the needs of our time without disconnecting from their local context.

The "From & To People" program starts from this awareness, as a creative and intellectual initiative that explores the position of art and design in times of major transformations, and examines the role that creative artistic practice can play in building new responses to these transformations through experimentation and research.

The program focuses on reimagining a sustainable future and exploring alternative solutions to the environmental, social, and economic crisis rooted in contemporary, inherited, and authentic knowledge practices. It also seeks to rethink the relationships that form our ecosystems, including the vital links between humans and nature, and to establish a positive relationship between active human intervention and the environment.

The program is also concerned with our relationship with the earth and how we live with the things that grow around us, aiming to promote a logic of dealing with nature and benefiting from it sustainably, to ensure its persistence and continuity for future generations, calling for a new ethics of practice that involves humans in caring for nature as a partner in existence, not as a resource for consumption.

In this context, Southern Citizen Dancers proposes this program as an experience extending across multiple media, where material becomes a partner in producing meaning and contemporary products, and where aesthetic responsibility is understood as an inseparable part of social and cognitive responsibility.

Practical Framework

The program is based on a collective laboratory open to experimentation, research, and multidisciplinary practice. It is an invitation for emerging artists, designers, and craftspeople to engage in an organic research process where knowledge and criticism intersect with practice and design with social action, in what can be described as an ecology of creative practices.

The program offers an open laboratory for contemporary design, arts, and ecological practices, where craft intersects with research, nature with the experimental path, and design, fashion, and sculpture transform into multiple media for thinking and production. In this space, material is treated as an entity carrying the memory of place, and is reshaped within an experience that seeks to achieve a living balance between contemporary practices, function, and environmental responsibility.

What Does the Program Offer?

The program provides a real practice environment:

• Technical research laboratories that activate material thinking - understanding the properties of local materials, their limitations and potentials, transformation experiments, and their impact on form, use, and environmental effect, with safety protocols and tracking of materials and their life cycle.
• A critical-applied curriculum that connects the history of art, design, and contemporary crafts through guided reading sessions, deconstruction of references and methodologies, and discussions.
• Organized access to infrastructure through workshops and manufacturing and experimental equipment, carefully considered raw materials, and documentation spaces, while respecting safety standards.
• Results-oriented professional mentoring through individual and collective guidance focusing on solving technical and aesthetic problems, building manufacturing plans, and preliminary modeling that progresses through clear stages from testing to improvement to readiness for display or use.
• The program covers the expenses and coordination of passing the vocational competency certificate (CAP) officially recognized by the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training, in the fields of crafts and design for participants who have completed the vocational training path.
• Five workshops resulting from the training path will be designed and selected. These workshops can be individual or collective.
• The program allocates five production grants to five selected workshops to support and develop their projects based on research and sustainable production.
• In addition to the grant, the program helps the five selected workshops apply for an additional facilitated loan, repayable over five years with comfortable terms and special privileges, in cooperation with local partner funding institutions.
• The produced works are tested in experimental exhibition spaces before their final presentation in national and international exhibitions.
• The final outputs are integrated into national exhibitions and a physical and digital craft store dedicated to distributing and promoting artistic and craft works that adhere to the environmental and aesthetic standards set by the quality committee.

Training Path

The training curriculum of the program extends over ten months and is based on linking vocational training, ecological approaches, and research in art and design. The program also relies on socio-economic qualification and practice-based learning approaches. Training here transforms into an experimental space where manual and mental skills interact with critical thinking and environmental and social awareness, making learning itself an artistic and cognitive practice that seeks to redefine the relationship between humans and materials.

The training progresses through interconnected units where contemporary arts intersect with crafts, fashion, and design, while also integrating the artistic dimension with life skills and cognitive skills within a pedagogical framework that enhances the transition from theoretical knowledge to applied production.

Unit One: Life and Artistic Skills

This unit aims to develop participants' personal, social, and creative skills through four intensive experimental residencies, each lasting six days.

This part focuses on:

• Personal and social skills
• Cognitive and critical skills
• Thinking about concepts of production and consumption
• Creative visions and concepts

Unit Two: Vocational Training in Design and Sustainable Crafts

This unit combines the craft, design, and artistic aspects within an ecological approach aimed at developing sustainable production skills rooted in authentic knowledge and shared techniques.

The unit is organized into three integrated paths:

• References and Concepts
• Techniques and Materials
• Research, Design, and Production

This unit focuses on mastering practical techniques and understanding material interactions within an aesthetic and functional perspective, while training participants to analyze the environmental and aesthetic impact of their works, seeking to create a contemporary artistic language rooted in its local context and responsive to current environmental challenges.

It should be noted that this program does not follow a traditional training model, but rather proposes an open educational and experimental path whose units and paths are based on continuous interaction, establishing learning and exploratory stations that intersect and overlap with each other, built according to a pedagogy of experimentation and participation, within a living training path.

Application Conditions

The "From & To People" program targets a group of emerging artists, designers, and craftspeople residing in southern Tunisia, who seek to develop their projects within the framework of contemporary art, design, and sustainable fashion, and wish to build a professional career based on research, experimentation, and environmental and social responsibility.

General Eligibility Conditions:

• The applicant must be a resident of southern Tunisia throughout the program period (10 months of actual training + follow-up activities).
• The applicant's age must be between 18 and 40 years.
• The applicant must be active or interested in one of the following fields:
• Design in its various branches.
• Contemporary crafts and manual arts.
• Fashion or creative industries.
• Contemporary arts.

*No prior academic training in art or design is required, but a basic level of technical skill or field experience in an artistic or craft practice is requested.

Note: There are no application or participation fees, and the program covers accommodation, transportation, and basic material expenses within a specified limit.

Participation Basics:

• Full-time attendance in all stages of the program, including artistic residencies and practical workshops.
• Commitment to the ethics of collective work and respect for the program's approach based on cooperation, experimentation, and environmental sustainability.
• Commitment to participation in evaluation activities and final exhibitions, and submission of the achievement portfolio at the end of the path.

Application Form:

Applications are submitted exclusively through the official website of the Southern Citizen Dancers organization, via the following link: Click here

*Important note regarding the form: Please note that this form does not include an auto-save or continue-later feature. Therefore, we kindly ask you to fill out all fields and complete the application in one go without leaving the page, as leaving the form or reloading the page will result in the loss of all entered data.

To preview the application, Click here

• Applications via email or any other means will not be considered.
• It is recommended to read all questions carefully before filling out the form and prepare the required files in advance.
• The form can be filled out in Arabic, French, or English.
• We advise applicants to complete the application entirely and attach all required materials, as incomplete applications will not be considered, and Southern Citizen Dancers will not inform applicants if their application is incomplete.
• After the application deadline, Southern Citizen Dancers will conduct an administrative review to verify eligibility and ensure that applications are complete and comply with the guidelines.
• For more information about participation, please contact the program management team via the following email: from.and.to.people.info@o-dcs.org
• Only applications that pass the administrative verification stage are subsequently forwarded to an independent jury to carry out the evaluation process and select participants for the program.
• Southern Citizen Dancers reviews all applications from an administrative perspective, while an independent jury is responsible for the evaluation and selection process. We emphasize that personalized responses or evaluation reports cannot be provided for applications that are not selected.

Timeline

• Applications open: November 29, 2025
• Application deadline: December 25, 2025
• Selection committee meeting: January 08, 2026
• Announcement of final results: January 15, 2026
• Program start: First week of February 2026

Selection Mechanism

Initial screening of files is conducted by the Southern Citizen Dancers team, with the aim of verifying the completeness of files and ensuring they meet participation conditions and adhere to the program's basic standards.

After this stage, files that meet the conditions are referred to an external and independent committee appointed specifically for this purpose.

The committee works according to transparent and objective criteria and oversees all stages of evaluation and interviews to ensure the independence of the decision and the quality of selection.

The evaluation process is based on the following criteria:

• Clarity of the applicant's vision and personal conception.
• Alignment of the file with the program's philosophy and its environmental and social values.
• Seriousness and commitment to the training path.
• Authenticity and ability for critical thinking and innovation.
• Geographical diversity to ensure fair and inclusive participation.

Final Notes

• No prior artistic or craft experience is required; what matters is interest, willingness to learn, and engagement in the experience.
• Incomplete files or those sent outside the official platform will not be considered.
• Paper copies are not accepted.
• Answers can be provided in Arabic, French, or English.
• Any incomplete file or file sent after the deadline will not be considered.
• The program reserves the right to contact applicants for an additional interview if necessary.