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STPLN Interdisciplinary program is a ten-month European Solidarity Corps experience for three young, ambitious and aspiring creatives to hone their skills, refine their portfolio and gain first-hand experience working within the Creative and Cultural Industries. Funded by MUCF through the Erasmus + ESC Program, this project offers a unique experience to participants to work on a variety of creative projects alongside the team at STPLN in Malmö, Sweden.

The 10 month project is packed with a unique learning-by-doing curriculum where participants take a hands-on approach to working with the STPLN organisation on creative tasks. Participants also have the opportunity to develop a personal project, of which they have full control of as well as access to a wide range of facilities, equipment, resources, structure, network and mentorship.

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STPLN Interdisciplinary Program

〰️ STPLN Interdisciplinary Program

Each edition takes place between the beginning of September and the end of June, the following year. Located at STPLN—an incubator for creative projects and meeting point for design, art, technology, science and crafts—participants work within a dynamic environment and gain access to a large network of doers, thinkers and tinkerers in different fields. STPLN is located in the charming city of Malmö, southern Sweden. The city offers a unique independent (and young) culture scene, a diversely international population, and a beach that is always < 30 minute bike ride away on any of the cities 500km of bike paths.

It’s hard to describe what a typical workday looks like, yet alone a whole workweek. But it’s worth a try. The 10-month program is designed to give participants hands-on experience of working within the creative industries, while also presenting a range of different challenges which participants get a lot of creative freedom and autonomy to solve. The tasks which participants will work on (together as a team) are most often aligned to the activities that STPLN is working with, and are meant to add some kind of value to the wider STPLN ecosystem in some way. There’s also one day a week where participants are (strongly) encouraged to work on their own personal project, similar to an artist-in-residence. So in essence, a typical workweek involves some meetings, some moodboard-making, some working with your hands, some multimedia work, some ideating and a lot of socialising. To have a better understanding of how this looks, we recommend you to check out some of the previous editions final publications here.

Sounds like something you fancy yourself doing? The open call happens once a year, around March/April. To stay in the loop for this, you can sign up to STPLN’s newsletter to get a reminder for when the application process has started, here. You can also follow us on Instagram here.

To get a head start, we recommend you to prepare your portfolio beforehand. as well as going through some of frequently asked questions at the FAQ page here.

PREVIOUS EDITIONS

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PREVIOUS EDITIONS 〰️

The theme of this year is “COMMUNITY BUILDING”. What makes people connect and come together? What kind of tools can be used? How can we form strong communities? All this and a lot more will be explored by this years ESC team.
You can find out more about this edition at the project page here.
Post-pandemic, we have noticed a shift in how people relate to shared physical spaces like STPLN and the increase of digital platforms and spaces in everyday life. The line between online and IRL is blurry and we find that kinda cool. Through tools like Slack and Discord, Miro and Pinterest and countless more, we are able to share ideas and knowledge quickly, visually and effectively. These tools can be super useful, but what happens if they are used to build interest-based communities?
For this edition, participants were tasked with exploring the concept of Hybrid Communities through different tasks ranging from event management, multimedia productions, design work and more.
You can find out more about this edition at the project page here.
Interdisciplinary Storytelling was a project that aims to utilise storytelling as a tool for social change. Working alongside the team at STPLN, three very different storytellers were invited to spend ten months documenting, representing and spreading stories about individuals and groups working towards social and environmental sustainability. In a time dominated by information overload, guerrilla marketing and pop-up ads, it is imperative for socially-oriented projects to be equipped with herethe tools and approaches needed to reach their audience.
You can find out more about this edition at the project page here.
What makes a great event, great? How does the format of an event affect what the outcome of the event will be? What do you need to think about in order to design a memorable experience in an event? The focus of this edition was to explore events of different kinds, from small workshops, to big festivals; from intimate concerts to geeky conferences. As this project was disrupted midway by the pandemic, it provided a unique chance to explore the transition from in-place events to virtual events.
You can find out more about this edition at the project page here.
This was the pilot version of Interdisciplinary Academy. During this edition, participants were tasked with forming an in-house creative agency based on their collective skills, styles and approaches and were tasked throughout the year with delivering communication outputs. This ranged from films, photo series, social media campaigns, spacial redesigns and project branding to quirky merch production, event organisation and more.
You can find out more about this edition at the project page here.