The STRP Young ACT Award is a launchpad for emerging artists who are moving from graduation into a professional artistic practice. Building on the legacy of the ACT Award, this edition focuses on supporting the next generation, offering opportunities to present your work, develop your practice, and connect with a professional network.

Selected artists will have the chance to present their graduation projects within STRP’s 2026 exhibition, creating resonance with our annual theme: Big Energy, Slow Futures.

The jury will select three winners that will each receive €4,000 alongside artistic and production guidance throughout the development, realization, and presentation of their work during STRP in spring 2026. Through a collaboration with Design Academy Eindhoven, one spot in the 2026 edition is reserved to a recent DAE graduate.

- The call is open to recent graduates (2024–2025) from Dutch art academies working in the fields of new media art, science, and technology.

- Applicants should have a graduation project or concept that resonates with STRP’s 2026 theme: Big Energy, Slow Futures.

- Project budget (€4,000 excl. VAT): Support to further develop your graduation project, including artist fee, materials, (rental) equipment, transport, and travel costs.

- Artistic and production guidance: Mentoring sessions and support from STRP’s artistic and technical team.

- Connection to a professional network: You’ll become part of a growing network of makers, curators, collectives, and institutions.

- Presentation of your work at STRP Spring 2026: Big Energy, Slow Futures: 26–29 March 2026 *Read more about the theme below.

- Public engagement: During the process, each artist will participate in a public event (e.g., workshop, talk, or discussion) to share insights about their artistic practice.

• Open call launch: 17 September 2025
• Application deadline: 12 October 2025
• Nominee announcement: 16 October 2025
• Selection announcement: 25 October 2025
• Development phase: Oct 2025 - Mar 2026
• Presentation at STRP spring event: Mar/Apr 2026

Please send the following (in English or Dutch) in a single PDF (max. 10MB) to info@strp.nl:

1. Short artist bio / portfolio & CV

2. Motivation letter (max. 1 page)
- Why you want to take part
- How this award fits your artistic development in the next year
- How your work relates to the STRP Spring 2026 theme Big Energy, Slow Futures

3. Description of your work
- Include visuals, technical requirements, links to documentation, and project exhibiting location (if available)

The selection will be made by STRP’s Artistic Director, the STRP Young Advisory Board (YAB), and our advisors, who will review all submissions and choose the nominees and winning project.

If you need any help with the application or have questions about the Young ACT Award, contact:

STRP Artistic Director – Tess de Ruiter (info@strp.nl)

We live in an age propelled by big energy, a tidal force of quantum computing, AI, and algorithmic systems. This wave of innovation dazzles even as it disrupts our rhythms: living, working, caring. It is dazzling yet destabilizing, an ocean of possibility that demands navigation.

STRP events become a collective laboratory, where artists, designers, and audiences engage with the infrastructures of energy and speed. Influenced by thinkers like Byung-Chul Han, Hartmut Rosa, and Yuk Hui, we explore how acceleration shapes, and sometimes fractures, our lives and environments.

Big Energy, Slow Futures invites you to be part of this experiment. Imagine if energy were measured not just in terawatts, but in attention, intimacy, ecological balance, and more-than-human relations. Artists prototype alternative rhythms, speculate on new cosmotechnics, and envision infrastructures as shared commons.

This is more than STRP’s events. It is a laboratory of futures, one where slowing down becomes an act of agency, imagination outpaces extraction, and we collectively forge a horizon where technology, ecology, humans, and more-than-humans can thrive.