STRP x Bart Hess 2025

Open Call: STRP x Bart Hess 2025

STRP and Bart Hess are joining forces to offer a unique opportunity for young creatives in the Netherlands. This time, we’re inviting you to co-create a permanent space for experimentation, encounters, and digital culture.

Are you an emerging artist, designer, performer, or maker, ready to push boundaries and shape a space that blurs the lines between art, technology, and human experience? Then this is your chance to create something that lasts.

Over six months, you’ll work side-by-side with Bart Hess and the STRP team to design, prototype, and activate a space that is both artwork and living laboratory, a platform for testing textures, movement, light, and sensory experiments. You won’t just imagine the future of this space, you’ll bring it to life.

What are you making space for?

In a world increasingly mediated by digital environments, STRP is asking: what kind of physical space do we need now?

This project is about creating a place for connection, creativity, and experimentation, an in-between space that is part artwork, part living environment. A place you can touch, transform, and experience with all your senses. Once completed, the space will function as a meeting point for the creative community, a gallery for artist, and a venue for workshops, talks, and live events.

To explore this question, STRP is collaborating with artist and designer Bart Hess as co-creator and coach. Known for his tactile, physical approach to digital media, Hess brings a unique perspective in our post-digital era, one where technology is everywhere, but human experience is at the centre. Over six months, he will guide and challenge participants to think beyond the screen, reimagine the idea of “space”, and weave the physical and digital in unexpected, sensory ways. All while working with you to make this a new hub for creativity in Eindhoven.

About Bart Hess

Bart Hess is a Dutch artist and designer whose work transforms textiles, materials, and the body into sensory, boundary-pushing experiences. Combining material studies, film, photography, and animation, Hess explores how the human body interacts with space and materials. His projects blur the line between skin and textile, organic and synthetic, physical and digital.

Discover more about Bart Hess

For Who

We’re looking for 3-5 emerging young creatives from any discipline, with a maximum of 2 years’ professional experience after graduation. You might work in:

Visual arts
Spatial design / interior design / architecture
Performance
Fashion & textiles
Digital media, VR/AR, or game design
Music & sound art
Storytelling or hybrid practices

You Are

Based in the Netherlands (preference for those in or near Eindhoven)
Strong in concept and sharp in execution
Curious about the intersection of art, technology, and space
Open to experimentation and collaboration
Excited to contribute to an evolving cultural environment in Eindhoven

What to Expect

Co-create a permanent cultural space in Eindhoven with Bart Hess and the STRP team
Experiment with materials, textures, and media, from tactile installations to experimental digital layers
Develop your artistic, spatial, and collaborative skills through hands-on making
Activate the space for public encounters and events
Connect with STRP’s network of artists, designers, curators, and cultural professionals

Practical Information

Period: October 2025 – April 2026
Time commitment: Total 125 hours (~8 hours/week), including group and individual work
Locations: Eindhoven (STRP’s new space at Microstad) & Bart Hess’ studio
Participants: 3-5 young creatives (max. 2 years after graduation)
Artist fee: €1,920 (exclusive VAT)
Application deadline: 21 September 2025

How to Apply

Send to info@strp.nl: