Marres, House for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht is not your typical art institute. We love to surprise visitors with exhibitions, performances, workshops, a garden, and food that engage all the senses. One of our most unusual projects, The Invisible Collection, is an archive podcast of spoken memories of artworks. A museum you can listen to instead of look at.

But how can The Invisible Collection reach new audiences and pick up fresh, surprising ways of experiencing art? That’s the challenge we would like the PREMIUM team to dive into. We are curious about bold ideas that use listening, storytelling, and imagination to shake things up. The project is about exploring how this “non-visual” way of looking at art can keep evolving and stay relevant. We don’t have a fixed outcome in mind because the whole point is to experiment. What matters most, is finding ways to open up the Invisible Collection so more people want to join in, share, and get inspired. So we are inviting a PREMIUM team to shake things up: How can we make The Invisible Collection reach new audiences, spark fresh ways of experiencing art, and keep evolving into the future?

You will dive into research on audiences, storytelling, and sensory imagination, and then turn your ideas into experimental formats, tools, or events.

The Invisible Collection is all about making art accessible beyond sight, showing that museums can be about memory, imagination, and inclusion too. It connects to bigger themes like neurodiversity, education, and participation. For Marres, this project is a chance to discover new ways of listening to and working with audiences and to keep the archive alive with fresh voices and stories. The PREMIUM team’s input could help us rethink accessibility, create playful new methods of engagement, and spark collaborations with other fields.

We want to put the outcomes straight into action: shaping new formats for Marres’ public programmes, experimenting with storytelling, and finding fun ways to get people involved and influence how art is shared in more inclusive ways. If the PREMIUM team comes up with tools or ideas that work, we will test them in real projects and see how audiences respond. The results could also help us team up with schools, cultural partners, and community groups, keeping The Invisible Collection dynamic and alive. In short: your ideas won’t stay on paper, but they will help us play, learn, and grow the project into the future.

We will give you the context, guidance, and feedback you need, and the creative freedom to try bold ideas. In return, you will get hands-on experience with a real cultural institution, a chance to test your ideas in practice, and the opportunity to leave your mark on a one-of-a-kind art project.