Join the Venue Activation List

The Venue Activation List will remain open on a rolling basis via Submittable until April 30, 2027. You will be prompted to log in to your Submittable account or create a free account.

Join the Venue Activation List Now

The Notre Dame Arts Biennial, organized and produced by the University’s Arts Initiative, is an international arts festival rooted in the creative spirit, intellectual energy, and iconic traditions of Notre Dame and our region. Spanning six months and occurring every two years, the festival follows a longstanding biennial tradition to give people time to develop and share their most critical work.

While time is needed to develop work, space is needed to share it. As an expression of its inaugural theme, symbiosis, a call to contemplate and create interdependence through the arts, venue activation facilitates creative space sharing and infuses the arts into spaces of everyday life.

Does your restaurant want to host a pop-up music series or display local artwork? Does your studio space want to host a workshop for emerging creatives? Does your retail business want to nurture community by hosting a neighborhood film screening?

The Notre Dame Arts Initiative invites regional venues, including campus venues at Notre Dame and other schools, to join the Venue Activation List. This list serves as an ongoing roster of venues interested in providing in-kind use of their space for public arts programming connected to the biennial. The Arts Initiative will hold submissions for a period of two biennials (or four years) and will reach out as projects arise that may be a good fit both thematically and logistically.

Eligibility

Organizations both based in and serving communities in St. Joseph County and its six surrounding counties (Elkhart, Marshall, Starke, and LaPorte in Indiana and Berrien and Cass in Michigan) are eligible to join the list. This includes local restaurants, businesses, non-profit organizations, and government agencies as well as academic units within colleges and universities, school districts, and individual K-12 schools. Eligibility is not limited to arts-based groups or arts presenting organizations.

In order to achieve the biennial’s goal of increasing opportunities for public engagement with the arts, venues are required to clearly list and uphold regular public hours.

Deadlines & Information Sessions

The Venue Activation List is currently open and will be reviewed on a rolling basis until April 30, 2027.