About Us
The Sylt Foundation is a laboratory for artistic, scientific, and social exchange. We explore and accompany processes of transformation, working across disciplines and cultures.
Inspired by Joseph Beuys’ vision of society as a social sculpture, we believe that communities are shaped through the creative, critical, and collaborative actions of everyone involved. Each individual has the power to contribute to change.
Through our projects and partnerships, we seek to spark dialogue, support new ideas, and sustain processes that lead to tangible improvements in people’s lives.
Founded in 2004 as kunst:raum syltquelle, the foundation later expanded its international focus and was renamed the Sylt Foundation.
Founded by historian, translator, and psychologist Indra Wussow, who lives and works between the foundation’s two bases—Sylt and Johannesburg, South Africa—and travels widely to build connections around the world.
In our programmes, artists meet scientists, activists engage with authors, and urban thinkers connect with rural voices. Together they create processes that cross disciplinary boundaries and place social, political, and ecological questions at the centre. The Sylt Foundation fosters these encounters not only as cultural exchange, but as contributions to a global social sculpture: an open, polyphonic space where ideas circulate, responsibility is shared, and the future is imagined collectively.
The foundation is represented by its founder and board, and works closely with partner organisations around the world to build strong, lasting networks.
Invited artists, scholars, and researchers live and work in residency studios and apartments at the Sylt Quelle in Rantum/Sylt, as well as in additional residencies in South Africa. We also collaborate with global partners to realise residency programmes worldwide.
Over the years, we have evolved from supporting projects to creating and realising our own. In collaboration with partners such as the Bremer Literaturhaus, the University of Giessen, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, the Toonda Cultural Community Center in Uganda, and many others worldwide, we now actively shape a living social sculpture—pioneering new ideas, fostering dialogue, and driving transformative change.
By invitation: Selected artists are invited through the foundation’s board.
Our community projects are long-term commitments that nurture resilient, supportive communities through education, art, literature, and narrative therapy. They create spaces of solidarity where creativity and dialogue become tools for shaping more just and compassionate communities.
Projects
Transformation and Identity – Trauma and Reconciliation
Artists, writers, composers, and curators from eight countries came together to explore questions that move the world: How do nations whose histories are marked by violence and dictatorship come to terms with their past? How are traumas processed? How are they experienced and perceived differently across generations? Are there shared experiences despite diverse cultural codes and historical contexts? How does the past find expression in the future?
What began with participants from Cambodia, Chile, Cuba, Germany, Haiti, Myanmar, and South Africa has grown over the years into a truly global conversation. At the invitation of the Sylt Foundation, artists and curators continue to explore these questions in workshops and international encounters. Through this intercultural and interdisciplinary project, we aim to foster dialogue on how historical trauma is addressed and on the role of art in processes of reconciliation.
Diverse People Remember
Diverse People Remember is an international long-term project that brings together school students, artists, educators, and scholars to explore family histories and share them across countries and continents. Through dialogue with peers and mentors, participants discover how the past continues to shape the present and influence the future.
At the heart of the project lies storytelling: by giving voice to personal and often painful memories, hidden traumas can be uncovered. In this process, understanding grows across cultures and generations, opening pathways toward empathy, reconciliation, and a more inclusive future.
TOONDA
Toonda is a visionary initiative founded by Rayka Kobiella and artist Jonas Gerberding in the village of Kyakataama, 30 km from Fort Portal, Uganda. It provides the community with a performance stage, library and meeting café, office and kitchen facilities, as well as a green outdoor space for sports, dialogue, and cultural exchange. Alongside its community programmes, Toonda also hosts artist residencies, opening the space to both local and international voices.
The Sylt Foundation is proud to cooperate with Toonda. Its way of connecting community life, education, and the arts across local and global perspectives resonates with our own belief that art and dialogue can reshape the world we live in.
Syltkokotela
In January 2024 we opened our Community Center Kokotela in the South African township of Lawley. The space is open to everyone in the neighbourhood and is shaped together with local NGOs. Here, mental health trainings, storytelling projects, intergenerational celebrations, and educational programmes for children take place.
Kokotela is more than just a meeting place: it is part of a living social sculpture, where art and culture become tools to strengthen community, foster dialogue, and open new perspectives for a more compassionate way of living together. Like Toonda in Uganda, it shows how local initiatives can be embedded in a global network of exchange and mutual inspiration.
VITA
News
20 - 24. 11.2025
Neighbourhoods in Time and Space: Fractures and Legacies
From 20 to 24 November 2025, the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (BKGE) in Oldenburg, the University of Giessen, and the Sylt Foundation will launch a new German-Polish dialogue format on Sylt. Together with authors and scholars, we will explore the complex relationship between Poland and Germany: What does this fateful neighbourhood mean for us today? What is missing, what connects us, what divides us? And what lessons can be drawn from history and the present for a shared future?
Today, German-Polish relations are still shaped by ambivalences: by centuries-old wounds and memories, by political frictions and divergent views of history, but also by close proximity and diverse interconnections within Europe. At the same time, a younger generation—networked with the world through social media—is redefining ideas of cosmopolitanism, European belonging, and immediate neighbourhood. Both societies also face similar challenges: how to defend democracy, pluralism, and cultural diversity in times of populism and polarisation. It is within this tension that we want to deepen the dialogue: What blind spots, what opportunities, and what shared perspectives emerge from our intertwined history and present?
In interdisciplinary workshops, literature, history, and cultural studies will come into conversation. The public highlight will be a reading on Saturday evening with authors Artur Becker, Brygida Helbig, Karolina Kuszyk and Mia Raben, moderated by Silke Behl.
The series Neighbourhoods in Time and Space: Fractures and Legacies aims to establish itself as an annual forum—an open space for questions, exchange, and new perspectives.
„Wenn du schnell gehen willst, geh allein. Wenn du weit gehen willst, geh zusammen.“
(Afrikanisches Sprichwort)
Felicitas Hoppe Writer
„Give me beaches and I’ll write novels! Cheers to kunst:raum syltquelle — a source that flows with more than just water!”
Max marek
visual artist
“Places where one may, effortlessly and undistracted, return to the essence— to the bare bones of things— have become all too rare…”
Carsten Otte
Writer
“One day the island of Sylt will sink beneath the sea. A pity—for then no books could be written at kunst:raum sylt quelle.
Yet one may assume that after the great flood, Indra Wussow will be voyaging in a submarine, ferrying the artists of this new water-world safely back to dry land.”
clemens weiss Visual Artist
“I have come to treasure Sylt as an occasional, undisturbed alternative to the ‘island of Manhattan’—above all for the cultural offerings of the sylt quelle and for the encounters with fellow artists and writers, all in air guaranteed to be fresh…”
artur becker
Writer
„…Solche Orte, die die Zeit stillstehen lassen, liebe ich, und du bist dir sicher – du wirst schreiben, du wirst vergessen, du wirst träumen und zurückkommen.“
Stephen cone weeks
visual artist
“I sit on the train. (…) The distractions of my life lose their hold on me. I am traveling to the source.”
Prof. ernst P. fischer
scientist
“…The transmission of knowledge succeeds whenever the activity it entails can be shown as a whole— that is, as a cultural unity, where science and art converge, as they do here in the kunst:raum sylt quelle.”
vicki schmatolla
performing artist
“Just as water springs from the source, so do creative energies gush forth from the encounters that take place in the kunst:raum sylt quelle.”
daniel kehlmann
Writer
“When I say that never in my life have I been able to work as well anywhere as at the Sylt Quelle, the only ones who react with disbelief are those who know neither the North Sea, nor the island, nor the kunst:raum.”
„Mir ist wichtig, Orte zu schaffen, an denen jenseits des eigentlichen Kulturbetriebs Gedanken und Ideen ausgetauscht werden können. Orte, an denen die Kultur zu ihrer Quelle zurückfindet. Rückzugsorte zum Arbeiten und Nachdenken, zum Experimentieren. Gedanken, so weit und so frei wie der Himmel über der Insel Sylt im äußersten Norden Deutschlands.“
(Indra Wussow, Stifterin)
Jenny erpenbeck
On the 20th Anniversary of the Foundation
I write about a plot of land in Brandenburg while sitting by the North Sea. I write about a garden while walking along the beach. Here, where a small thatched-roof house already cost a million even back then, eighteen years ago, I write about the loss of a thatched-roof house in the distant German East.
In front of the island’s most famous fish restaurant there is a playground; I take a rope there. My son pulls on it, I pull on it, he ties himself to a ship’s model and plays storm. Indra Wussow brings writers to Rantum and visual artists too — she smuggles into this high-proof cocktail of millionaires a few people who think about words or about colours.
All that was eighteen years ago. The son is long grown — and so is the novel. The North Sea is contained in the book, even though you don’t see it. And the strong current that sweeps your legs out from under you. And eight weeks of life, four weeks cold, four weeks hot.
Frank zahel President of the District Council of Nordfriesland
Words of Greeting
Dear Ms. Wussow, dear guests in our beautiful Rantum,
moin everyone,
When your invitation landed on my desk, one question came to mind — perhaps typical for someone who is both a professional fireman and a volunteer firefighter: Who actually puts out fires in culture and the arts when something starts to burn?
Not in the literal sense — we certainly hope that won’t happen — but what about when an artist cannot yet, or no longer, live from their art? When money runs out? When the lack of opportunities or recognition weighs heavily on their soul? When creativity and inspiration don’t flow as freely as water from our fire hoses? What then? And how do we as a society respond to such fires?
One answer might be: bad luck, too bad! But fortunately, there are people who don’t just shrug their shoulders but roll up their sleeves and do something. I dare say, Ms. Wussow, that as a literary translator and curator you have witnessed many such “fires” in the art world. And instead of looking away, you drew the remarkable conclusion to do something about them. That is why we are here today.
Your personal commitment has been a source of help in times of need — or of inspiration when it was most needed — for many artists and cultural workers. Whether through your fellowships, the opportunity to work quietly and recharge creative batteries here in Rantum, or through projects in South Africa, Cambodia, Poland… some of which, I must admit, are unfamiliar places to me. If people in those countries have heard of our little sand dune in northern Germany, we Sylters probably have you to thank for it.
You have brought artists from all over the world to Rantum: from Africa, the Baltic states, Venezuela, from Belarus — which has sadly slipped into dictatorship today. The thought of how many languages have been spoken around the Rantum Basin through your work is impressive, and it humbles me.
All of this has benefitted the artists, it has benefitted your foundation — and it has benefitted us, the people of Rantum. We have gained recognition for our village and island through so many international guests, we have felt a breath of the wider world here, and we have enjoyed the open-air art gallery that has grown around the Sylt Quelle thanks to you. A travel guide even notes that sculptures by “renowned artists” can be seen there.
Now, once an artist is called “renowned,” you might think they have survived the biggest fires and highest hurdles of their career. But is success really measured by having a “big name”? You, Ms. Wussow, recently said in an interview: no. What matters to you is not big or small names, but the ideas and messages that artists bring. And you have ensured, for twenty years now, that these ideas and artistic creativity can flow here in Rantum.
For this I congratulate you, together with your colleagues, on behalf of the local advisory council, the municipality of Sylt, and the district of Nordfriesland. To the next twenty years! Congratulations — or, as we say in our Sylt language, hartelk Lekwensk!
Indra Wussow
the founder
About the Founder
For as long as she can remember, Indra Wussow has been asking: How do we live with the past? How do stories of trauma, silence, and loss shape who we are — and how can art open spaces for dialogue, reconciliation, and change?
As founder and chief curator of the Sylt Foundation, she has created projects that bring people together across borders and disciplines. Her path has taken her to Cambodia, Chile, Myanmar, Israel, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, South Africa, Germany, and Poland — places marked by dictatorship, colonialism, and violence, but also by resilience and creativity. Everywhere, her focus has been on the intergenerational inheritance of memory: the way histories are carried forward in families, communities, and societies, and the ways in which art and storytelling can help transform them.
With a background in history and psychology, she brings both a sharp eye for structures and a deep empathy for lived experience. What drives her is the conviction that memory is never only about the past — it is about responsibility for the future, and about the possibility of building more compassionate communities.
This vision became tangible in December 2024, when the Sylt Foundation celebrated its 20th anniversary. From Sylt, voices and contributions flowed in from around the world — video messages, artworks, and texts from Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Myanmar, Uganda, Germany, Chile, Cambodia, Poland and beyond — showing the global network that has grown under her guidance.
Indra Wussow is also the editor of Afrika Wunderhorn, a book series dedicated to contemporary African literature.