Reviving Nature 2027

koihin

Plearn 2027

Play • Learn • Perform • Participate

International Artist Residency and Festival

January–March 2027 | Chiang Mai, Thailand
Part of Reviving Nature 2027

Applications close: 31 October 2026

[APPLICATION LINK COMING SOON]

What if environmental action began with curiosity?

What if climate conversations could be playful, creative, participatory and joyful?

Plearn (เพลิน) is an international artist residency and festival exploring how art can inspire environmental awareness through play, imagination and shared experience.

The Thai word เพลิน means to enjoy, to become absorbed in an experience and to find pleasure in the moment. It invites us to slow down, explore and reconnect—with nature, with communities and with one another.

Rather than approaching climate change only as a crisis, Plearn asks:

How can artists create experiences that make people care because they have participated, discovered, played and imagined together?

We invite artists to transform environmental learning into an open playground where audiences become participants rather than spectators.

The Open Call

Artists may develop interactive installations, performances, games, workshops, public interventions, storytelling, movement, sound, digital media, ecological design, socially engaged work or other interdisciplinary approaches.

We are interested in work that invites people to touch, build, question, listen, move, imagine and collaborate—and, through doing so, reconnect with the living world.

Projects may respond to subjects including:

  • climate change and environmental justice
  • biodiversity and ecosystems
  • air pollution, water and forests
  • food systems, waste and the circular economy
  • Indigenous and local knowledge
  • community resilience
  • regenerative practices
  • future imagination
  • relationships between humans and nature

Projects may be poetic, experimental, educational, performative, speculative, interactive or socially engaged.

Who Can Apply

The open call welcomes artists, collectives, performers, designers, researchers, educators, makers, architects, technologists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, environmental practitioners and creative thinkers from all countries.

Applications are welcome across disciplines, including:

  • visual art, installation and public art
  • theatre, dance, performance and movement
  • music and sound art
  • film, photography and storytelling
  • digital and interactive media
  • design, architecture and craft
  • environmental and socially engaged practice
  • community arts and interdisciplinary work

Emerging and established practitioners are equally welcome. We are particularly interested in applicants who are open to exchange, experimentation and engagement beyond the boundaries of their usual practice.

The Residency

Residency period: January–March 2027
Location: Studio 88 Artist Residency, Doi Saket, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Residency dates are flexible and will depend on each artist’s proposal and the opportunities available within the wider programme.

Artists will have time and space to research, experiment and develop their work in dialogue with local environments, communities and fellow residents.

Studio 88 offers a setting that is both secluded and connected: a place for concentrated practice within reach of Chiang Mai’s artistic and cultural life.

Presentation Opportunities

Selected artists may be invited to present their work through:

  • Reviving Nature Festival 2027
  • Chiang Mai Performing Arts Festival 2027

Presentations may take the form of exhibitions, performances, workshops, installations, talks, screenings, participatory projects, public interventions, open studios or other appropriate formats.

Participation in the Chiang Mai Performing Arts Festival is subject to the festival’s independent selection and programming. Studio 88 does not determine or control its programme.

What We Are Looking For

We are especially interested in proposals that:

  • engage audiences through meaningful participation
  • approach environmental awareness through creativity and experience
  • create connections between people, places and communities
  • explore new artistic forms or collaborations
  • respond to a particular site or environment
  • connect art with ecology, science, education or local knowledge
  • open space for hope, imagination and collective action

Projects do not need to arrive fully resolved. Plearn welcomes strong starting questions, thoughtful experiments and work that can grow through the residency.

Key Dates

Open call: Now–31 October 2026
Notification: Mid-November 2026
Residency: January–March 2027
Festival presentations: February–March 2027

How to Apply

Please prepare:

  • an artist biography
  • an artist statement
  • a portfolio
  • a project proposal of no more than two pages
  • your preferred residency period
  • any technical requirements

[APPLICATION LINK COMING SOON]

Come and Plearn

Environmental change requires more than information. It also requires imagination, participation and new ways of experiencing our relationship with the living world.

Plearn invites artists from around the world to create those experiences with us.

Come play. Come learn. Come perform. Come participate.

Studio 88 Artist Residency
Doi Saket, Chiang Mai, Thailand