The Festival of Vorgartens transforms private front gardens into stages for encounters and creative exchange. Residents and artists work together to create temporary artworks and performances that connect contemporary art with everyday culture.
The interaction between professional art and local traditions creates space for spontaneous dialogue and unexpected perspectives. This special form of collaboration is possible because homeowners open their front gardens and audiences turn neighbourhood streets into lively viewing spaces.
Thurgau offers an ideal setting for the Festival of Vorgartens, as it has the highest number of single-family houses in Switzerland. Front gardens are part of everyday life and offer a unique opportunity to rethink the boundary between private and public space in a playful way. At the same time, the region reflects the spirit of the festival through its lively neighbourhoods and openness to new ideas.
Each weekend, six artists arrive, explore the neighbourhood and develop performances together with residents. The festival understands itself as a site-specific jam session, where art and everyday life meet through improvisation. The invited artists bring their experience in dance, performance, music or literature into a special social context. The front gardens become the stage, the neighbourhood becomes the space of resonance, and the weekend provides a focused timeframe for artistic exchange.
The formats are designed to be accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. Audiences meet at the festival centre and are guided through the neighbourhood by a local host. Each neighbourhood features a primetime performance on Saturday evening and a matinee on Sunday at midday. Whether as audience members, participants or hosts — the Festival of Vorgartens offers space for everyone.
The festival relies on local resources. Materials come from the neighbourhoods and return there after the performances. Public transport is recommended, as parking spaces are very limited. Through these measures, the Festival of Vorgartens is designed to be both environmentally and socially sustainable.
The Festival of Vorgartens offers a new approach to contemporary art and enables encounters that are rare in everyday life. Front gardens, as symbolic spaces between private and public life, become places of creativity, cooperation and shared experience.
The Festival of Vorgartens was initiated by San Keller as part of the «Ratartouille» project competition of the Thurgau Cultural Foundation. For the first edition in 2025, an interdisciplinary team came together to further develop and realise the format.
Curating and organisation were led by San Keller and Anna von Siebenthal.
Design and scenography were by Kathi Rüll. Sonja Berta accompanied the festival through social media and video documentation, while Leon Faust provided photographic documentation and an architectural perspective on the neighbourhoods. From 2026 onwards, the new research format Vorgarten Dominio is curated by Wassili Widmer.
The project is supported by the Thurgau Cultural Foundation and further partners and funding bodies.
Above all, the festival lives through the residents. Their openness, hospitality and willingness to share their front gardens turn each place into a unique stage.
Through this trust, encounters emerge between art, neighbourhood and everyday life — with an impact that lasts far beyond the individual performances.
The Festival of Vorgartens understands itself as a site-specific jam session, where art and everyday life meet through improvisation. The invited artists bring their individual tools — whether dance, performance, music or literary experience — and let them “sound” within this unique social context. The temporal and spatial framework is clearly defined: the front gardens provide the stage, the neighbourhood becomes the space of resonance, and the weekend offers a focused timeframe for artistic encounter.
As in a jam session, the exact form remains open until the very end. Residents are informed about the festival already in January, but what will actually happen in “their” neighbourhood only becomes clear on site. In the few days before the performances, artists meet the residents and jointly develop spontaneous, site-specific formats that reflect the character of the neighbourhood in a playful way.
This process-based approach reflects the unpredictability and dynamics of life itself — similar to the weather, which also cannot be fully predicted, yet strongly influences the mood and atmosphere of the festival. The resulting performances are therefore not only artworks, but also momentary snapshots of a collective dialogue, making the social and cultural context of the neighbourhood visible and audible.
In this way, the festival creates space for creative experimentation and for exchange between professional artists and non-professionals. This collaboration leads to a unique “sound” of the neighbourhood, brought to life through the encounter of private and public spaces, of art and everyday life.
The Festival of Vorgartens brings professional artists into dialogue with a space that already carries a strong individual signature: the front garden. Traditionally designed as a representative space facing the street, the front garden expresses personal identity and social position. Here, households present themselves at their best — through neatly trimmed hedges, seasonal decorations or architectural details. In Thurgau, a region historically shaped by rural life, the front garden developed from the functional farm garden, which once served both representation and nourishment. Today, it stands as a symbol of individualisation — a subtle stage for the self-presentation of the nuclear family.
Within this performative design space, the individual authorship of the residents — often caring, sometimes idiosyncratic — meets the artistic authorship of the invited artists.
They bring not only professional expertise, but also their own identity and, not least, a certain artistic self-confidence. The encounter between private identity and artistic self-assertion opens up a field of tension marked by quiet irony. While the front garden aims to express authenticity and individuality, artistic interventions reflect this staging — sometimes appreciatively, sometimes playfully, sometimes critically.
The front garden thus becomes a place of dialogue and resonance. What happens when two forms of self-expression — the artistic and the everyday — meet? How does a front garden “sound” when shaped both by plants, seasonal details and architectural decisions, and by the aesthetic language of professional artists? These questions make the festival such a special experience. It highlights the social and cultural dynamics of this everyday space and gently questions ideas of individuality and public visibility.
The front garden becomes not only a stage, but also a mirror — for artists, residents and audiences alike.
The Festival of Vorgartens sees itself as a method for fostering dialogue between art, space, community and resources. The Thurgau edition is conceived as a pilot project: an experiment that is jointly tested, reflected upon and carefully documented, in order to create a transferable foundation for future editions. A central question is how front gardens can be transformed into high-quality art spaces with limited means. What appears small and accessible at first glance requires a conscious and sustainable use of financial, social and spatial resources. The goal is a format that remains artistically ambitious while also being realistically achievable.
Observation and documentation play a key role. Sonja Berta and Leon Faust document performances, encounters and spatial situations, making processes visible that extend beyond the moment.
The new format Vorgarten Dominio expands the concept outward. It refers to a domino effect: monthly performances in changing neighbourhoods allow the project to move further and feed new impulses back into the research. In 2026, the team will deepen this exploration through visits to comparable projects across Europe. At the same time, we are in exchange with the SNF research project Biennialisation of the Landscape or Culturally Driven Regional Development?, connecting artistic practice with academic perspectives.
From these experiences, a flexible “guide” will emerge — clearly structured, yet open enough to adapt to different social, spatial and financial contexts. In this way, the Festival of Vorgartens becomes a model that can be shared, adapted and independently continued: an invitation to rethink art and community in everyday life.
The Festival of Vorgartens transforms private front gardens into stages for encounters and creative exchange. Residents and artists work together to create temporary artworks and performances that connect contemporary art with everyday culture.
The interaction between professional art and local traditions creates space for spontaneous dialogue and unexpected perspectives. This special form of collaboration is possible because homeowners open their front gardens and audiences turn neighbourhood streets into lively viewing spaces.
Thurgau offers an ideal setting for the Festival of Vorgartens, as it has the highest number of single-family houses in Switzerland. Front gardens are part of everyday life and offer a unique opportunity to rethink the boundary between private and public space in a playful way. At the same time, the region reflects the spirit of the festival through its lively neighbourhoods and openness to new ideas.
Each weekend, six artists arrive, explore the neighbourhood and develop performances together with residents. The festival understands itself as a site-specific jam session, where art and everyday life meet through improvisation. The invited artists bring their experience in dance, performance, music or literature into a special social context. The front gardens become the stage, the neighbourhood becomes the space of resonance, and the weekend provides a focused timeframe for artistic exchange.
The formats are designed to be accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. Audiences meet at the festival centre and are guided through the neighbourhood by a local host. Each neighbourhood features a primetime performance on Saturday evening and a matinee on Sunday at midday. Whether as audience members, participants or hosts — the Festival of Vorgartens offers space for everyone.
The festival relies on local resources. Materials come from the neighbourhoods and return there after the performances. Public transport is recommended, as parking spaces are very limited. Through these measures, the Festival of Vorgartens is designed to be both environmentally and socially sustainable.
The Festival of Vorgartens offers a new approach to contemporary art and enables encounters that are rare in everyday life. Front gardens, as symbolic spaces between private and public life, become places of creativity, cooperation and shared experience.
The Festival of Vorgartens was initiated by San Keller as part of the «Ratartouille» project competition of the Thurgau Cultural Foundation. For the first edition in 2025, an interdisciplinary team came together to further develop and realise the format.
Curating and organisation were led by San Keller and Anna von Siebenthal. Design and scenography were by Kathi Rüll. Sonja Berta accompanied the festival through social media and video documentation, while Leon Faust provided photographic documentation and an architectural perspective on the neighbourhoods. From 2026 onwards, the new research format Vorgarten Dominio is curated by Wassili Widmer.
The project is supported by the Thurgau Cultural Foundation and further partners and funding bodies.
Above all, the festival lives through the residents. Their openness, hospitality and willingness to share their front gardens turn each place into a unique stage.
Through this trust, encounters emerge between art, neighbourhood and everyday life — with an impact that lasts far beyond the individual performances.
The Festival of Vorgartens understands itself as a site-specific jam session, where art and everyday life meet through improvisation. The invited artists bring their individual tools — whether dance, performance, music or literary experience — and let them “sound” within this unique social context. The temporal and spatial framework is clearly defined: the front gardens provide the stage, the neighbourhood becomes the space of resonance, and the weekend offers a focused timeframe for artistic encounter.
As in a jam session, the exact form remains open until the very end. Residents are informed about the festival already in January, but what will actually happen in “their” neighbourhood only becomes clear on site. In the few days before the performances, artists meet the residents and jointly develop spontaneous, site-specific formats that reflect the character of the neighbourhood in a playful way.
This process-based approach reflects the unpredictability and dynamics of life itself — similar to the weather, which also cannot be fully predicted, yet strongly influences the mood and atmosphere of the festival. The resulting performances are therefore not only artworks, but also momentary snapshots of a collective dialogue, making the social and cultural context of the neighbourhood visible and audible.
In this way, the festival creates space for creative experimentation and for exchange between professional artists and non-professionals. This collaboration leads to a unique “sound” of the neighbourhood, brought to life through the encounter of private and public spaces, of art and everyday life.
The Festival of Vorgartens brings professional artists into dialogue with a space that already carries a strong individual signature: the front garden. Traditionally designed as a representative space facing the street, the front garden expresses personal identity and social position. Here, households present themselves at their best — through neatly trimmed hedges, seasonal decorations or architectural details. In Thurgau, a region historically shaped by rural life, the front garden developed from the functional farm garden, which once served both representation and nourishment. Today, it stands as a symbol of individualisation — a subtle stage for the self-presentation of the nuclear family.
Within this performative design space, the individual authorship of the residents — often caring, sometimes idiosyncratic — meets the artistic authorship of the invited artists.
They bring not only professional expertise, but also their own identity and, not least, a certain artistic self-confidence. The encounter between private identity and artistic self-assertion opens up a field of tension marked by quiet irony. While the front garden aims to express authenticity and individuality, artistic interventions reflect this staging — sometimes appreciatively, sometimes playfully, sometimes critically.
The front garden thus becomes a place of dialogue and resonance. What happens when two forms of self-expression — the artistic and the everyday — meet? How does a front garden “sound” when shaped both by plants, seasonal details and architectural decisions, and by the aesthetic language of professional artists? These questions make the festival such a special experience. It highlights the social and cultural dynamics of this everyday space and gently questions ideas of individuality and public visibility.
The front garden becomes not only a stage, but also a mirror — for artists, residents and audiences alike.
The Festival of Vorgartens sees itself as a method for fostering dialogue between art, space, community and resources. The Thurgau edition is conceived as a pilot project: an experiment that is jointly tested, reflected upon and carefully documented, in order to create a transferable foundation for future editions. A central question is how front gardens can be transformed into high-quality art spaces with limited means. What appears small and accessible at first glance requires a conscious and sustainable use of financial, social and spatial resources. The goal is a format that remains artistically ambitious while also being realistically achievable.
Observation and documentation play a key role. Sonja Berta and Leon Faust document performances, encounters and spatial situations, making processes visible that extend beyond the moment.
The new format Vorgarten Dominio expands the concept outward. It refers to a domino effect: monthly performances in changing neighbourhoods allow the project to move further and feed new impulses back into the research. In 2026, the team will deepen this exploration through visits to comparable projects across Europe. At the same time, we are in exchange with the SNF research project Biennialisation of the Landscape or Culturally Driven Regional Development?, connecting artistic practice with academic perspectives.
From these experiences, a flexible “guide” will emerge — clearly structured, yet open enough to adapt to different social, spatial and financial contexts. In this way, the Festival of Vorgartens becomes a model that can be shared, adapted and independently continued: an invitation to rethink art and community in everyday life.