Currently 4 active audio, sound and music grants, fellowships and residencies open to applicants in the Netherlands. Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
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One residency for an artist, designer or maker working with sound, exploring spatial sound in relation to seismology, climate and discharge-related acoustics, run with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. THE PREMISE: climate change is making major landslides, ice-breakoff events from marine-terminating glaciers, and sound-producing ice movements more common. These generate infrasonic vibrations inaudible to humans that sometimes spread across the entire planet and into the atmosphere. The residency asks how immersive sound techniques can make these events tangible and build meaningful sonic narratives from them. WHAT YOU GET ACCESS TO: scientific data on seismological events, vibrations, infrasound and the movement of land and ice masses, with scientific expertise from KNMI (lead researcher Jelle Assink) and artistic guidance from the Futures of Listening team, relating local events to global impact. RESEARCH QUESTIONS to position your proposal against include how immersive sound can cultivate situated listening to ecological processes and more-than-human encounters, how artistic and scientific methods of working with environmental data can inform each other, and what is gained, lost or ethically at stake when environmental sounds are translated, interpreted or reconstructed through spatial and synthetic means. DELIVERABLE: residents are expected to create a final spatial sound production using the 4DSOUND system. Other outcomes may include immersive installations, data-driven sonic works, audiovisual pieces, software prototypes or reusable methodologies. Experience in art-science environments is welcome but not required; you may instead explain why working in one would benefit your practice. HARD ELIGIBILITY GATE: applicants must be based in the Netherlands AND registered as an artist with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK). This is not negotiable and rules out non-NL applicants. Futures of Listening is a Netherlands-based platform for spatial sound, immersive experience, performance and installation art, founded by FIBER Festival, 4DSOUND, Robin Koek and Art of Sound at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, supported by CIIIC and Stimuleringsfonds.
One residency for an individual practitioner, a duo or a studio working at the intersection of sound and space, exploring architecture through spatial audio. THE PREMISE: architecture is traditionally conceived through form, structure, material and light, with sound treated as something to be controlled or optimised afterwards. This residency asks what happens if architecture begins with sound, shifting the question from how a space should sound to how sound can generate space. Spatial audio, virtual acoustics and immersive media now allow prototyping of responsive environments, impossible architectures and sonic spaces beyond physical constraints. RESEARCH QUESTIONS include how sound can become a first principle in architectural and spatial design, how the acoustic properties of space inform the creation and perception of spatial sound, and how artistic research can shape the future tools, interfaces and methods of spatial sound creation. NOT JUST ARTWORKS: they explicitly say they want new methods, insights and creative infrastructures too. Outcomes may include installations, spatial audio compositions, performances, audiovisual works, software prototypes, reusable methodologies or modular interfaces. Residents may collaborate with a 4DSOUND software developer to prototype new tools, and practitioners who already build their own software, hardware or creative technologies are encouraged to advance those as part of the residency. WHO: architects are the named invitees, with scenographers, spatial designers, installation artists, sound artists, composers and creative technologists also encouraged. Creative coding experience is welcome but not required. Lead researcher is Poul Holleman, co-founder and director of 4DSOUND. HARD ELIGIBILITY GATE: applicants must be based in the Netherlands AND registered as an artist with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK). This is not negotiable and rules out non-NL applicants. Futures of Listening is a Netherlands-based platform for spatial sound, immersive experience, performance and installation art, founded by FIBER Festival, 4DSOUND, Robin Koek and Art of Sound at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, supported by CIIIC and Stimuleringsfonds.
One residency to research and develop an interactive listening experience built on non-linear sound narratives, experienced by navigating through a series of virtual spaces or layers. NO VISUALS: Worlding Narratives centres sound as the primary medium for immersion and intentionally removes dominant visual layers such as VR, AR, projection or video. THE DESIGN PROBLEM they want tackled is translation and adaptation, specifically the shift from one visitor in a headphone-mediated experience to rendering for a multi-speaker system for group interaction. That change in dynamics, reproduction and perspective is integral to the residency scope. RESEARCH QUESTIONS include how immersive sound can function as a primary narrative medium across speculative and non-fictional realities, what new narrative structures and dramaturgical methods become possible when the creative process originates from sound rather than adapting frameworks from other media, and how interactive sonic structures can create navigable listening experiences designed for and by multiple intelligences. Outcomes may include interactive sonic prototypes, spatial audio compositions, immersive listening experiences, narrative sound works or software prototypes. WORTH NOTING: your residency runs in tandem with resident Pinar Temiz, an expert in sound design for gaming environments, with the opportunity to work together. Lead researcher is Dr Angela McArthur of UCL, with research support from Dr meLe yamomo of the University of Amsterdam. WHO: media and sound artists, sound designers, musicians producing their own sonic work, field recordists, writers, composers and game sound designers. Experience with interactive audio, spatial sound tools or game-sound workflows is welcome but not required. HARD ELIGIBILITY GATE: applicants must be based in the Netherlands AND registered as an artist with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK). This is not negotiable and rules out non-NL applicants. Futures of Listening is a Netherlands-based platform for spatial sound, immersive experience, performance and installation art, founded by FIBER Festival, 4DSOUND, Robin Koek and Art of Sound at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, supported by CIIIC and Stimuleringsfonds.
The NORMA Fonds redistributes copyright remuneration collected by Stichting NORMA into cultural, social and professional projects involving performing artists, and is one of the few Dutch schemes with four intakes a year and a genuinely short cycle. Both arts-sector organisations and individual arts professionals may apply, though the applicant needs a bank account and legal footing and cannot be a BIS-funded institution. The project must centre on performing artists in the copyright sense, meaning people who perform a copyright-protected work: musicians, dancers, actors, voice actors. This fits live experimental music, sound performance and performative media-art work, but not object-based exhibitions or non-performative installation programmes. The maximum grant is EUR 10,000, the total project budget must stay under EUR 150,000, the applicant's annual budget under EUR 500,000, and at least a quarter of the project budget must be earned from audience income, so this is a top-up rather than a primary funding source. Budgets must honour NORMA's 2026 performer wage norms. Applications are submitted online during a one-month window each quarter; the next round runs 1 to 30 October 2026, closing at 23:59. TIMING RULE: decisions arrive no later than eight weeks after the deadline, and the premiere date must fall at least eight weeks after the application deadline. Organisations that already received a NORMA Fonds grant in 2024 or 2025 are excluded, and supporting staff may not exceed 2 FTE.