Working with local artists
Paradigm is shaped by the creative hands of our city. From stage design to visual art, local makers bring their craft to every corner of the festival, turning the grounds into a living canvas. By working with artists from our own community, we keep Paradigm rooted in the place and people that make it ours.
Pole Escape, founded by Isabelle, Milou, and Els, is a newly established pole dance studio in Groningen, opening this September. What began as a friendship has grown into a community.
Today, they want to share what pole dance means to them: a way to express themselves, challenge and celebrate their bodies and their capabilities, and build a supportive community. Whether you want to sit back and enjoy the performance or cheer them on, they invite you to experience it in whatever way feels right.
Dani Akollo, also known as ZUKO, is a movement artist specializing in American street and club dance styles. He studied Hip Hop dance in Utrecht and spent three years as an online K-pop trainee. When he discovered whacking and punking, he recognized himself for the first time in the people practicing these styles—an encounter that brought him closer to his true identity.
His work emerges from an ongoing exploration of his identity as a multi-ethnic, queer person. Dani believes that movement, music, and culture help us better understand ourselves and connect more deeply with who we are.
His latest work, The S.O.L – Searcher of Light, explored the concept of "lost twin syndrome," inspired by his own life.
Dani regularly performs at queer festivals, including Pride events, and has appeared at Project Dans. He has performed on stages both in the Netherlands and internationally.
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Mural artist with a passion for working with brush and paintbrush.
Lieke van Schaijk is the artist behind Studio Krimmels. Through illustration and sculpture, she gives form to personal fascinations, experiences, and everyday rituals. Her work is playful, colourful, and sometimes delightfully absurd—from a giant blue lighter to a life-sized cow with wings and a unicorn.
A graduate of Minerva Academy, Lieke enjoys experimenting with a wide range of materials and techniques. Driven by curiosity and the joy of making, she creates work that doesn't aim to deliver a grand message, but instead invites wonder, humour, and a smile.
The Langeweg Soundboys are two DJs from Oldambt with a fascination for pirate radio culture, adding their own anarchic and tropical twist to everything they do. Both born on Langeweg in Scheemda, their shared love of exotic, rhythmic, and out-of-the-box music brought them together.
Inspired by the spirit of the old pirate radio DJs, they proudly embrace their role as underground selectors with unmistakable Groningen pride. Whether performing as an eccentric duo or as part of a lively party collective, they are a familiar presence in the Groningen scene. They built and hosted the Secret Stage at Paradigm Festival in 2024 and 2025, appeared at Vogelpop 2023, and have organized numerous daytime raves during New Year's celebrations in the city.
Always with a record to play and a story to tell.
Between sunlight and moonlight, NACHTSCHADE invites you to settle in, listen, and be carried away by the words of Jaimy Hindriks, Eva Broekmann, and Sjoukje Kamphorst.
Jaimy performs stand-up poetry that is absurd, awkward, and deeply human. Her work is an ode to the wonderfully peculiar nature of people, using humor to reveal just how strange—and relatable—life can be.
Eva takes you on a journey through vivid, humorous, and comforting poetry. Whether traveling far or simply around the block, her words explore the space between confusion and recognition, revealing a quiet sense of balance.
In her poetry, Sjoukje explores the intersections of intimacy, sex, and capitalism, examining how tenderness and cruelty are intimately intertwined.
Three poets, three distinct worlds, one place to let the day slowly dissolve into the night.
Jelmer Bijleveld is a spatial designer with a passion for designing, building, and making. He primarily works with wood and recycled materials, creating furniture, structures, sculptures, and set designs. He enjoys finding creative solutions, collaborating with others, and is energized by creating new experiences that people can engage with.
Francis is a 21-year-old artist from Groningen and is currently studying Fine Art at Minerva Academy.
Experience a natural high, make new friends, and lose yourself in music and movement during this silent disco experience filled with mindfulness and energy.
As an organic house producer, multi instrumentalist and composer for different formations H.A.R.A.L.D transforms electronic beats into a living breathing entity. From the enchanting notes played on his ceremonial hurdy gurdy through the pumping beats he produces with both analog and digital archetypes. With his raw energy, soulful vocals and shaky bass lines he transforms the dance floor into sacred ground. Ready to bring the audience a collective and vibrant experience resonating to the universal being in a very sexy way. Playing music since the age of eight, experimenting music styles and cultures. Undeniably defying his signature sound. Since 2022 H.A.R.A.L.D traveled across Europe playing his live sets. Trying to conduct and translate energy into dance music. Through passion, craftsmanship, technology and love he opens up a realm that was not sensible before.
Madame & Madame is a female-driven techno and live art performance duo by Brechtje Hoedt and Jolijn Hedemann. Combining immersive techno sets with real time abstract painting, they create a unique sensory experience where sound and visual art merge. Each performance unfolds as an electronic journey accompanied by a live artwork that evolves with the music, transforming rhythm and emotion into abstract forms on canvas.
Pyrolight is a Groningen-based collective of fire dancers. Different forms of fire flow and pyrotechnics come together in dance and spectacle. Pyrolight will light up your night.
His colourful murals can be found everywhere from New York and Berlin to Colombia, with Japan soon to join the list. Closer to home, his work is visible throughout his hometown of Groningen. Michel Velt is widely regarded as one of Groningen's most successful street artists.
My name is Jurjen Galema. I am an artist who creates soft sculptures—textile sculptures often filled with fiberfill and sometimes supported by a skeleton made from PVC pipes. I build worlds inhabited by extraordinary characters with intriguing stories and interactive elements. Themes such as gender, identity, kitsch, popular culture, and obsession are central to my practice, each explored and interpreted in my own distinctive way.
At first glance, my sculptures appear playful and inviting: they are colourful, encourage touch, and are often presented in light-hearted settings, such as nightlife environments. Yet the narratives they depict are not always so light. Themes including addiction, the human body, and sexuality frequently emerge in my work. This contrast encourages viewers to reconsider the act of touching, creating a push-and-pull dynamic within the experience of the work. I discovered that the inherent softness and tenderness of textile objects create a compelling contrast with more mature subject matter.
Beyond my artistic practice, I am also active in the nightlife scene as the drag queen Lola Lasagna. I organise shows, host bingo nights, and perform at a wide range of events. These two worlds often come together in my work: I bring Lola into art galleries, and I bring my art into nightclubs.
Nina Iggy – Artistic Director & Performer
Jos Jacob – Spatial Designer & Performer
Rina Hellinga – Business Director
Wilde Kade is a nomadic platform for performance art that moves between solid ground and open water. From the fringes of urban and natural landscapes, we create temporary worlds where audiences, places, and artists come together.
We work from what each location carries within it: stories, materials, rhythms, and traces of life. By listening closely to what is already present, we create performances and installations that become interwoven with their surroundings.
Our work revolves around themes of impermanence, memory, and transformation. We create experiences that invite people to slow down, wander, and be fully present—not as spectators on the sidelines, but as active participants in what unfolds.
Alter à Go is a Groningen-based performance team. With 15 very close yet highly distinct perfomers, we embody diversity and celebrate uniqueness, with the goal to make everyone in our audience feel worthy. At the same we create an atmosphere of unity, openness and fun! We cover many creative genres, such as dancing, installations, costume design, and performance workshops. The intention is always to stimulate our audience in a positive way.
Ellemieke Meijers is an artist, writer, and manager of a nine-member group of specialists. In the hope of obtaining answers to existential questions, she has formed a team of the very best experts she could find. This team shares a collective goal: to provide humanity with help, answers, and wisdom. The group includes, among others, Marjam Bakker de Vries (Christian horse therapist), Master Struik (holy draft stopper and meditation guru), Dominik Chan (Hole Fixer), de Buurman (unemployed), and Kring Gloed (fortune teller). Operating as an intermediary, Ellemieke represents both the business and creative interests of these specialists. She oversees the design and distribution of their beliefs via the magazine vraag & aandagt, recruits clients for the Horse Therapy and/or the hole fixings, and performs on their behalf with highly serious PowerPoint presentations.
Frisian light artist and maker Karsjen Tamminga studied for a Master's degree in Agrotechnology at Wageningen University. In the student house where he lived, he created light installations for parties that stole the show. While working as a data analyst, he remained fascinated by the intersection of technology and creativity. Today, he channels that fascination into kinetic light artworks.
My name is Neo Fongers. I don't have an artist name — just call me Neo! I love sewing and drawing, and I'm good at thinking creatively. So if there's a problem to solve or something that needs to be made, I'll always come up with an idea.
Mirthe van Wermeskerken is an illustrator and visual artist. Through drawing, screen printing, and ceramics, she creates a gateway to a world where the mystical and the everyday converge. Her bold, high-contrast illustrations reveal a search for the surreal within ordinary life. The characters and symbols in her work tell stories that seem to form a new kind of folklore, with the relationship between people and nature playing a central role.
Alongside her practice as an illustrator and visual artist, she leads screen-printing workshops, coordinates art projects for young residents of the Ter Apel asylum seekers' centre (AZC), creates hand-poked tattoos, and is a co-founder of CLUB SOBER.
During Paradigm Festival, she will host a screen-printing pop-up where visitors can choose a second-hand garment and have it printed with an exclusive design created especially for the festival's 15th anniversary.