Science Gallery Network
Bringing science, art, technology and design together, Science Gallery delivers unique, transdisciplinary exhibitions, events and educational programmes that engage millions of inquiring minds every year in connective, participative, and surprising ways.
The Science Gallery Network is an international collaboration of leading universities dedicated to public engagement through interdisciplinary art-science initiatives. As a Network, we seek to change the world through youth-led perspectives, igniting conversations and collaborations, and support young people to find connection, hope and agency through curiosity and creativity. We will achieve this as a global platform with a critical mass of public venues and digital spaces engaging millions of people.
Open calls
Each open call runs for 5 - 6 weeks. Ready your submission at least a few days before the deadline to ensure you have no technical difficulties and can have any queries answered in advance. The submission form closes automatically on the last day, and late submissions will not be accepted.
Most open C lls are run by individual locations in the Network (Atlanta, Bengaluru, Berlin, Dublin, London, Melbourne and Monterrey). Be sure to reach out directly to the correct location that has launched the call for any queries about their process. If the call is run by multiple locations simultaneously, a specific contact will be provided on the call page. Contact information for questions can always be found on an individual Open Call page. Review process dates are clearly published, and results are communicated shortly thereafter.
Technical difficulties with the application forms should be addressed to Submittable directly.
SENSUAL Exhibition Open Call
We are inviting project submissions for Science Gallery Melbourne's upcoming exhibition, SENSUAL. This form has 32 fields in total and will take approximately 30 minutes to an hour to complete. If you have any questions about the application process, please reach out to us via email at info@melbourne.sciencegallery.com
This open call will close on Thursday 30 April, 11:59pm (UTC, Coordinated Universal Time).
- London time: Thursday 30 April, 11:59pm
- Bengaluru time: Friday 1 May, 5:29am
- Monterrey time: Thursday 30 April, 5:59pm
- Melbourne time: Friday 1 May, 9:59am
Exhibition description and sub-themes
SENSUAL
Sweet, smoky, sour scents. Soft, slimy, sticky, and soothing sensations.
Experience seeps in through the senses.
Amidst the present onslaught of surreal visual information, tune into physicality as an antidote. We can distinguish flavours and smells. Feel temperature, texture, pressure and vibration. We know when we are in pain, off-balance, or dancing to a rhythm. Ensembles of sensory neurons are constantly channelling information to our brains for processing. This exhibition seeks to tweak the sensorial streams we are tuning into, shifting the mix to amplify palpable qualities of perception. It’s getting harder to believe what we see, so how can we build trust in what we feel?
Out of sight, out of mind, and into the body – come together and probe the rich sensory layer between our inner world and the external environment.
We are looking for participatory, experiential and experimental projects from across disciplines that explore the senses beyond sight.
Subthemes include (but are not limited to):
- Sensory modalities beyond sight (i.e. smell, taste, touch, hearing, pain, proprioception, interoception and more)
- Human and non-human perception
- Embodiment
- Lived experiences of differences in sensory perception (Blindness, d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing, anosmia, ageusia, somatosensory loss, synaesthesia)
- Collective sense-making and exploration
- Phenomenology
- Psychedelics
- Information processing
- Sensory augmentation with technology
- Biomimicry
- Pheromones
- First Nations knowledge and cultural perspectives in relation to the exhibition themes
Some considerations:
This open call invites you to propose installations and research projects that can operate in a shared-space group exhibition context in a non-traditional gallery environment, where the light and sound conditions aren’t constant. Projects selected via our open call are generally funded for up to $8000 AUD (Australian dollars), which includes all fees, materials, freight, and other project costs. Please note that this is a maximum amount, not a target amount. Unfortunately, at this stage, we are usually not able to include travel costs in this budget. These projects will be open to the public for approximately ten months attended by upwards of 30,000+ people, with a focus on 15–30-year olds. We value projects that are simple in their invitation, opening the door for complex debate and ongoing enquiry. We love projects that are iterative, interactive, contribute to genuine research and that are interdisciplinary. We love humour, provocation, speculation, and irreverent ideas that entertain people first and then educate them. The project you propose can be a new idea, in-development or evolved for another presentation or existing works that are ready to go.
About:
How do you capture humanity's relationship with food?
Food writing as a literary genre is a diverse and storied medium. Through recipes, memoirs, travelogues, journalistic pieces, fiction, and rhyme food writing explores the way that food shapes society.
As part of our current exhibition season CALORIE, we are inviting young writers aged 18 to 30, to respond to a series of writing prompts drawn from the many ways in which food influences and is influenced by human society. You are encouraged to submit a short piece— essays or poetry—that engages with the prompts and explores the aspect of food that they represent.
Shortlisted writers will be mentored by culinary anthropologist and writer Kurush Dalal to showcase their final piece at a public reading in June.
Timeline:
Call goes live: 24 April 2026
Call Closes: 24 May 2026
Writing workshop and Mentorship session: 20 June 2026
Public reading and Showcase: 27 June 2026
Participation Guidelines:
- The deadline for submissions is 11:30 PM IST on 24 May 2026
- You must be between 18 and 30 years of age to participate.
- You must be willing to travel to Bengaluru for the public showcase. Please note that we can only cover domestic travel for selected participants from within India.
- You can submit a maximum of three responses per person.
- Your submission must be in English.
- Please include the title of your work in your submission.
- Your submission can either be an Essay or in the form of Poetry.
- For Essay Submissions, Word count: 800 to 4,000 words. Choose a length that suits your story—short personal reflections, longer explorations and pieces of fiction are all welcome.
- For Poetry Submissions, Length: 10 to 60 lines. This can be one longer poem or up to three shorter poems (total not exceeding 60 lines). Style: All forms are welcome—free verse, spoken word, narrative poetry, haiku, or experimental forms.
- Entries must be submitted in .doc or .pdf file formats. The file should be named as follows: YourName_Title_IYW2026
- Text within the submission should be formatted in Calibri, size 12.
- You retain all the rights to your work. By submitting your work, you will give Science Gallery Bengaluru the permission to use and publish your submission during CALORIE, and your submission will be archived on the Science Gallery Bengaluru website.
- Your submission should not have won or placed in other competitions, or have been published in an official capacity in other magazines, exhibitions, etc.