At the end of October 2025, MICA professors Sandra Maxa, Mark Sanders, Kristian Bjornard, and Hayelin Choi visited the Faculty of Design to share their expertise with Hamburg students. They kicked off their visit by presenting their work to a larger audience during a panel discussion at Forum Finkenau. They then spent three days working with students of the three Hamburg faculty members, contributing to the concept of “Internationalization at Home” at the Faculty of Design. The Hamburg students loved the workshops, and the results were also presented in a small poster and video exhibition. Katharina Duve, who was involved in this collaboration for the first time, said at the end of the week: 'A collaboration with a US partner university is not only artistically interesting and inspiring, but also very informative and important for social interaction in these times.'
The current ISAP grant runs for two years until the end of September 2026 and will enable further faculty visits to Hamburg and the USA in 2026. An application for a two-year extension of the funding was submitted in mid-October 2025. Sven Vogel, who heads the ISAP project, says of the plans for the coming years: 'The long-term goal is to intensify and consolidate the exchange between MICA and HAW Hamburg, thereby internationalizing and expanding the range of courses offered by both universities.'
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Text & images: Ingrid Weatherall
The workshops were co-funded through Faculty of Design and "HAW goes USA" budgets as well as with MICA Faculty travel grants.
Baltimore Workshops Video:
Sven Vogel, Brand design: packaging design for a coffee brand that reflects the feeling of social togetherness.
Katharina Duve, Time-based media: “Photo Film” to depict the theme “Togetherness in Baltimore's neighbourhoods".
Stefan Stefanescu, Editorial design: Video collages from photos and sound on the theme of “here’s to you.”
Hamburg-Workshops:
Sandra Maxa, Mark Sanders: “Invisible Brands”, Typography and design as a visual identity using the cities described in “Invisible Cities” (Italo Calvino, 1972) as a starting point.
Hayelin Choi: “Telling our stories through each other”, Interviews in the form of short photo films.
Kristian Bjornard: Narratives with a reinterpretation of decontextualized images and a Norwegian folk tale.
