Performance Lighthouse

Platform for the promotion of performance art projects driven by EPFL students.

DÆNCITY, Festival Magma, Sévelin 36, Lausanne, June 2025. Photo : Mehdi Bouguerra Ezzina

The Performance Lighthouse of EPFL’s School of Engineering leads the conceptualization, organization, coordination, production, and promotion of student-driven performance art projects, developed in collaboration with external art institutions. By bringing EPFL engineering students into the creative process, it connects technical training with artistic practice and gives them hands-on experience in collaboration, experimentation, and project delivery beyond the classroom. Engineering and performance art share more than is often assumed. Both involve prototyping, testing, and iterating in real time, working with constraints, and coordinating teams around a shared outcome. Improvisation in particular mirrors the situations engineers face in practice: acting without knowing exactly how in advance, adapting to unexpected events, and making decisions in interaction with others. By engaging the body, the group, and the unforeseen, performance art gives students a space to build these capacities while questioning the boundaries between technology, creativity, and human experience. Although led by the School of Engineering (STI) and directed by Prof. S. Henein (Institute of Mechanical Engineering, STI), the Performance Lighthouse reaches students from all EPFL section, spreading an engineering creative mindset across the whole institution.

Article about the Performance Lighthouse : “EPFL builds a new lighthouse dedicated to performance art”

Dance-improvisation workshop in Nachtaktiv – Healthy Brain

29th of October 2026

DÆNCITY 2026 participant Ritika Batra and Performance Lighthouse coordinator Simona Ferrar will give a dance-improvisation workshop in Nachtaktiv-Healthy Brain in the Novartis Pavillon in Basel, on the 29th of October 2026, in order to share the experience related to the artistic residency project DÆNCITY and the SHS course IMPROGINEERING.

The registration link and detailed programme can be found here.

NACHTAKTIV is an evening event series that invites you to explore, try out and engage. Visitors can experience the Pavillon’s current exhibition free of charge and dive into cutting-edge research presented by scientists, students and start-up founders from various institutions – in an engaging and entertaining way. From fascinating research methods and innovative technologies to the astonishing complexity of our skin and brain, a whole world beyond the naked eye awaits discovery.

Grants for Artistic Projects

The Performance Lighthouse (STI) and the Culture Division (VPI) offer two types of grants to support artistic projects led by EPFL students :

  • Performance Lighthouse (STI) grants for performing arts projects led by students, either individually or in groups.
    Next deadline: December 15, 2026
  • Culture Division (VPI) grants for artistic projects led by EPFL student associations.
    Next Deadline: January 4, 2027

In both cases, the grant amount is CHF 2,000 per project.

These grants aim to foster creativity, verbal and nonverbal communication skills, critical thinking, and collective engagement, as well as to actively contribute to the richness of campus cultural life.

For more information and to access the application forms, please click here.

DÆNCITY 2026

Second edition of the artistic residency, performances, exhibitions and academic research, for EPFL students, in collaboration with Sévelin 36.

DÆNCITY 2025

Artistic residency, performances, exhibitions and academic research, for EPFL students, in collaboration with Sévelin 36.

Improgineering

Movement workshops on the campus for EPFL students and staff.

Movement improv’ for everyone on the campus!

The “Collective creation: improvised arts and engineering” course (IMPROGINEERING) is part of the Social and Human Sciences (SHS) programme at EPFL, in collaboration with the Arsenic.

About

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Education

Research in learning sciences demonstrates that engagement in performing arts practices enhances students’ learning processes, bridging the gap between theory and practice and promoting boundary crossing from academic to extracurricular realms. This integration is rooted in the involvement of the body in knowledge acquisition and production, the collective essence of creativity and the potent role of improvisation in all living actions.

  • The course IMPROGINEERING: “Collective creation: improvised arts and engineering” was developed by Prof. Simon Henein, in collaboration with performance artist Joëlle Valterio and the Arsenic (Lausanne’s Center for Contemporary Scenic Art). Since 2017, this course has been introducing students to improvisation techniques developed in the living arts (theater, music, dance, performance) and examining their possible transposition to engineering design practices.

Outreach

Academically recognizing and supporting the artistic endeavors of EPFL students enables the valorization of these initiatives within the curricula such as through the allocation of ECTS credits to semester or master’s projects. Moreover, extending the reach of these initiatives beyond academia by creating public events in partnership with external artistic institutions enhances the exchanges with the city and broader community.

Research

Academically recognizing and supporting the artistic endeavors of EPFL students enables the valorization of these initiatives within the curricula such as through the allocation of ECTS credits to semester or master’s projects. Moreover, extending the reach of these initiatives beyond academia by creating public events in partnership with external artistic institutions enhances the exchanges with the city and broader community.

Team

  • Simon Henein
    EPFL Professor in Microengineering & Head of the Performance Lighthouse
  • Simona Ferrar
    Project Manager, dancer and performance artist

Partners