In addition to regular discussions, workshops and studio visits, a Cheers for Fears festival or academy has been held annually since 2014 with changing partners such as Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, Theater Oberhausen, FFT Düsseldorf, IMPULSE Festival or TanzFaktur Köln. The focus of the festivals lies on the presentation and feedback of artistic works – in addition, we explore a pressing question in workshops with invited guests and in discussion formats. In 2014, for example, we asked what experimental free spaces exist at universities beyond the curricula; the following year, we were concerned with the role of music in works of the performing and visual arts; in 2016, we wanted to know what forms of performance play a role in theater training at NRW art academies; at the 2017 Cheers Festival, we were interested in the status and understanding of political “art between reflection and action”; and in 2018, under the motto “Organize yourselves! Working (together) in the Arts” we devoted ourselves to questions of collective creation. In 2019, as part of the Impulse Theater Festival, we invited young artists* and theater makers to explore the fine line between empowerment and self-optimization in theater and the arts. 2020 we invited to the Academy for Theater and Digitalization at Theater Dortmund under the title “Staging Complexity. A Lab on Culture and Theater in the Digital Age” to the Academy for Theater and Digitization at Theater Dortmund. In 2022 students, professors, young artists and their audience met in the frame of the Cheers for Fears Festival at tanzhaus nrw. Under the motto of interdisciplinary exchange and teaching in the arts met installative, cinematic, scenic, dance as well as musical formats came together. In addition, the Panel discussion “Together for the Theater of Tomorrow – Training in the Performing Arts” was held.