Open doors. Open minds.

To mark the 70th anniversary of the city partnership between Stuttgart and Cardiff, students from the Merz Akademie and the University of South Wales have realized a joint project in cooperation with ComicJuju e.V.. The focus: the universal experience of arriving and being welcomed.

In October 2025, the Stuttgart students traveled to Cardiff to explore the Welsh twin city. In workshops and encounters with fellow Welsh students, they collected stories between medieval architecture and the contemporary cultural scene. In doing so, they not only took on the role of the guests, but also became a mirror in which the hosts were able to see their familiar surroundings in a new light.

These experiences gave rise to individual comics - from Stuttgart and from Cardiff. The works combine personal encounters with social questions: What does it mean to arrive? How do we open doors? The students' comics will also be collected and published in this year's riso-printed ComicJuju Zine.

The Cardiff delegation will travel to Stuttgart for the vernissage - 70 years after the town twinning was founded as a peace project to break down prejudices through personal encounters and transform political abstraction into human reality. The exhibition vernissage is part of the program of the Stuttgart Comic Days, which will take place from 9-15 March 2026.