The Ahlers Pro Arte Foundation's event activities began at the same time as the first exhibition. On May 11, 2005, the author, artist and musician Thomas Kapielski read to an audience from Dieter Roth's work "Da drinnen vor dem Auge"at the exhibition "Dieter Roth: Bücher". Since then, the foundation has held numerous evening events. After the foundation moved to Herford, two lecture events in December 2016 marked the start of our activities at the new location. As in the case of the exhibitions, the aim from the outset was to offer a programme that was as diverse as possible in terms of themes and format.

In addition to readings, there were lectures, panel discussions, and also song and piano evenings. The content ranged from a lecture by Henryk M. Broder on the socio-political situation in Germany (2007) to readings by Fritz J. Raddatz from his diaries (2011) and his biography of Heinrich Heine (2012), from lectures on the art historian Erwin Panofsky (2011) or Gabriele Münter's path to color (2015) to musical performances such as Franz Schubert's "Winterreise" (2012). Of particular importance with regard to the place and its tradition were the lectures by Werner Schmalenbach (2007) and Wieland Schmied (2008) about their time as director of the Kestnergesellschaft.

Since 2017, we have been focusing on the questions that are also addressed in the exhibitions in semi-annual events. For example, in autumn 2017 the focus was on portraits in the 20th century, a year later on images of women in art and in autumn 2019 on reading in art. Other topics included art and fashion (2021), nature and art (spring 2022), constructivism in the 1920s (fall 2022), the history of tourism as reflected in art (spring 2023) and women in art around 1900 (autumn 2023).