I am part of the panel for Terrestrial’s 2020 remote residencies, a paid opportunity for community artists across England to develop their local connections and explore new ways of working.
Terrestrial produces arts projects, community events and adventures. Over the last two years they have invited a series of inspiring artists to spend time in Weston-super-Mare, where they have collaborated with on-the-ground community groups. They have supported a dance project made by people with experience of addiction, created portrait films and choral songs with isolated older people, devised a spy adventure with 500 ten- year-olds, and brought together sea swimmers, litter-pickers and local historians to make a documentary about a mythical sea serpent.
In these challenging times, we are all discovering how to make connections in new ways. So rather than gathering people to us (as we had originally planned to spend this summer doing), Terrestrial want to invest in artists to explore community links with people and groups wherever they are based. This is what we mean by ‘remote residencies’ – artists taking time to think about how they might foster creative relationships in their own local communities.
This might mean artists building on connections they already have, or making new ones. They might connect with formal organisations (local charities, schools, community centres) or informal groups (street whatsapp groups, mutual aid networks, local parks) within the current social distance guidelines.
Through these residencies we will encourage artists to take some time for research and reflection... to think about the work they’ve done in the past and how they might continue to foster relationships and share artistic experiences with community groups – especially those that can’t easily access online networks.
Our panel will select 20 artists that offer an inclusive picture of community activity across England. Following an initial introduction chat with the Terrestrial team, we will invite each of these artists to take part in a short one-to-one conversation about their work. We’ll try to make this an informal, no-arts-speak chat about what you do and how you’ve collaborated with community groups in the past. We will pay each selected artist £150 as a contribution to their time and commit to covering the costs of anything that is needed to make this process accessible to you.
With your permission, we will record these conversations, and host them on our website as a public resource. We want to amplify the voices of community artists, as we believe that your skills are now more important than ever – as we all try to find new ways of coming together. We will invite producers, venues, festivals, funders etc. to explore and share these conversations; we hope this is a way to introduce the selected artists to new opportunities.
We will invite 8-10 of the shortlisted artists to join us for a ‘remote residency’. We will run these over two weeks, with 4-5 artists taking part each time.
Proposed dates: 25-29 August & 15-19 September
This residency invites you to stay just where you are. We hope to give you time to foster connections with your local environment: speak to neighbours, reach out to people on the phone, online, in the street... and share your thoughts and findings with the other artists taking part around the country. We don’t expect anyone to create work during their residency – it’s time to reflect, share and play.
As things evolve over the coming weeks, some artists may feel they can safely explore their local connections in person; but we know this won’t be possible for everyone, so we have no expectation of this.
You can work to your own timings – that may mean you split your residency time over a longer period to fit around other commitments. But throughout the outlined residency weeks we will host a series of digital gatherings, discussions and mini-workshops for residency artists to share experiences and ideas as a group.
We will pay each artist £700 as a contribution to your time during the week, as well as a short informal debrief session a little time after. We will do our very best to provide and/or pay for anything you need in order to take part in this residency (this includes any access needs and childcare costs).
We’ll ask you to document your explorations in whatever light-touch way suits your practice – a journal or audio diary, some photographs etc.
We hope that we can follow these residencies with some small commissions for artists to explore a project building on their local connections. We want to be transparent about this ambition, though we don’t yet know exactly how this might work. Any ideas you have
or partnerships you forge during the residency process remain yours to carry forward in any way you wish.
