General Information on Residencies

General Information on Residencies

What are residencies?

Artists and other creative professionals can stay and work elsewhere temporarily by participating in artist-in-residence programs and other residency opportunities. These opportunities offer conditions that are conducive to creativity and provide their guests with context, such as working facilities, connections, audience, etc.

Residency Profiles: No artist-in-residence programme is the same. Each programme or guest studio, large or small, established or experimental, has its own background and atmosphere. Working periods differ enormously: from two weeks to six months or sometimes even a year. Some specialize in one discipline, others are open to a great number of disciplines. There are also a lot of differences in financial resources, housing and studio facilities, application and selection procedures, coaching, exhibiting, networking.

Please go to this page to find out more about residencies.


Artist-in-Residence History

Artist-in-residence programmes have a history that stretches back much further than you may think. Due to its current popularity it seems that we are dealing with a new, fashionable phenomenon that owes its explosive growth to the globalization of artists' nomadic behaviour. However, artist-in-residence programmes did not appear out of the blue. Go with us backwards in artist-in-residence history.


Types of residency programmes

Many different artist-in-residence models exist. Each artist-in-residence model is subject to change, and each program is modeled by the ways in which it is offered and by the ways in which it is used. A most general division can be made between:

  • AiR's that offer space and time without any condition. You may focus on contemplation, research, creative inquiry, process, experiment without any tangible outcome.
  • AiR's that ask for a tangible outcome: an artwork, an exhibition, a project, a workshop, a collaboration, a specific assignment.

This is only a general division. There are different profiles and models, ranging from short-term, nomadic residency projects to long-term residencies connected to companies, museums, research institutes and universities. Some residencies are embedded in a social community to which the visiting artists are required to commit themselves. Others thrive exactly because of the opposite reason: offering retreat from social obligations. Different disciplines also require their own, specific way of use and offer of the residency concept.

Please go to this page to read more about the different types of residencies.