A Studio in the Woods is now accepting applications for Adaptations: Living with Change Residencies. Residencies are 6 weeks, will take place between September 2019 and May 2020, and include a $2500 stipend and $2000 materials budget. The call is open to artists of all disciplines who have demonstrated an established dialogue with environmental and culturally related issues and a commitment to seeking and plumbing new depths. We ask artists to describe in detail how the region will affect their work, to propose a public component to their residency and to suggest ways in which they will engage with the local community.

New Orleans and the region are frequently invoked as one of the areas most vulnerable to the effects of environmental change. Our highly manipulated landscape can be seen as a microcosm of the global environment, manifesting both the challenges and possibilities inherent in the ways humans interact with urban and natural ecosystems. With nearly half of the world’s population living within 40 miles of a coastline with rising seas, the concerns of Southern Louisiana resonate globally. Adaptations Residencies invite artists to examine how climate driven adaptations – large and small, historic and contemporary, cultural and scientific – shape our future. Adaptations Residencies will provide artists with time, space, scholarship and staff support to foster critical thinking and creation of new works.

Proposals are due by April 22nd and residencies will be awarded by June 14th, 2019. Direct questions to Cammie Hill-Prewitt at info@astudiointhewoods.org.

To apply please visit http://www.astudiointhewoods.org/apply-for-adaptations-living-with-change/

Joya: arte + ecología / AiR is an “off-grid” interdisciplinary residency rooted in the crossroads of art, ecology and sustainable living practice. It is located in the heart of the Parque Natural Sierra María – Los Vélez, in the north of the province of Almería, Andalucía. Joya: AiR offers abundant time and space for residents to make, think, explore and learn from their surroundings.

Joya: AiR supports a range of disciplines including, but not limited to, visual art, writing, music, dance, curatorial and film. Founded by Simon and Donna Beckmann in 2009, the Joya: arte + ecología / AiR programme is grounded in the foundation that dynamic and sustainable creative activity is the backbone to regenerating the land that has been slowly abandoned over the last fifty years. 

Since 2009, Joya: AiR has welcomed over 650 artists and creatives to realise their projects within one of the most unique and beautiful regions of the country. This is one of the sunniest regions of Europe receiving over 3000 hours of sunlight a year. Residents have access to studio space and 20 hectares of land. Accommodation (private room with attached bathroom) and meals are included, as is collection and return to the nearest public transport system.

Joya’s working languages are English and Spanish.

Further details and the submission form are available here: https://joya-air.org/apply/

The deadline for applications is March 17 2019

We happily cater for vegans, vegetarians and occasional carnivores (we have a reduced meat consumption with an emphasis on all our food being local)



Accommodation is bright, warm and clean with wood heated radiant floors. More images… https://joya-air.org/centre/

Alex Brown (Artsadmin) and Tilly Hogrebe (Bow Arts) have created thisartists’ survey as part of a research programme called Accelerator, led by Julie’s Bicycle, on advanced sustainability in the arts and cultural sector. Focussing on sustainable arts practices and the circular economy, the survey aims to map existing art practices and group them around sites of potential exchange; materials, knowledge and skills, time, money, which feed into environmental and socio-economic sustainable goals.

If you have an interest in sustainability and would like to be involved in a series of workshops, based on alternative art economies and circularity, then please fill out the survey here. 

In October 2018, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a special report on climate change, outlining that we have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe. As a result, now more than ever, environmental sustainability is something each and every one of us should think about, both individually and as part of our networks, in our private as well as our professional lives. This thinking needs to become second nature and inform all our actions.

In a collaboration between Bow Arts and Artsadmin, and under the Julie’s Bicycle and Arts Council England Accelerator programme, we are looking at environmental sustainability within artist studios and in connection to artist practices. What materials are being used, and are environmental or other ethical aspects taken into account when these are bought? Are there ways to reduce and re-use materials, rather than recycle and dispose of? And do socio-economic factors such as time and money have an impact on how green an artist is in their practice? We are looking for answers to those questions and will aim to establish ways in which we as arts organisations can inspire as well as assist artists to take sustainability in their practices to a new level.

One of the models we are looking at in order to achieve this is Circular Economy. 

Traditional behaviour patterns often follow the model of take-make-dispose. For this it has to be assumed that there are infinite resources, which of course we know not to be the case. In addition, simple disposal at the end of a product’s life has a huge detrimental impact on the environment and should therefore no longer be an option, and in fact should never have been.

A circular economy model on the other hand is a closed loop system, designed to keep in any resources for as long as possible, get the most value out of them while in use, and eventually ensure sustainable ways of disposal. This way waste and pollution will be designed out of the system.

Ways to achieve this include maintenance & repair (of tools and equipment), reuse & sharing, upcycling, and only eventually, recycling. If you are interested in exploring the concept of Circular Economy further, have a look at Julie’s Bicycle’s resource on the topic and follow our progress on this project!

So, how will we get there?

The beginning of the process is to gain a greater understanding of current systems of sustainability and exchange within creative practice. Whether you currently consider your practice to be engaged with sustainability or not, we would like to hear from all artists so that we can effectively map material and resource use in the sector and measure how practitioners consider sustainability. There are no wrong answers to this survey, think of it as a process in order to collectively discover best practice. What matters most is the appetite for progress.

We are thinking about the circular economy through different prisms, primarily environmental sustainability, how our relationship to materials might impact artistic decision-making. If an embedded economy is the systemic whole, the actors within can only consume the amount of energy that has been inputted to keep sustainable equilibrium. We are considering our relationship with materials first but in doing so, we also examine the sites of exchange that are forged together to make an economy. This is not only in a financial sense of an economy but an artistic one, by dissecting exchanges and how the management of resources functions in a social system, we can re-examine how we create and work within a living ecosystem.

We hope in the first instance that you are interested in some of these themes of how practices centred around the boldness of art-making which allows us to navigate a collective future of environmental justice. We want to foster debate, innovative practice and cooperation that working sustainably encourages. How can this our relationship to materials and suggestions of alternative economies prefigure a regenerative future? How can we foster a community of sustainable studio users?

By asking these questions, we’re hoping to bring together groups of artists who are challenged and inspired by these ideas, and open to new ways of thinking in the way they approach their art process and production. It would be fantastic if we could get as many artists completing the survey as possible, this will be incredibly helpful in finding out about current practices. The workshops will be a chance to exchange knowledge with others on topics centred around artistic process and practice and will tackle advanced sustainability issues. The project will focus on collective action and collaboration and work like a peer exchange group facilitated by the 2 lead organisations.

To get involved in the workshops, please complete the survey and express your interest through the Google form. You should be interested in knowledge exchange that contributes to some research for Julie’s Bicycle Accelerator programme. The initial sessions will be centred around- 1) alternative economic models and the circular economy 2) sustainable material use. The subsequent sessions will be decided by the group but are likely to explore themes of collaboration, commons, time and money.

We’re really excited to be at the beginning of this journey and as we delve deeper into the idea of a creative economy that works for artists, more questions come up. We expect the next year of the Accelerator programme and path to circularity and sustainability to be challenging and enlightening in equal measure and it would be great if you joined us.

Photo by James Allen

The School of Making Thinking is offering two really exciting summer residencies this summer. THE BODY OF WATER is a playwriting residency exploring water-related phenomena as dramaturgical inspiration, set to take place at Pittsburgh’s Community Forge.  IMMERSION 3.0 is the third iteration of an innovative VR creation lab set to take place at Cucalorus, in Wilmington, North Carolina. IMMERSION has been praised within the VR industry as at the forefront of innovating creative material in the emerging VR world! For both residencies, opportunities for subsidized tuition and travel are available. APPLY BY MARCH 10th! 

The School of Making Thinking hosts Spring & Summer Intensives for qualified artists and thinkers to work alongside each other for one to three week sessions. We continually experiment with structure, approaches to programming, and alternative pedagogies. Our residents have included sound and performance artists, poets, philosophers, sculptors, painters, botanists, dancers, playwrights, filmmakers, video artists, documentarians, and historians, among other diverse practices.

THE BODY OF WATER:

​May 25 – June 9 – Community Forge, Pittsburgh, PA
Tuition $600 

*includes food and lodging | tuition and travel subsidies available ​ 

This residency will create a space for experimenting with the emergent development of a playwriting methodology based on bodies of water. By the end, each resident will work to produce two things: (1) a proposal for a dramaturgical form (story shape) or a writing practice inspired by water or water-related phenomena, and (2) a piece of dramatic writing that follows that form or practice. Residents may, but don’t have to, write plays about water—we are primarily interested in letting water inform the shape of plays, not their content.

We will study the anatomy of bodies of water (rivers, oceans, springs, lakes, perhaps icebergs—frozen bodies of water!), as well as their effects on social structures. We will look at water-related phenomena like flow, sedimentation, human and animal migration, flooding, and more; we’ll look at examples of performative work that engages waterways, biomimicry, and theorists/activists whose work draws on language around liquidity, emergence, and flow. Pittsburgh, at the confluence of three rivers, provides rich potential to engage embodied research as well. Through our Pittsburgh host site, Community Forge in Wilkinsburg, there will be the option for residents to interact with other artists, community organizations, and Wilkinsburg residents/youth.

Here are some of the kinds of questions that interest us: What changes about site-specific performance or place-based research when the site/place is a body of water? What happens to a story if the plot diagram isn’t shaped like a mountain, but like a river or a lake or an ocean? How could a writer collaborate with water? How can a playwright collaborate with a scientist /collaborate with a painter in a way that’s fluid, that flows? What can playwrights learn from the way that water acts on us all at a distance and links us to other people and beings who appear geographically far away

The residency will focus on plays: we’ll work to translate our ideas to our playwriting process, from conception and research to writing and feedback. We welcome applications from anyone interested in working specifically with playwriting, whether you primarily identify as a playwright or you have a practice in another medium and you’d like to experiment with dramatic form. We also welcome applications from scientists, activists, scholars/researchers, and others who would like to collaborate with a playwright. We’ll be developing an experimental approach together, so it’s important that you’re interested in writing for the stage but also that you’re willing to challenge your own ideas about what makes a stage play work.

IMMERSION 3.0: VR Creation Lab

June 2 – June 22, 2019 – Cucalorus, Wilmington, NC
Tuition $1250

*includes food, lodging and technical support for VR production |tuition and travel subsidies available

This summer, The School of Making Thinking will run IMMERSION 3.0, our third iteration of our 360° video creation lab. The IMMERSION 3.0 Residency at Cucalorus will be an opportunity to explore immersion as a part of artistic practice, develop immersive works and become acquainted with the emerging media, build deep relationships in community, and develop methods of organizing creative projects in connection with social justice and peaceful futures.

Building on the belief that meaningful work is born out of a deep sensitivity for the context from which it emerges, we will immerse ourselves on every level. We will be building group rapport through collective experiences and embodied workshops, intimately collaborating on and co-mentoring creative processes, and conducting micro research projects into Wilmington’s present and past in order to deepen the context and content of the pieces produced. By engaging the history of our surroundings, wondering about the standing communities, observing architecture and local lore, acknowledging the original caretakers of the land and local Indigenous communities, and the legacies of cultural production that make Wilmington what it is today, we collectively ask the questions: What layers of historical, cultural, colonial, oppressive, personal and social fabrics map onto our movements in a space? How might we engage these realities actually, and virtually?

The first week of the session will be focused on group and site introductions, as well as developing technical familiarity with the cameras and gear. In the second week, we will create immersive pieces of performance and 360° videos in chosen locations throughout the city. The third week will be devoted to post production of the video pieces created with technical support from ARVR Consultants, culminating in a work-in-progress sharing of videos and any projects intended as a live experience.

We are seeking participants who have capacity to engage in an intensive production schedule, interest in developing skills and familiarity with the emerging media of 360 video and virtual reality, and a desire to work within local communities and contexts. Prior experience with 360° cameras and technology will not be required. Session participants will have access to 360° video capture cameras as well as technical support during the shooting and editing process. Please note that IMMERSION 3.0 does not provide computer workstations, and participants should be prepared to work from their own machine if they have access to one. Pieces created at the residency will have the opportunity to exhibit at the VR Expo at the Cucalorus Film Festival in November 2019. Residents will be encouraged to return to participate as exhibiting artists.  
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Over the last two years, The School of Making Thinking has led the IMMERSION Lab in partnership with Cucalorus Film Festival and ARVR Consultants. The 360° video pieces that emerged have been tremendous: work born of intensive collective experience, cutting edge technical support, focused idea incubation, and challenging conversations in community.