Artist-in-residence programs and other residency opportunities allow artists to stay and work elsewhere 'for art's sake'. They offer conditions that are conducive to creativity and they provide for working facilities, ready to be used by individual artists.

Residency Profiles No artist-in-residence program is the same. Each program 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 residential arts centers specialize in one discipline, others stimulate a great number of disciplines. There are also a lot of differences in financial resources, housing and studio facilities, application procedures, selection procedures, coaching and exhibiting.

Conditions and Selections Many residential art centers lay down the terms guest artists have to comply with, such as an exhibition at the end of the period or a project, achieved by collaboration with other artists or cooperation with the public. However, many centers offer unconditional hospitality: the artist is free to use the residency for his or her own purposes, without any obligation towards the host. But even in those circumstances, total unconditional hospitality does not exist, although some residential art centers come close to it.

Application Most residential arts centers offer an application procedure which is open to artists from all nations, with or without deadlines. Usually artists are requested to send in documentation, a curriculum vitae, a motivation and if necessary a project proposal. Each institute has its own policy of adjudication. Participation is planned a long time in advance, usually six months, sometimes years ahead.

More about diversity of residency programs Some residencies may be prescriptive, by perhaps requiring the artist to produce a particular work of art within a given timeframe, others allow the artist to simply be present in the host organisation, contributing to the community as they see fit, and producing whatever artworks emerge from their interaction with members of the host organisation. Another type of artist in residence program is providing an uncommon setting for artists. For example, a residency might be set up in a hospital, an engineering factory or on an oil rig. These kind of residencies however are more common in the United Kingdom and the United States, than elsewhere.

History of artist-in-residence programs Artist-in-residence programs have a history that stretches back much further than is often thought. Due to its currant popularity it seems we are dealing with a fashionable phenomenon that owes its explosive growth solely to globalization of artists’ ‘nomadic’ behavior. However, artist-in-residence programs have not appeared out of the blue. The phenomenon has been part of the international art world for over a century.

1900 First wave of artist in residence programs The first wave of artist-in-residence programs came at the beginning of the last century. Take The Corporation of Yaddo , founded in 1900 and the Woodstock Guild/ Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in 1903, both established in the state of New York. Yaddo was founded by art-loving benefactors. They regarded offering guest studios to individual artists as a new kind of patronage. Woodstock Guild was founded by artists and was run on their own terms: a sense of community was very prominent in this artists’ colony. Both models were typical of a lot of other artist-in-residence programs which were set up during the first decades of the 20th century, both in the United States and Europe. An example in Europe is the artists' colony at the small village of Worpswede near Bremen: founded in 1889 by, amongst others, the artists Heinrich Vogeler and Rainer Maria Rilke. Soon they managed to draw attention to Worpswede internationally. In those times the village even was called 'Weltdorf'. In 1971 the colony was given a new boost with the foundation of Künstlerhäuser Worpswede, which has grown into one of the most renowned international residential art centers. Another European example is the Gregory Fellowships, dating from 1951. The Gregory Fellowships, funded by the Yorkshire printer Peter Gregory, placed painters, sculptors, poets and musicians in the University of Leeds. The University was, at that time, primarily a technical institution with very little arts activity, and the presence of the artists was intended to humanise the university. The Gregory Fellowships helped to set the typical formal for subsequent artist in residence schemes, with the fellows being free to move around the university as they wished, and not being tied to any one department. The Gregory Fellowships proved that artist in residence schemes can have an impact on the host organisation as they were instrumental in helping the University of Leeds to establish its school of Fine Art and expand teaching of literature and music. Look up Yorkshire in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The University of Leeds is a major teaching and research university, one of the largest in the United Kingdom with over 32,000 full-time students. ... Fine art refers to arts that are concerned with beauty or which appealed to taste (SOED 1991). ... Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ... For other uses, see Music (disambiguation). ...

1960 Second wave of artist in residence programs A new wave of artist-in-residence programs emerged in the 1960s, adding two new models to the ones that already existed. One new model offered artists the opportunity to withdraw temporarily from a society which was considered bourgeois. They preferred to create their own utopia in seclusion. The other new model, on the other hand, tried to contact the public and aimed for social engagement: guest studios in villages and cities served as a base for society change. Quite a number of new foundations elaborated on this new tendency during the seventies and the eighties.

1990 Globalisation: new wave of artist in residence programs As from the nineties a third wave of residency programs proliferated all over the globe: from Brazil to Taiwan, from Estonia to Zambia, from Japan to Vietnam. Characteristic of this new wave is the rich diversity of residency models: from not required hospitality at one end of the spectrum, to almost commission-like projects at the other end of the spectrum. Because of its global expansion and its seemingly unrestrained popularity, these new artist-in-residence opportunities have attracted more attention in the art world. However, we must not forget that new residency opportunities do have their historical roots. Neither should we forget that the 'old', established programs are still offering their expertise, contacts, advice and support to the new opportunities.

Funding Participating in an artist-in-residence program costs money. Some residency programs cover all costs, some don't cover any costs at all. In general residential art centers cover the costs for some part, which makes it necessary to find additional funding. Generally in Western European countries artists can apply for subsidy at state governed bodies. There are some international beneficiary funding schemes, most important of which is the Unesco-Aschberg residency funding scheme.

External link

http://www.transartists.org http://www.resartis.org http://www.art4eu.net