Wassaic Project 2025 Summer Residency Program Open Call

https://wassaicproject.slideroom.com/#/permalink/program/80566

Application Opens: 9/3/24
Deadline: 11/12/24
Application Fee (USD): $25.00

About Us:
The Wassaic Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, uses art and arts education to foster positive social change. We nurture connections between our artists and our neighbors facilitating a mutual broadening of perspectives and respect across economic and cultural boundaries. Partnerships between artists and our community improve the reach and quality of our work and inspire new ways of looking at art and the world. We strive to be actively anti-racist and consider this stance in all programmatic, curatorial, and management decisions.

Wassaic Project 2025 Summer Residency Program Open Call

The Wassaic Project accepts proposals for our 2025 Summer Residency program (June – September). This call is for individual artists, collaborative teams, groups of two or more individual artists, and artists applying through our Family Residency program. The residency fee is $900 per artist/collab group/artist team/family for ~4 week residency session, which includes: semi-private studio space(s), private room in a shared house (our Family program receives a private house), access to our limited wood shop and kiln, staff support, and programming such as our Visiting Artist program, Artist Talks and Studio Visits, open studios, artist presentations, etc. The Wassaic Project cultivates and supports community for emerging and professional contemporary artists, writers, curators, filmmakers and other creatives. Housed in historic, landmark buildings, the residency program offers ten artists each month the opportunity to live and work in the heart of a rural community. The Wassaic Project seeks artists working in a diverse range of media who want to produce, explore, challenge, and expand on their current art-making practices, while participating in a community-based arts organization.

Review
Residents are selected by a review committee composed of the Wassaic Project Co-Directors, Director of Artistic Programming, and an external Review Panel consisting of professionals in the field. Residents will be selected based on the quality of their work, commitment to their practice, and ability to interact positively with the community at large.

Application Requirements
Contact information
1–10 work samples
CV (3 pages max)
2 references
$25 application fee
Proposal: We believe our residency works best as a creative laboratory untied to outcome. We would like to hear about what makes you curious, what you are interested in investigating, and what your jumping off point would be. (200 words max)
Optional question: We want to look at your work according to your definition of success. Are there additional criteria that you would like the panel/us to consider when reviewing your work? For example: What do you consider to be a successful piece or process? If you work with a community, the artistic product may not be the sole or most important creation of the work. Are there other impacts and creations in your process we should focus on? Please share any documentation that could bring us close to these impacts—interviews, testimony from participants, writing about the work, images from an event, etc.

Residency Fees
We offer our residency on a sliding scale, from $0–900. It costs us $5,000 per person to host the residency. Most of this is covered by the generous support of donors and grants, but we recommend a contribution of $900 per 4-week residency per person from artists who are able to contribute. We also offer 10+ fellowships per year, which include a no-fee residency plus an honorarium.

Financial Assistance
We offer need-based financial assistance to artists-in-residence for whom it would be impossible to attend without financial support. Financial need is self-reported by artists in their applications. We ask that artists who are in a position to fully contribute towards the residency fee please do so.

Fellowships
We offer the following fellowships:
The Work and Family Fellowship offers no-fee residencies and $500 honorariums to several artists-in-residence per year participating in the Family Residency program.
The Sustainable Arts Fellowship offers several no-fee residencies and $500 honorariums per year to family residents who identify as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color.
The Mary Ann Unger Fellowship offers one no-fee residency per year to a female-identifying artist who primarily works in sculpture and who identifies as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color.
The ArtForArtists Fellowship for Social Justice-Based Practice offers one no-fee residency and $500 honorarium per year to an artist who identifies as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color.
To be considered for the Work and Family Fellowship and Sustainable Arts Fellowship, please take some time in your application to reflect on the ways in which care and caregiving, whatever those words mean to you, come through (or might come through) in your work. It’s okay if this isn’t something you’ve considered before. We think of these fellowships as a starting point towards building a future where artists shape the way society sees and values care.
All applicants are considered for the Mary Ann Unger Fellowship and the ArtForArtists Fellowship for Social Justice-Based Practice and do not have to complete any additional information on their application.

Family Residency Program
The Wassaic Project broadly defines “family” as a group of more than one individual where there is an in-house dependent relationship as a necessary caregiver. The Wassaic Project recognizes that artists who have caregiving relationships, as providers or recipients, often opt-out of peer community building for practical reasons. The Wassaic Project aims to provide accommodations which increase access to our residency program. Examples of caregiving may include, but are not limited to: parent/child (parent is caregiver), child/parent (child is caregiver), partner/partner (where one partner is a supportive caregiver of the other and cohabitation is required for caregiving), a recipient of caregiving, a self-selection into this application for separate and additional housing space by identifying as a family applicant.

Summer 2025 Residency Dates
June 5 – 30, 2025
July 2 – 28, 2025
July 31 – August 28, 2025
September 4 – 22, 2025

For more info:
www.wassaicproject.org/artists/summer-residency
www.wassaicproject.org/artists/family-residency www.wassaicproject.org/apply/residency-faq

Please email [email protected] with any questions and please put “Summer Residency 2025” in the subject line.