OAC Resources to Support Your Artist Residency Project
Artist Directory: Select teaching artists and get ideas. Presents OAC Arts Learning artists in a clear, accessible format. Link.
Residency Handbook: Improve your planning process. Takes you through the entire process of conceiving, preparing for and conducting a residency. Provides specific instructions for those who want to sponsor an artist residency. Link.
Focusing the Light: Read about how to advocate, plan, evaluate and document a project in this OAC series. Link.
Grant Guidelines for Sponsors: Find guidance for preparing your grant application. Links to FAQs, questions you will answer in your application narrative and other important information. Link.
OAC Funding History: Identify past grant recipients to visit or ask for advice. Link.
Links & Threads: Read articles on past residencies for ideas. Link.
The following questions from the OAC Residency Handbook will help your team stay focused on goals, as well as broaden support and heighten interest in your project.
Talk about and research these questions as you decide whether to sponsor a residency and revisit them with your planning team as you make decisions and as you evaluate your residency.
- In what ways, does an artist residency advance your organization's mission, goals and learning priorities?
- Why do you want to work with a professional artist?
- What challenges might you face as you design and conduct a residency?
- What opportunities might you capitalize on through a residency?
- What is exciting about having a residency?
- Why is the arts discipline you are considering important to your organization?
- What expectations do your staff members have for a residency?
- What expectations does your board have for a residency?
- How might you build connections between a residency and community initiatives or themes?
- Who will benefit most from a residency?
Application Criteria: Simple, Straightforward
What goals do you have for your artist residency?
What initial activity ideas do you have for your artist residency?
Describe who will be working with the artist and why for both the core group and the peripheral group.
Describe a few of your ideas for involving the larger community in the residency activities, if appropriate.
What preliminary planning has taken place (or will take place) to prepare for your residency?
Describe a few of your ideas for documenting observable changes in arts learning for your core group participants.
Describe the physical space where the majority of your residency activities will take place.
Identify needed equipment and supplies that are available for the residency.
The OAC Grant Guidelines link to a pdf of the criteria above. The pdf includes the number of characters allowed by the OLGA and additional explanation. Download the pdf.
Your grant application narrative should address the criteria that the OAC panels will use in evaluating your application. The following areas of discussion, based on those criteria, will help generate the information your grant writing team will need.
Design activities to support learning in, through or about the arts. In other words, one or more of the arts disciplines must play a major role in the activities. You can focus intensively on creating or performing works of art, study an existing art form or work of art in depth or integrate learning in the arts with content and ideas in other areas.
Identify a core group of participants. This group should consist of learners and staff who will commit time and effort to intensive artistic activities. The size of the group should ensure that learners can receive some individualized attention and that the group will be able to complete the kind of project you are envisioning. Depending on the activities, you can identify your core group as all learners in a particular classroom, course section, program, subgroup or location. Or you can cite the criteria you will use to select learners for the core group. You also may identify one or more peripheral groups that will participate in a more limited way.
Identify goals and initial activities. While learners will make many of the artistic decisions, the application should outline goals for the residency and describe the activities that will be used to engage learners and introduce the theme, key content and art form.
Discuss how you will assess and document learning and how you will know that the residency achieved your the goals. Both assessment and evaluation in artist residencies often enrich and intertwine with learning. They may require new ways of thinking. Documenting the process as it unfolds through photos, video and audio recordings is invaluable both for assessing learning and evaluating overall success.
Discuss how you will make the residency activities accessible and collaborative. Examine how you will ensure that those who would benefit from participating in the residency are not excluded. Address with your principal or director how scheduling, facilities and staff roles and assignments can enable and support collaboration. Develop strategies for building support among staff, parents and/or the community.
Develop strategies for encouraging community participation, if appropriate. Most residencies culminate in some type of public demonstration of learning or sharing of creative work. You can share work in print or online publications, via local cable channels, radio stations or podcasts. You can hold live events—readings, exhibits, film screening and performances. You can find a permanent location within your facility or donate the works to an organization that will use them in meaningful ways. To increase impact, consider a primary and secondary way to share. For example, videotape a performance and incorporate the video into your website, as well as share it via Youtube. As you think about how to extend public value, also think about possibilities for community conversations, panel discussions or online fora about the issues addressed in the work. Explore whether the work can be linked to an existing community event, such as an arts festival or public celebration.
Back to Residency Quick Guide
This article was published in December 2011
