A Series of Recommendations
A Series of Recommendations
Image: Interior of the Garden Studio at the Hambidge Center. A long, wide hardwood floor, with white walls and ceilings; there are lots of big windows along the walls, as well as two desks. Toward the background are a grand piano and electric keyboard; in the foreground a jean jacket and yellow beanie sit on a chair.
--
I’m closing out a few days of high-volume newslettering by sharing a short and scattered list of recommendations. These recs share 3 things in common: 1) I think they’re excellent or worthwhile, 2) I have enough familiarity to feel confident sharing the rec, and 3) more than anything, I get the sense that a lot of people don't know about them who should - “people” in this case meaning folks in the rough venn diagram of arts and movement interests that many of you reading this email probably hold - “movement” in that case meaning both physical and collective. I'm sharing it all out of my own accord and interest in info/resource-sharing, not cause anybody asked me to. You can access the audio recording of this email here.
#1: Residency: Hambidge Center
The Hambidge Center is an artist residency about a 2-hour drive northeast of Atlanta. I went there this past March for 2 weeks; it was my first-ever “sleepaway” residency (aka going to a beautiful place faraway from where you live to make art primarily on somebody else’s dime). Since it was my first, I don’t have much to compare it to, but my time was absolutely incredible, a highlight of the past 5 years by far. I feel like a lot of artists I know might really like it as well.
Here are some things that make Hambidge excellent:
They accept dance/movement artists, and have a large studio that is perfect for dancing (and also has a grand piano in it! pictured in photo above). I've known of dance artists being placed in different studios than this one, so I'm not sure quite how they work that out (it might depend on what you ask for), but the studios in general are pretty lovely.
They also accept writers, visual artists, and musicians. Within visual, they have a focus on ceramics, with a HUGE and from what I understand extremely legit pottery studio.
Uniquely, they ALSO accept 1) culinary artists! And 2) ARTS ADMINISTRATORS! As in, there is a specific category/set of dedicated residency spots for people applying as arts admin workers who also have creative practices themselves. When I was there, the arts admin resident was the founder/director of the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project, along with being a poet and visual artist. (She was also very cool and my favorite friend of the residency period.) Arts admin work is infamous for being hard to balance with one’s own creative practice, and I find it moving and innovative (in the sense that few other places seem to do this) that Hambidge makes dedicated space to support artists who do admin labor for other artists. So many of my friends make a living helping arts orgs run - I hope places like Hambidge can offer some of you space for your own practice along with supporting that of others!
There’s no wifi in the living studios, nor cell phone service on the grounds at all!!! (You do have a landline in your studio that can receive incoming calls and call other buildings on the campus.) There are also extensive and gorgeous hiking trails, and a swimming hole. I hiked every day in between rehearsal and meals, and formally went to check my email and google certain topics once per day.
Some notes on access and vibes:
Hambidge offers both fully-funded and partially-funded residencies.
You get a private live/work space all to yourself, and enough food that I at least could easily have skipped bringing any of my own, besides perhaps coffee/tea.
There are two ADA-compliant studios, though the grounds themselves and the common areas are not fully accessible. Further details here.
The first week I was there, there was a decent amount of difference across the resident group in terms of race, gender, age, country of origin, sexuality, and more, in addition to diversity of aesthetics and disciplines. I personally felt pretty comfortable and connected with my resident group. The second week, things tilted noticeably in the direction of straight white women, which made things weird in ways I could tell you over a hang sometime, but for better or worse created an opportunity for bonding amongst those of us not in that category.
Hambidge has multiple deadlines per year for residencies in 3 seasons; the deadline for this coming summer is January 15. You can apply here.
#2: Grant: Illinois Arts Council Agency Individual Artist Support (not the fellowship!)
In the Chicago artist ecosystem, there is a mythological beast known as the DCASE Individual Artist Grant. Every year, as the days are shortening and human animals feel called to join their fellow species in rest and hibernation, the beast awakens from its den at Washington & Michigan, sending an unearthly shudder that radiates along the arteries of Clark, Lincoln, Clybourn, Elston, Milwaukee, Grand, Archer, Vincennes, Blue Island, and South Chicago. By day it fills the Chicago Cultural Grants Dot Org website with PDFs and drop-down menus; by night it haunts the zip codes of Chicago, trailing the smell of opportunity in its wake and leaving behind a slime trail of pulverized ego. Every year approximately 69,696 people apply and every year somehow seemingly 69,695 of them end up .5 points below the granting score cutoff. Every year DCASE makes the application process slightly less overwhelming in certain aspects, and every year it’s somehow still a beast.
Folks, I’m here to tell you this is not the only way. There is another government-funded individual artist grant that we are eligible for. It’s from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. I might be wrong, but I basically feel like nobody knows this one exists - they think IACA only does the super competitive $15k Fellowship awards. But the IACA Individual Artist Support grants, both for projects and for professional development, offer funding amounts that are relatively on par with DCASE. So if you’re writing a DCASE it’s not that hard to redraft for IACA, and vice versa.
Here are some things that have led me to feel, dare I say, fondly?? toward the IACA grants:
Because it feels like nobody knows about them, I think they might be less competitive? Which, in my view, is a good thing - I think we’d all benefit from a creative economy where we just have to be valid on our own terms rather than through comparison with endless other applicants. (Doesn’t mean I don’t want more people to know about them or else I wouldn’t be writing this, just that for now it seems like they’re flying under the radar with a lot of folks, and one might as well get in on it.)
There’s not a formal deadline! They just have an open window with a start and end date, and give out grants on a continuous rolling basis after the application window begins until the money for that cycle runs out. I suspect this also makes it less competitive, partly because there’s not deadline syndrome that creates anxiety-driven compulsion to submit - it’s more like people are just submitting when they’re ready. If you have a strong project/app and you send it in, you’re closer to just competing with yourself than with hundreds of others right at that moment. (Again, my analysis of the competitiveness here is conjecture rather than confirmed truth, but the rolling deadline part is for sure. This can also have a downside in that you never know when the funding will run out and it changes every year; one year I had written a full application, went to submit, and it had literally closed that week. Tragic. But I still feel net positive about this way of doing things.)
One time, there was an error in my application, and a grant administrator REACHED OUT AND TOLD ME HOW TO FIX IT! The humanity! The compassion! So often these application experiences can make you feel like you’re either the sausage that’s getting made or the real grisly parts getting spat out into the slop bucket. It’s pretty cool to instead feel like a human artist, standing in front of a human administrator, asking them for cash, and being treated generously in response.
I've found the grant reporting less laborious than that for DCASE, particularly in that IACA doesn’t require receipts - just honest reporting of expenses.
A couple big grains of salt: any of this could change in the future or could have changed since I last went through an IACA process, and my experience may not be yours. Additionally, the IACA app has A LOT of very minute details that can disqualify your application if you don’t follow them - stuff like font and margin size of the PDF docs you attach, restrictions on the start date of the project in relation to the date of application (which can always be managed but also be easy to miss), and more. So, proceed with mad attention to detail. The grant window is open now until whenever the money runs out (or else sometime in the spring).
Briefly: I love to mutually support fellow artists in dealing with the ups and downs of applying for shit. At this point I have lots of experience applying for shit and having it occasionally work out, and some experience helping others do so as well as asking for their support in return. So, if we are broadly in community together, this is a general offer to be a sounding board for process or materials review in the applying-for-your-job-over-and-over-again that is the independent artist life.
#3: Physical practice container: Practice-Bridge
One of my first and longest movement education relationships has been with Solaluna Yoga, based out of Oberlin, OH. They’ve taught and teach me how to move functionally and safely while building strength, somatic awareness, expansive strategies for paying attention, and breath skills I use in high-stress situations.
Solaluna recently began offering a program called Practice-Bridge that is designed to support people who want to develop greater consistency in movement practice - inclusive of practices that fall under the umbrella of yoga, but also relevant beyond that. It includes live sessions of between 15min and 1hr, structures for maintaining practice on your own, reading resources for deeper learning, and more. If this sounds like something you’d like in your life, learn more about Practice-Bridge here.
#4: Building the future internet: Cooperative Social Media Crowdfunding
How we communicate with each other is essential to our humanness. It’s how we check in, share, support, and organize.
The social networks that represent the status quo facilitate some of that connection, but at a known (and unknown) cost: "free" software in exchange for our personal data, exploitative features that promote addictive behavior, limited transparency and nearly zero accountability.
People want something different. We want to join something we feel good about. We want to have a legitimate say in what that looks like. We want cooperatively-run social networks.
I’m part of a budding effort to help fund and build cooperatively-run, non-corporate social media networks. We’re proposing a simple plan: build a crowd-funded pool of money to invest in cooperatively-run social media platforms. Your contribution, no matter how small or large, gives you a say in what community-driven ideas we support, allowing us to build collectively. Does that sound interesting to you? Let us know by filling out this form and read on for more info.
Two resource & info reshares to close
My friend Alia Walston has a GoFundMe up to cover expenses for crucial healthcare. If you have resources to spare, please consider donating here. (To the extent that shared networks help link us in mutual aid - extra call to my Chicago and Oberlin fam on this one!)
I’ve been following the Iranian Diaspora Collective and my friends and colleagues in the diaspora to try to assess how individuals in the US can support the interests of protesters in Iran and contribute to the kind of pressure that might ultimately stop the executions. What I understand right now is that, as small or old-hat as these things can feel, contacting your members of Congress, donating, and potentially signing some petitions are the major asks at the moment. This document covers a lot on those fronts.
And that's that. See you likely in the new year for more jokes about grantwriting, relevant updates, and whatever else comes up before then.