CALLING ALL ARTISTS, ORGANIZERS, MUSICIANS, FABRICATORS, ACTIVISTS, WRITERS, PUPPETEERS, FACILITATORS, EDUCATORS, AGITATORS AND UNAPOLOGETIC DREAMERS:
Want more time and space to focus on your project? The Worcester Artist-Activist Residency provides a free place to live for politically-engaged makers to develop their praxis. Stay in our 23-year-old anarchist collective for 1-3 months from June to August 2018 and help us build a stronger network of artists and activists. We prioritize people of marginalized identities and with ideas that are less likely to receive support from more conventional means.
The residency is hosted at Collective-A-Go-Go where countless activists and artists have lived and worked on their ambitious projects including: the Scamp School, the FANG collective, Prison Action News, Stone Soup Community Center, the Raven Freedom School, and a million other organizations, DIY events, music and art projects.
This summer, the residency will be coinciding with the Institute for Advanced Troublemaking, a weeklong anarchist theory and action summer school for adults of all ages. Residents will help with the set up, upkeep and takedown of the summer school, and will also be invited to participate in its ongoing workshops. The school will take place from July 21 to 29, 2018.
Why do we do this? We are interested in building more overlap between artists and activists, and fostering connections across geographic regions. We like the energy that new people can bring into this collective space, especially when they are focused on work that they truly care about. We want to share our collective as a material resource for people who are doing important but often un-or-undercompensated work to dismantle oppressive structures. We admire the networks that exist for DIY music scenes and want to offer something similar for people whose creative work is less commonly supported. We want our space to be a hub of resistance and regeneration.
Artist/Activist will:
- Stay in our three-season barn
- Be welcome to regular shared vegan meals (vegan kitchen)
- Have access to shared work spaces in the barn, our eclectic library and 4.7 acres of wooded property and garden space
- Live across the road from hiking trails and conservation land
- Have support in accessing relationships the collective has cultivated with the collective community and other radical/community institutions, ie various maker spaces, community bike shop, community centers, etc.
- Have support in developing stronger creative facilities in the collective, ie improving screenprinting set-up, establish printmaking studio, establish small woodshop, etc.
Artist/Activist will be expected to:
- Contribute 15 working hours per week during the residency with the guidance and collaboration of the residency coordinator – this can include work supporting the Institute for Advanced Troublemaking as well as gardening, splitting wood, organizing our library, cooking/cleaning, improving shop spaces
- Attend and participate in weekly check-ins with collective members
- Document the work they create during their residency and share with the collective to be used in future media and publicity about the residency
- Co-organize a culminating show or event at the end of the residency showcasing what has been worked on, drawing connections to the larger community. This could look like: an artist talk, a collaborative art event, an art or music or poetry show that you curate, an album/book/zine/print series release show
