Hello World! We are very happy to bring you some exciting news this month:
China Residencies is joining Rate My Artist Residency and Residency Unlimited in a coalition to build a new web-based solution to better unify and disseminate information around artist residencies. The project is called RES and will be prototyped, developed, and tested throughout 2016-2017 in New York as part of NEW INC, the New Museum’s cultural incubator dedicated to supporting innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship across art, design, and technology.
What is RES?
Since 2009, our friends at the Brooklyn-based nonprofit Residency Unlimited have been running RU Opportunities, a free online listing service delivering up-to-date information about artist residencies worldwide. As of today, the service has garnered a large online following and publishes open calls on a daily basis. Last year, we supported their successful Kickstarter campiagn that raised $10,000 to help bring the service up to speed with new features that would benefit both artists searching and applying for residencies, as well as arts organizations who run and manage residencies.
Their original plan was to contract a web developer to fix the kinks in the system and add new features to the service. But last spring, after a RU Talk with curator Paolo Mele, Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria (RU co-founder) had a conversation with Katrina Neumann, creator of Rate My Artist Residency. Together they agreed that there are a vast number of similar platforms out there, many of which are built by artist minded communities dealing with the same types of challenges, and very often, publishing the same content that quickly goes out of date.
They both then decided to team up, completing the triangle by calling China Residencies’ co-founder Kira Simon-Kennedy in Beijing, who immediately agreed to join forces both RU and RMAR in this exciting new initiative to help artists and residencies worldwide.
While we primarily cover the same field, we’ve always strongly supported each organizations' individual mission (we gave our very public first talk about China Residencies at RU, where Kira and Crystal first met Katrina!) Each team member brings unique factors, experiences, and perspectives to the table and each of our skill-sets will play key roles in the development of this new initiative.
Check out NEW INC's announcement here and and coverage here.
If you’d like to help us out by filling out a quick survey about how you currently search for or disseminate opportunities, please click here if you’re an artist and here if you’re a residency. You can also leave your email to stay tuned for more updates as this project takes form throughout the coming year!