Two pairs of week long residencies at the Grand Theatre will be available to Kingston artists for the third straight year this July.
The City of Kingston’s Local Arts Residency program at the Grand Theatre was born in 2021 when the theatre was unable to be used for performances due to COVID restrictions, instead leveraging the available space to allow local artists access to a well outfitted room to develop their projects.
The residency is aimed at Kingston-based emerging or mid-career professional artists, and in the past two years has welcomed a variety of different artistic disciplines.
Kingston’s Director of Arts and Culture Services Colin Wiginton says it’s tailored for an artist who has a project well thought out and ready to go.
“Someone has to be prepared to come in and actually hit the ground running,” Wiginton said.
“So it’s not necessarily something for an artist who doesn’t have an idea already of what they want to achieve.”
The residency itself hasn’t changed much over the last three years, offering two separate weeks of residency at both the Baby Grand and Regina Rosen auditorium, with residencies at each location running concurrently.
Artists applying should identify what space best fits their needs and focus on that room accordingly.
Artists are given a $1000 honorarium for the week as well as access to state of the art equipment and professional technical support.
The applications are fielded by a team of jurors selected from this year’s roster of performers at the Grand OnStage series.
Wiginton says this year they hope to include former residency participants as part of that jury, trying to make local networking part of the process as well.
“It also creates an opportunity for Kingston artists to benefit from the insights of these other artists,” Wiginton said.
“It’s about relationship building as well.”
Last year the artists selected for the four residencies were Jan Le Clair, Melissa Noventa and Zahra Badua, Lydia Wilton, and Sophia Fabiilli and Zoë Sweet.
The selection process will focus on four main pillars when sifting through applicants: overall artistic merit, diversity, artistic practice/commitment, and community access to the work.
Wiginton says the application process is meant to be relatively straightforward and accessible, and artists should really focus on highlighting those four pillars in their application.
“It’s not meant to be onerous, but really it’s about making sure that the artists are hitting the selection criteria,” Wiginton said.
“The better that they’re able to answer those four things that are outlined as the points of interest for us the more likely the jurors are to rank them higher.”
Applications for 2023 will be accepted until April 5 at 5 PM.
