Creative Arts & Social Practice Cohort
Exploring Community Organizing and Community Building Through Art, Cultural Work, and Socially Engaged Practices
Two separate cohorts of 8 participants who want to explore and create social change through art, cultural work, and social practice*.
Through group and individual creative processes and educational experiences, participants will be encouraged to work in their medium of choice throughout the fellowship to build community, engage people across differences, and take steps to shift relationships to power in the communities they call home.
Fellowship participants will include community members who don’t identify as LGBTQ+ in their projects by engaging them in the production/creation process, in a culminating performance/show/public event, or in other ways that reflect collaboration and invitations into the work.
All creative practices (dance, performance, music, theater, visual art, audio, and more) are welcome! You do not need to be an expert in social practice or any specific medium, to be considered for this fellowship opportunity. Applicants should indicate the mediums they’re bringing into this work or that they seek to explore further within the fellowship.
Out in the Open can directly support and has experience utilizing the following to build community, support interconnection, and promote inquisitive approaches to social and cultural change: audio storytelling, radio broadcasting, creative reuse and Do-It-Yourself mediums (eg: collage, zine making, mail art), puppets, handcrafts (eg: glass bead making, spoon carving, embroidery), and cooking large scale (or small scale!) meals. Artists and cultural workers who utilize other mediums or are seeking specific experiences or support are encouraged to indicate this on their application.
There will be one 2-night kick-off retreat, for participants of both cohorts, held in June 2024 (exact date and location forthcoming). Each cohort will meet monthly for 2 - 3 hours, and be supported to build relationships with each other outside of the group spaces. In addition to individual participants’ projects and events, there will be a late-Autumn gathering for participants of all previous and present fellowship cohorts.
This fellowship is for you if:
have been successful with self-directed projects in the past.
engaging in supportive, reciprocal conversations about your work and ideas, and the work and ideas, of others is exciting to you.
you are ready to commit to and prioritize monthly in-person meetings with your cohort.
you are curious about the experiences of others and willing to share from your lived experience.
you are currently seeking to engage in deeper community building where you live.
you thrive with open-ended prompts and are able to create structures and meaning within known timelines/deadlines.
you rurally north and west of Portland/Brunswick and outside of urban areas of Bangor, Augusta, and Waterville in Wabanaki territory/Maine.
you identify as LGBTQ+ and live openly with this identity.
you are thinking about how your LGBTQ+ experience intersects with other aspects of your identity and the identities of other people.
*Social practice has many interpretations and applications, which we are into! Here are some examples we’ve paid attention to most recently: the work of Cannupa Hanska Lugar, The ACT in Art Activism, Ten Artists on What Social Practice Means to Them, Krzysztof Wodiczko's installation to engage people at the UK/Irish border, Liz Lerman’s Dancers of the Third Age
