Re–tooling Residencies
The Re–tooling Residencies project was addressed to both arts communities and art institutions looking to create arts residency centers in Eastern Europe and to cooperate with existing centers of this kind. The project aimed to foster cooperation and mutual support between arts institutions from the east and west of the EU as regards arts residency programs. This was to be achieved through exchanges of experience, knowledge sharing, and support of the professional development of cultural cadres. A study and research program begun at an international conference (November 16–19, 2009) enriched the project with practical and theoretical knowledge of issues like the mobility of artists and trans–national collaboration between organizations differing in terms of their institutionalization. The program also represented a deepening of cooperation between institutions from the ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU member states. In the nineteen months following the conference described above, seven selected individuals carried out study visits at specific arts residency programs (including, but not limited to, project co–organizers), where they learnt about the varying methods of organizing creative residency programs, participated in supervising projects pursued under residency programs, and met extensively with artists and specialists.
