Residencies
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An ongoing residency program is an important aspect of our pedagogical practice. Through the program, creative practitioners are invited to become temporary members of our community and pursue their creative practice in response to and in dialogue with our space.
Although it's not a requirement residents do often offer workshops to young people in which they share skills or offer organised activities. Having skilled professionals sharing their technical expertise is incredibly valuable. However, by far the greatest contributions of residents and our fundamental motivation for organising the scheme is the addition of new and unique voices into our ongoing conversation and the opportunity for young people to observe and collaborate with intrinsically motivated adults engaged in real creative processes.
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Our belief in the potential of residencies to create a mutually enriching dialogue that is enabling for creative practitioners and acts as a catalyst for learning and community evolution has been repeatedly rewarded and confirmed. Visiting practitioners have created personal work which is valuable to them, and initiated projects and learning - indirectly and directly - which includes costume design, illustration and painting, printing, filmmaking, dance, storytelling, and songwriting.
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Residents are most often artists and musicians, not least because adults engaged in these professions tend to have relatively flexible schedules. However, we would love to welcome adults from other disciplines; writers, dancers, designers, poets, ecologists, fabricators, carpenters, scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and so on. When we understand disciplines (e.g. biology) as ways of interacting with and making sense of the world rather than simply established bodies of knowledge, we see clearly that they all have the potential to be profoundly creative.
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© Unión de los ríos
