The Crossroads:
2025’s Call for Artist-in-Residence

About:

Crossroads present choices and transitions that we face both in our personal lives, and in the world at large. We are looking for artists to help us untangle the ethics of contemporary life, by digging into the grays, pauses, and in-between's- crossroads- that offer us tools, materials, and insights for building more empowered futures.

Crossing & Intersecting:
Crossroads & Personal Change
In the past 15years, Urbano's artists and participants have explored public art and activism across all media, always culminating in interactive and public art events. Our projects can be seen as a laboratory at the intersection of art, activism and education. We are interested in working with artists whose practice resonates with being at an intersection: exploring intersectionality, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and the changing meanings of the concepts of art, audienceship, and artists.

Choice & Voice:
Crossroads & Social Change
In literature and art, crossroads symbolize a place of choice-making, a place of transition. This theme asks questions of modern day morality: what is wrong and right? Does such a thing exist? How have we come to live this way; at what costs? And who pays the biggest price? Do our individual choices matter? We invite artists with a social practice to explore the possible futures ahead of us, and empower our participants in shaping that future.

Intergenerational Think Tank:
Crossroads & Community Care
Crossroads can be meeting places: meeting between yourself and the other; meeting between past, present and future. In our short intergenerational projects (SIP), we invite artists and participants to enter the crossroads and explore the modern-day issues that confront all of us (climate change, war, housing crisis). What can we learn from each other? What experience from the past speaks to our present moment, and to the future? Do ethical concepts from the past still apply, or do we need new ones, in order to navigate this new world?

Programs:

We are inviting artists from all disciplines (visual; dance/theatre; spoken word; writing; film/photography; and especially artists with a social and/or transdisciplinary practice) to address a Crossroads through one of our three programs.

Youth Art Projects
YAP's are ten-week-long explorations of a particular social issue, through public and participatory art practices. They're both conceptualized and instructed by an AiR, and oriented in serving Urbano's youth demographic. Youth are Boston Public School (BPS) high school students between the ages of 14-19and Urbano alumni (many of whom are enrolled in college).

Structure:
- 10 weeks
- Two 2-hour studio session per week -1-2 Saturday field trips or site visits -12-15 participants
- Youth participants
- Culminating in a public project

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Community Art Projects
CAP's are intergenerational art workshops that invite makers ages 14-65+to work with an Artist-in-Residence in actualizing not only a public art-project, but a professional development experience. Onethat supports artists in advancing their creative practice within a community of artists who are learning and connecting through a shared creative process.

Structure:
- 10 weeks
- Two 2-hour studio session per week -1-2 Saturday field trips or site visits -12-15 participants
- Participants ages 14-65+
- Culminating in a public project

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Short lntergenerational Projects
SIP's are creative conversations that are idea-led but process-based. They're artistic meditations on a question that a SIP AiR leads their intergenerational group in investigating through transdisciplinary dialogue, process, and experiential learning. Building shorter but equally valuable moments at Urbano where participants can explore meanings, answers, and artistic approaches to learning from each other across age, space, and context.

Structure:
- 4 weeks
- 2-hour studio session per week
- 8-12participants
- Participants ages 14-65+
- SIP Artist presents their program wrap-up at a final event

Eligibility & Financials:

General Requirements:

- Experience as a professional practicing artist.
- Availability for all project meetings, classes, and events.
- Demonstrated commitment to social practice and community-based work.
- Experience working collaboratively with youth and/or communities of varying backgrounds. Formal art education experience is a plus.
- Enthusiastic about building relationships with potential partners and participants (community organizations, affinity groups, small businesses, academics, etc.)
- Invested in long-term and impact, ideally with social, environmental, and/or economic justice emphasis.
- Strong sense of concept and artistic foundation, with willingness to experiment and work across disciplines.
- Proposal reflects an authentic connection to the Crossroads theme.

YAP/CAP/SIP Requirements:

- SIP: ability to commit to 4-6 hours per week over a 4-week period
- YAP/CAP: ability to commit to 50-60 hours total overa minimum of a 10-week period (for YAP/CAP)
- Availability for all project meetings, classes, and events.
- Engages participants in high-quality, challenging, and supportive arts learning experiences.
- Involves participants in conceptually developing and shaping the project.
- Commitment to helping participants develop critique and reflection skills to think deeply about the creative process.
- Crosses boundaries between artistic disciplines
- Process-oriented and place-based, with feasible ambitions.
- Potential for long-term impact, ideally with social, environmental, and/or economic justice emphasis.
- Ability to present the public project in a community final event
- Guided by principles of DEI community engagement

Compensation:

- Artists receive a stipend of $5,000 for their work on a 10 week YAP/CAP and culminating event;
- Artists receive $1500 for a 4-session SIP and final event.
- The honorarium includes curriculum design, leading studio sessions, field trips, program evaluation and final event.
* Please note that a team of 2+ artists sharing the residency must also share the stipend.*

Art Resources:

- Art supplies for the participants (please inquire in advance before assuming access to specialized equipment).
- Support from Urbano staff in curriculum development, communications/outreach, as well as installation and promotion of a final event.
- Support from our programs assistant during all classes/studio sessions.
- Connections to various event spaces, installation spaces, and maker-spaces in greater-Boston that can serve a range of creative modalities: movement, sculpture, fabrics, food, writing, performing arts, and media arts. (These spaces include but are not limited to that of the Cambridge Foundry, however, they are all dependent upon space-availability).

Apply

Dates:

Proposals/Applications Due:
Wednesday, September 25, 5:00PM

Finalist Interviews:
October 7-8-9, 2024

Implementation:
- Short Intergenerational Project (SIP):
Nov-Dec 2024; Feb-Mar 2025; May 2025
- Winter/Spring Youth Art Project (YAP) & Community Art Project (CAP): Jan-March 2025; March-June 2025

Artists Orientation: TBD

Instructions:

Please submit your Proposal via Google Forms, but the supplemental materials as email attachments to info@urbanoproject.org with the subject: "Call for Artists"

Required Supplemental Materials:

1) Proposal Form. Your completed Proposal Form should be submitted via Google Forms. Reflecting an authentic and socially relevant connection to the Crossroads theme, as well as a clear articulation of the artistic vision and aesthetic direction of the project.

2) CV / Resume. Your email-submitted CV/Resume should clearly delineate any academic/ non-academic experience with education, creative engagement, and/or art-making.

3) Photo/Video Work Samples. Your email-submitted work samples should be 10images OR a maximum of 5 minutes of video documenting your current art, media, design, or performance work (as png's or a link).

4) Work Samples Sheet. Your email-submitted Work Samples Sheet should serve as a description-based inventory list that speaks clearly to each work sample that was submitted.

Resources:

Not sure where to begin with your ideation? We've assembled a list of projects, collectives, and media that guided us in our understanding of the crossroads, and that we believe can guide your's as well. Click Here.