Orkney Group Residency WRITING INTO PLACE

23 – 30 SEPTEMBER 2023
Application deadline: THURSDAY 14 AUGUST 2023
Maximum number of participants: 8

WRITING INTO PLACE will enable creative practitioners to develop approaches to ‘writing’ that are experimental, inventive in form, and that respond to place, in Orkney's specific environment.

The fully catered Group Residency has been devised by The Museum of Loss and Renewal with invited partner Emily Orley (artist, researcher and educator around the relationships of ‘Air, Sea and Soil’, encompassing the Orkney Islands’ remarkable natural environment.

Expert introductions to the subject matter and to Orkney’s land, culture, and contemporary issues e.g. ecology and renewable energy will be provided by the facilitators and guest contributors.

AIR, SEA AND SOIL: WRITING INTO PLACE is offered in partnership with The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness and will take place at Linkshouse, in the historic area of Birsay beside the Atlantic Ocean, and at sites of natural and archaeological importance in Orkney.

The Group Residency will provide a partially-structured and hands-on programme of site-based ways of working that are shared to enable residents to develop their skills and understanding of how to investigate site as part of a creative practice and for public presentation. A final publication (e.g. digital, material, hybrid) will be designed and published by The Museum of Loss and Renewal, and presented publicly.

Guided walks and readings will happen in selected locations that evidence occupation, abandonment, and renewal: delicate places in the group residency’s environment, triggers for imagining and inventing new futures and histories. Members of Orkney’s creative and research communities who hold precious knowledge of local history past and present, will contribute to bespoke sessions.

Working together across site-specific, participatory, performance and writing practices a group of residents from diverse cultures and creative disciplines will focus on different ways of responding to place through writing in its most expanded sense.

Devised to be supportive, the partially-structured programme will enable residents to develop their skills and understanding of writing across a range of approaches and technologies. The residency experience will stimulate new ways of thinking and experimentation through production, research, co-learning and presentation. The programme will provide a framework and act as a catalyst for deepening observation and expanding awareness in life and art, by engaging with the non-human and human world through writing.