Group Residency Programme, Orkney: Air, Sea and Soil: MICRO-MACRO

MICRO-MACRO has been devised around the relationships of ‘Air, Sea and Soil’, encompassing the Orkney Islands’ remarkable natural environment.
The Group Residency will be lead by Tracy Mackenna, Curator of The Museum of Loss and Renewal and facilitated by Tracy and programme contributors. A range of multidisciplinary Orkney-based discipline experts who hold precious knowledge of archaeological sites, spatial and local history past and present, and collecting and presenting, will contribute to bespoke sessions.
Welcome to all creative practitioners and researchers interested in making, thinking and being in experimental ways. This Group Residency will take you out and about in Orkney, introduce you to the impact of climate crisis, to vast skies and the archipelago that has long been shaped by the sea.
FOCAL POINTS
Creative practices
Interdisciplinarity
Technologies
Co-learning
Individual practice
Experimentation
Semi-structured programme
Expert facilitator/s and guest contributors
Collective platform for encounters
Supportive, caring, non-hierarchical environment
Fully catered
Immersive experience
Relationships to land, connections through place
Location specific, inc. Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site
Site (responsiveness)
Cultural and environmental ecologies
Memory (ecological, material, ruin)
Imagining futures
Publics; participants and audiences
AIM
The aim of the Group Residency is to develop approaches to place that are experimental, inventive in their form, and that respond to place by paying attention to the intersections and collisions between art, culture, materiality, technologies and place.
Opportunities are created for creative practitioners and researchers to share and establish a bank of knowledge and creative strategies, both globally interconnected and hyper local, digital and analogue, for imagining new responses to places and the multiple, layered and contested histories they hold.
Disciplines
MICRO-MACRO is offered for practitioners and researchers working in all creative disciplines and for those who have a strong interest in the investigation of site and place.
Accommodation
The residency programme will take place in the ancient and historic village of The Palace, in the parish of Birsay. It is situated on the St Magnus Way pilgrimage route on the Atlantic Ocean and amidst farmlands and sites of archaeological, historical and social importance in Orkney, accessible by foot and minivan.
Accommodation is 5-star self-catering (single rooms) and is fully equipped, including wifi.
Workspace
Work spaces are shared and include ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ spaces.
Fees and Support
The Residency Programme is operated on a non-commercial cost-covering basis, and is financially supported by The Museum of Loss and Renewal in order to keep fees low. The residency fee is £1350 GBP, paid by the resident. It includes the residency programme, 5-star self-catering accommodation (single rooms) and work spaces, collection/return to nearest airport/ferry point.
A deposit of 50% is payable within three weeks of being offered a place on the residency programme (non-refundable). The remaining balance is payable eight weeks in advance of the residency start date. In the event that cancellation is required, residents may cancel up to a minimum of six weeks prior to their residency start date. If a resident has to end the residency early due to personal circumstances, a refund cannot not be issued.
You will be responsible for funding and organising your own travel, your own insurances and any visa requirements particular to your country of origin. Travel information will be supplied (Kirkwall Airport and Orkney Ferries), and collection/drop-off at the beginning and end of the Group Residency will be arranged.
We do not have external funding for this project, so regret that we are unable to offer assistance with fees, travel, production costs or other subsistence. Typically, successful applicants source funding by applying to their national arts funding bodies, personal fundraising, or through academic institutional support. Formal Letters of Invitation can be provided to assist in this process.
The programme consists of:
Subject-specific sessions by facilitators
Presentations and exercises by programme contributors
Collective and individual (mentored) working sessions
Working sessions at archaeological sites
Museum / gallery / visit
Guided walks
Collective critical evaluation and forecasting