An Artist Residency in Motherhood by Lenka Clayton is now open to any artist/parent

Lenka Clayton has opened up her project, An Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARIM), to any artist and parent wishing to start their own residency. Lenka started the project in 2012 after having her first child and finding that existing residencies weren’t accommodating of artists with children, so set one up in her own home.

The project’s new website offers artists who are parents a free downloadable residency set-up kit, based on Lenka’s own experiences. This includes documents to help artists plan the structure of their residency; an editable manifesto; and a form for the artists to fill in detailing the duration of the residency, its website and location. This is included to give the artists accountability and make it “official”. When artists fill in this form, their residency is plotted on a world map on the ARIM website, with a link to the artist’s page.

The ARIM site also offers artists the opportunity to apply or nominate someone else for a Red Thread grant of $999, funded by donations from galleries and artists, and Lenka’s mentorship programme.

“Before having kids, I’d often attended artist residencies,” explains Lenka. “When I became a parent, travelling became tricky, money and time were tight and the residencies I found couldn’t accommodate artists with families.” So instead, Lenka applied the framework of a traditional residency to her life at home as a mother, with a set of strict parameters in place to professionalise the scenario. 

She wrote a manifesto, created business cards and a website, established mentors, made improvements to her studio and invested in materials, and made arrangements for three mornings a week of childcare. She also won a Creative Development Grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation/Heinz Endowments and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Then she began her residency, based on the important ethos that “I was not making work about motherhood, but out of it.” Works produced during the residency can be viewed on the ARIM website.

Alain de Botton has said of ARIM: “This is a beautiful, thought-provoking and brilliant project.”