June 5, 2025

Artistic Residency

Residency Period: September 1 until November 2, 2025
Application deadline: July 11, 2025

In September, we will be piloting our first residency, a new annual aspect of our program aimed at drawing on the residential context we are situated in. Simply put, the goal of this first residency is to support a Rotterdam-based artist/artist collective through the developmental stages of a project, and to do so in a way that both inhabits and activates our space differently. Given that it’s the ‘pilot’, it is also a way to learn together about what the needs of a resident might be, and about what kind of home the space can provide for art-making when we’re not just thinking about a public-facing program.

Generally speaking, the historical, communal and residential functions of our location in the former bathhouse and washhouse of the Justus van Effencomplex provide a basis for our program. In taking the past social life of the space as a guiding principle, we try to work in an intersectional manner to bring a range of people, places and (urgent) ideas into conversation through art. In this way, international perspectives and contexts are placed in dialogue with local concerns and needs—and vice versa—and the question of what a small-to-medium-sized art institution located on the edge of a city can do (and be!) is always at the front of our minds.

The selected resident is not expected to address the location of A Tale of A Tub directly through their work, but practices that align with any of the above approaches will be favoured—whether that be working intersectionally, context-specifically or in a situated way, or with questions of instituting or social and material need at the heart of the work. We want to make clear that this is not an outcome-driven residency, i.e. you don’t have to produce something by the end. It is specifically for developing on a particular thread of your practice and doing so within a supportive context and without the pressure to perform.

As part of the residency, you will receive:

• A fee of €3000 (excluding VAT)
• A production budget of €1500
• A budget of €1500 for inviting external advisors relevant to your project for studio visits, talks or project-specific consultations. This could range from inviting a curator, theorist or fellow artist you would love to speak with, to meeting with, for example, an electrician or speech coach for garnering technical advice. Note: this budget is to cover compensation for their time as well as travel and accommodation (if needed)
• Use of the basement space of A Tale of A Tub as a workspace for the duration of your residency as well as the tools and equipment kept on site
  Fortnightly studio visits with our curatorial team of Isabelle Sully (artistic director) and Lisanne Janssen (education curator)
• A commissioned text that sits alongside your work, published in the form of our fourth quarterly bulletin of 2025 
• A budget of €500 for one public-facing event held throughout the course of the residency and one educational activity. Both will be developed in conversation with our curatorial team

Please note that as this is the pilot residency, it is only open to Rotterdam-based artists and does not include housing (but we are working towards this for future editions!).

To apply, please send the following materials to lisanne@a-tub.org by July 11, 2025:

• A description detailing your interest in the residency and some initial thoughts on how you might spend your time (no more than 1 A4). Within this, please also include a description of what needs the resources provided by the residency are addressing for you
• A practice description (no more than 500 words)
• Documentation of your work (compiling no more than ten pages of images, five pages of excerpted text or ten minutes of video/audio)

Applications will be assessed by our curatorial team of Isabelle Sully (artistic director) and Lisanne Janssen (education curator) as well as Amy Jones, former curator at Chisenhale Gallery, London, currently curator at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, who will act as an external voice. Applicants will be notified by Friday, July 25, and the selected artist/collective will be in residence for two months spanning September 1 to November 2, 2025.