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What is a residency?

Residencies vary in scope, time, and environment. A residency usually involves focused time to make creative work. Some residencies offer housing and studio space, some residencies offer work space but no housing, and some offer space for research and conceptualizing but no studio space (and everything in between). Some offer full funding, living stipends, subsidized funding, and some charge the participating artist.

More info about residencies can be found here:
https://www.artistcommunities.org/residencies
https://resartis.org/
The Big Artist Opportunities List - Assembled and maintained by Everest Pipkin (with big big thanks to everyone who has sent me opportunities to add)

What is Engaging Collections?

In short, Engaging Collections is a Residency which funds North Carolina artists to share untold narratives through creative projects that build community.

What does this mean? We award funding to creatives who wish to make art about and with their communities in collaboration with a library, archive, or special collection. Our AiRs (Artists in Residency) will engage the folks living in their communities in free art, bring more people into spaces like public libraries and archives, and share the special narratives that are often left out of local history. The AiR’s initiatives will engage their communities in free, accessible, creative programming through sharing these stories of North Carolina history, environment, and generational memory.

Engaging Collections was launched with funding and support from the All For NC Fellowship, an initiative of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

Who should apply?

Creatives currently living or working in North Carolina will be selected for funding.

Engaging Collections encourages applications from artists who identify as culturally, geographically, educationally, marginalized, including (but not limited to) Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Queer, Trans, Non-binary, Gay, Lesbian, Two-Spirit, people with disabilities, women, those without formal art education, and people who identify as any intersectionality or identity not mentioned here. Since a goal of Engaging Collections is to shed light on and uplift non-dominant narratives, it is important that the artists selected are working from their own lived experience and are connected to the communities in which they are working.

Why libraries, archives, or special collections?

So much untold history lives in boxes and file folders in local history repositories. Many public libraries have genealogy resources, local history collections, and countless untold, unseen stories living within that aren’t often accessed or that many people don’t even know exist.

Artists are excellent translators, and are uniquely qualified to sensitively and creatively celebrate the stories that make their communities special. By encouraging artists to collaborate with a NC library, archive, or special collection, the benefit is wide-ranging: these spaces become demystified and more accessible, the stories are shared in creative and inclusive ways, the public is engaged in free artistic programming, and the artists are fairly paid for their creative labor without having to charge the public.

So what is an archive or special collection?

Public library special collections often have print and electronic resources for genealogy (family history) and local history collections, which may include resources like photographs, maps, postcards, and letters. A special collection is a group of items, such as rare books or documents, that are either irreplaceable or unusually rare and valuable, and are considered to be of value to the host institution. 

Resources about archives, libraries, and special collections:
https://www2.archivists.org/about-archives
http://www.ilovelibraries.org/what-libraries-do http://www.ala.org/tools/challengesupport/selectionpolicytoolkit/special

Some examples of archives and special collections in North Carolina:
https://archives.ncdcr.gov/
https://archives.ncdcr.gov/researchers/western-regional-archives
https://ncroom.buncombecounty.org/Presto/home/home.aspx
https://library.greensboro-nc.gov/research/north-carolina-collection
https://libguides.nhcgov.com/local