A Call for Parent Friendly Artist Residencies

Residencies function as marks of quality in the art world and are therefore essential links in the chain reaction of success. Yet they are not accessible to everyone. In her latest essay in the Land Without Borders series for Mister Motley, Mirthe Berentsen reflects on the ways in which artists with children are structurally excluded from participating in highly sought-after residencies.

“Residencies assume artists are free—free from care responsibilities, free from dependencies, and free to be physically present in a specific place for weeks or months at a time. In this way, the infrastructure of the art world is structurally unsuited to those who provide care," she writes.
 

For this essay, Mirthe Berendsen interviewed, among others, our residency advisor Heidi Vogels. Berendsen believes the DutchCulture | TransArtists residency database should also respond to this issue. It would be relatively simple to add “family- or child-friendly” as a category, just as users can currently filter by discipline. As Heidi Vogel states, it has been on our wish list for years and is planned as part of a major database update. But it is dependent on funding.

The drastic and short-sighted budget cuts by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—under which the International Cultural Policy (ICP) will be reduced by nearly half in 2027—hit DutchCulture hard, Berendsen writes. Investing in international accessibility is said not to be in the “Dutch national interest.” Yet what is ultimately affected is the Dutch economy (1.5% of GDP) and artists, who will have fewer and fewer opportunities to access international platforms—opportunities that are vital for many makers, economically and otherwise.

TransArtists does see growing awareness: open calls increasingly state that children and partners are welcome. But without a dedicated search function, this information remains scattered and hard to find. Artists still have to email dozens of residency organisations individually to ask about it.

The residency shown in the photo accompanying this article is not related to the content of the text.