About Our Funded Folk Residencies
Applications NOW CLOSED FOR OUR 2026 RESIDENCY DATES. Applicants will be notified of selection DECISIONS before thanksgiving.
Our residencies include:
A free week-long stay at The Garret at Folkist Space
A $500 artist stipend to offset the costs of travel and time off
Studio space at the Kirkland Art Center
An artist welcome dinner at Folkist Space and a $50 gift card from our sponsors at Nola’s Restaurant
Free time to work on the project of your choice
The Kirkland Art Center, where our artists have studio space during the residency.
Funded Residencies, for and by folk artists
The mission of the Folkist Space Residency is to support visionary creators whose work does what folk art does best: help us to feel our feelings, inhabit our bodies, strengthen our communities, and move a little differently through the world.
We offer a handful of week-long funded residencies to folk artists each year in partnership with the Kirkland Art Center. You can find more details about the program here.
What’s our definition of “folk artist?”
We believe that any creative work with its roots in— or branches into— the lives of everyday working people is a kind of folk art. The folk art we love spans genres, mediums, and cultures, but is always rooted in the urgent aliveness of folks who are not separate from the world but fully immersed in it.
From textile arts to creative non-fiction, traditional music and dance, documentary photography, theatre arts, and more, we're looking for all kinds of creative folks whose locus of creation is primarily centered outside traditional academic and institutional structures of support. Find more weedsy details about the program and application process in our FAQs.
What do we look for in a successful applicant?
We don’t care what stage your arts career is at, where (or if) you went to school, how old you are, whether you’ve been published or shown in a gallery, or what your chosen medium is.
We do care about your current artmaking practice. Successful applicants display dedication to growth and mastery over time in their chosen work, and a clear vision for what they’re doing and why.
We also care about how your work responds to or affects the world around you. Most of our folk residents have some kind of community practice that is in conversation with their work.
For more information, you can explore our FAQs here.
Where Residents Stay
Residents spend their week at The Garret at Folkist Space and work in a studio at The Kirkland Art Center, which is just four doors down the street.
