Residencies
2025 open call: Watery Commons
We are pleased to announce the Connecting Threads 2025 residency programme, offering up to six paid and supported residency opportunities for creative practitioners who are based in the River Tweed catchment area.
Our artist residencies form a key strand of our programme for 2025, under the overall theme of Watery Commons.
We’re interested in your ideas of a watery commons that might bubble up on multiple scales across time and place. How can artists and creative practitioners navigate connections between the local and the global, the bodily and the systemic, the material and the metaphorical?
The residency begins with an initial Encounters week in June during which all selected residents will spend time together with the Connecting Threads programming team along the River Tweed. Thereafter, each resident has two months to undertake the remaining three weeks of the residency at their own pace.
How to apply
- Download the residency information pack for full details.
- Download an application form.
- Please complete the equalities monitoring form.
The deadline for expressions of interest is Monday 31 March, 9am.
About our 2024 artists in residence
Sam Laughlin, Untitled from Spinning Away (2023)
Upper Tweed: Sam Laughlin
June – September, 2024
Sam Laughlin is a British visual artist primarily concerned with intricate natural processes, patterns and cycles. Mainly utilising large format black and white photography, his work is characterised by sustained and informed engagement with the natural world - things which occur slowly and a slow way of looking at them.
For more detail on how Sam engaged with the developing ecology of Borders Forest Trust's Wild Heart sites, read his residency reflections.
Coleman and Hodges, Field Station: Here. Participatory walk and installation. VARC (2022)
Middle Tweed: Coleman and Hodges
May – October, 2024
Robbie Coleman and Jo Hodges are public artists based in Dumfries and Galloway. They have a shared arts practice that investigates ecological and socio-cultural systems, processes, relationships and change. They are interested in research, experimentation and collaboration. Their wide-ranging working methods include film, performance, visual art and installation.
For more information on how Coleman & Hodges explored the pathways of the middle section of the River Tweed, read their residency reflections.
Annie Lord, Grower Portraits. Text on illustrated apple wrappers. 2021
Lower Tweed: Annie Lord
July – September, 2024
Annie Lord is an artist and writer based in Midlothian. Her practice encompasses collaborative, socially engaged projects, visual artworks and creative non-fiction writing. She is fascinated by how we interact with the physical world – transforming plants, animals, and minerals into objects of artistic, scientific and domestic value.
For more insight into Annie's explorations of the newly restored Berwick Bridge in its 400th year, read her residency reflections.
www.annielord.co.uk