Call for Writers for Create Change Artist Residency Program

Each year, The Laundromat Project selects three visual artists to participate in its six-month Create Change Artist Residency Program. Three writers are then paired with Create Change participants to write about their projects throughout their residency.

To Apply
The Laundromat Project is looking for three writers of any genre (creative writing, journalism, art criticism, etc.) Our goal is to assemble as many different perspectives of this work as possible in anticipation of a program catalogue. Profiles should be brief in length (500 words maximum) and will appear first on our website but will be archived for later publication.

If selected to profile one of the Create Change participants, we will connect the two of you so that you can spend time with their work at their respective laundromat site in order to engage with their process and ideas.

Each work will receive a $500 honorarium upon successful completion of the profile.

Please send three writing samples to exceed no more than 1,000 words each as PDF documents to Petrushka Bazin at petrushka(at)laundromatproject.org by July 22nd, 2009. If submitting an excerpt from a longer work, please send no more than five pages from the work and no additional samples.

About The Laundromat Project
The Laundromat Project is a community based arts organization committed to the well being of communities of color living on low incomes. We understand that creativity is a central component of healthy human beings, vibrant neighborhoods and thriving economies. Every year we invite artists to mount public art projects in laundromats throughout New York City. By bringing art to our neighbors, we aim to raise the quality of life in our community.

About Create Change
Create Change is a six-month public art residency program (May 15, 2009 – October 15, 2009) developed to connect communities and artists of color in meaningful ways. Each Create Change artist is charged with placing art-making in the context of everyday living by:

::producing a site-specific, socially relevant installation at their local laundromats

::engaging fellow laundry patrons as participants in their creative process; and

::increasing their own visibility as an artist and a neighbor in the area they call home.

Past projects have ranged from building a drawing stand where laundromat patrons and passersby exchanged drawings with a local artist; to sculpting a bench made from ceramic tiles designed by secondary school students; to hosting a book exchange around a bench made from books.

The themes of current projects include ideas of home, efforts to maintain or obtain affordable housing, “familiar strangers,” and storytelling.