This E-residency themed Zero Hour is an initiative to foster a sense of community and cross-arts collaboration, pairing visual artists with performing artists over 4 weeks. We will then launch the final work developed through an online exhibition.

“Cultural fragmentation and conflict, and the cynicism and resentment that enable them, are environmental poisons. The real ecological crisis is not a merely practical and technical problem, but equally a crisis of collective will, a cultural crisis.” - Terry Patten

Theme: Zero Hour

In this present climate, our future is fluid and time is relative. Zero Hour outlines the idea of how we begin again. As an artist and as a collective whole,  it lies in our hands to rewrite the shape of our future. We are the seers, the mirrors and the weapons of healing and re-evaluation.  How do we create and share this reconstructive journey through our expression? Zero Hour is a space within which we are standing on the precipice of change and we invite you to dream and build this new world together.

How do we move away from the ego and the individual towards a personal and institutional reversion? The reintegration of matter and mind within the matrix of social evolution. This E-residency strives to create a space wherein you can find answers to these questions and be the architects of this new future. 

About the E-Residency and Online Exhibition

The E-residency is an initiative to foster a sense of community and cross-arts collaboration. We have 15 available places for visual artists and 15 available places for performing artists. Each visual artist will be paired with a performing artist and will develop their ideas collaboratively over 4 weeks. We will also have a mid residency CRIT, with some esteemed professionals who have been in the industry for 20+ years. This will be specific to your groups and thus they will be able to provide mentorship and act as sounding boards for your ideas, helping in this developmental phase of the project. At the end of the E-residency, you and your partner will be expected to submit a small body of work that we will design and launch on our website as an online exhibition.

Brief Timeline:

24/04/2020: Call Out Ends. Applicants are notified. Successful applicants will be notified of their pairings.

 W/c 27/04/2020: Week 1 (E-Res begins) 

 W/c 04/05/2020: Week  2

 W/c 11/05/2020: Week 3: CRIT Week

 W/c 18/05/2020: Week  4

 24/05/2020: Submission of your body of work. 

 12/06/2020: Online Exhibition Launch Date.

What we are looking for:

- We are looking for creative practitioners who work within the visual and performing arts, practicing any of the following but not limited to

• Dance & Movement

• Theatre

• Spoken Word

• Literature

• Music

• Painting 

• Drawing

• Printmaking

• Sculpture

• Textiles

• Performance Art

• Coding, AR, and VR.

• Photography

• Video

• Filmmaking 

• Animation

• Design

• Architecture

- Creatives that are open to working collaboratively, as the E-Residency has a fundamental emphasis on this process.

- A proposal that has scope for progression not just in your specialisation but the opposite art. (Eg. If you are a visual artist, we are looking to see an innovative idea that proposes working with a performing artist, vice versa.)

- A proposal that considers and is aware that the final format of the exhibition is online and therefore has some ideas of how to bring it from a physical space into virtual space.

- Are able to produce work at home and document them well.

- Have access to a fairly fast internet connection and are confident in their skills to access online video conferencing portals such as Zoom.

- Are looking to develop their practice in a new and exciting way and are interested in working with practitioners outside their art form.

About We Belong Here

We Belong Here is a pioneering movement led by the creative community for the community. It is about experimenting with the crucial themes of today, exposing society to expression and collective sharing and always celebrating creativity and diversity. We Belong Here, based in Leeds, UK creates opportunities for these ideas to be catalysed. We engage every kind of creative and give them a platform to exhibit, perform and express. We believe our community provides the building blocks of change. By supporting and nurturing them we create new generations of artists and artistry. We Belong Here stands by expression across art forms, be it artist, poets, dramatists, musicians or dancers, across age groups and across communities, building contemporary spaces where they may all exist in unison.