Artist Residencies and Learning Programmes
South West France
Are you an artist looking to develop your art and professional practise? Are you interested in learning how to make your artistic dreams more sustainable? Keen to ensure your art has relevance to the world and the challenges we face together? Or maybe you are looking to use your artistic practice as an educator, social activist or community leader?
In unique residency programmes, we invite you to be part of the magical Clos de Gaye community in south west France, where you can come together with other artists, facilitators, educators, cultural leaders, collectors and curators in extraordinary experiences that help you grow as an ‘artist-leader’, stretch the boundaries of your thinking of what your art can do in the world, and help you build a profitable, sustainable career as an artist or cultural creative.
We have a particular, though not exclusive, focus on supporting female artists, as well as those from migrant, refugee and diaspora populations.
Residencies at Clos de Gaye
Come and spend some time in this unique part of south west France, nestled at the foothills of the Pyrénees, an hour from the Basque coast, with some of the most dramatic and artistically inspiring scenery.
Stay a week, a month, or several months to work on a piece of art, build community with other artists and showcase or exhibit your work in our community spaces.
Our beautifully appointed rooms, each with their own desk, shared bathroom and space for reflection and creation, and all facing our stunning view on the mountains, create an unparalleled opportunity to inspire, energise and activate your artistic spirit.
Whether you are a writer, painter, musician, performer or film maker, or even a social activist working on a creative project, take the time to bury yourself in the your art in community with others. We have artist studios and performing spaces, to give you the freedom and flexibility to create at your own pace.
“ Nobody is capable of becoming a real artist if he didn’t feel to some extent that his life and talent belong to all of humanity, and that everything that nature has given him is given to him for humanity”
— Nikolai Demidov
What you will get
Working with our international faculty during your residency, you will embark on a series of learning experiences that give you the tools to step into a different level of leadership as an artist.
Five different programmes
Workshops on the following topics:
- Develop your internal leadership
- Communications for fundraising and business development
- Monetising your work
- The artist as activist and educator
- The pedagogy of the community artist
Community engagement
Working with the team at The Centre for the Arts and Global Leadership to develop a series of workshops, talks and discussions during your time in the residency. This could be in the form of integrating with one of our programmes with children in local schools or as part of our Global Explorers and Summer Camp programmes as well as sharing your work with a local audience through our Thursday night ‘Meet the Artist’ Salons as well as our Friday night ‘Jefferson Dinners’.
Evening dinners
Come together with others on the programme to share stories about your journey as an artist, in a spirit of collaboration and support, to sustain you on your journey and ‘build your tribe’ for the long hall.
Strategic planning and business support
Write and develop a business plan to aid you in the next steps of your career
Be mentored virtually by one of our career coaches for the 12 months after your retreat
Exhibit or showcase your work
Use our beautiful space as a backdrop to exhibit your work or perform during your time here, enabling you to share your work with the local community and our international visitors.
Develop long-term sustainability
We seek to support you to sell your work through on online and real life shop at Clos de Gaye, leveraging our platform and community across the world to help you develop new audiences for your work. We also look for opportunities to involve you in our retreat programmes, Summer Camps and other educational work at the Centre and to invite you into our community of artists, collectors and curators to maximise your exposure to new buyers.
Change the World
Be part of our groundbreaking and visionary ‘action summits’, held on the Clos de Gaye estate during the autumn and winter months, or take part in our annual International Festival for the Arts and Social Change during the summer season. Opportunities to lead, take part or help shape the conversation during our workshops, discussions, performances and strategic planning sessions, and through our work at The Foundry, to bring deeper humanity, a bolder and more expansive vision and large-scale change in how we can reshape our world for a better future for us all.
Intensive ‘Meet the Collector’ retreat
We also offer week-long intensive retreats with ‘patron-collectors’ and curators looking to identify new or emerging artists to build new communities of support for the arts. Looking to disrupt the current extractive model of artist-gallery or funder relationship that often leaves the artist feeling exploited and not fairly recompensed for their work, we seek to nurture regenerative relationships to make artists more sustainable and open collectors up to new and unexpected relationships of shared value.
Our Mission
We are on a mission to harness the power of the arts to make a massive impact in the state of our world today. For too long, artists have been on the periphery of society, denied not just financing or opportunities to grow their impact, but, critically, left out of the important conversations happening in the corridors of power. We want to change this, by not only using participation in the arts to transform the potential of our corporate, government and civil society leaders, but by also supporting artists to step into their own leadership, and have an outsized, positive impact in our world today, placing the role of art and artists at the centre of transformation in our world.
If you are passionate about the role that the arts can play in our world, we want to hear from you! We not only provide you with opportunities to develop your own leadership skills through courses and programmes that support your personal and professional journey, but we also want you to be part of what we are building at the Centre, through our annual Festival, residency programmes, action summits, corporate training initiatives and our educational work in communities around the world.
Does this sound like it could be interesting? Take some time to look through the different opportunities and then do reach out to us to let us know how you’d like to get involved!
Clos de Gaye
Extraordinary experiences where the world comes together for impact
