Writing Residency: Rabbit Island Residency

The Rabbit Island Residency provides financial support, time, and pristine natural spaces to challenge creative practices in a wilderness environment. Artists live and work on the island for 2-4 weeks, engaging directly with the landscape, responding to notions of conservation, ecology, and sustainability via their research and cultural works. The residency reflects on the American continent’s four hundred year history of settlement and division of land and stems from the idea that in a developed society intelligent organization of wild spaces is one of the most civilized things we can pursue.

The island itself, an unsettled and undivided space, enables artists to present commentary on these ideas, creating interpretations and solutions to issues of global importance–climate change, loss of natural habitat, the value of pristine watersheds, the environmental implications of entrepreneurship, and so forth. Modern understanding of our natural reality, as well as our cause-and-effect relationship to it, dictates a need for principles worthy of our time. If artists do not create the work that defines this new space, who will? Art is perhaps the purest form of creation and serves fittingly as a symbol for all human constructions.

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The deadline for applications is February 22, 2026, 11:59 PM EST. 

2-4 weeks plus $4000 stipend

• Download and review the Residency Application Guide.

• Review the Frequently Asked Questions. Please prepare the following application documents: Artist Statement (1,200 character limit)

• Provide a brief artist statement describing your practice. For group proposals, provide a collective artist statement describing your collaborative practice.

• Proposal (2,000 character limit)

• Provide a proposal or outline of the work that you would like to pursue on Rabbit Island. This section should be used to demonstrate the applicant's understanding of the context-specific nature of the Rabbit Island Residency Program. More information describing this can be reviewed in our Residency Application Guide. Our residency exists to engender creativity in the context of contemporary environmental issues. PLEASE NOTE: Historically we have received many applications that could be referred to as "Time and Space Applications". In these, artists propose working on ideas unrelated to contemporary environmental thought and simply seek time and space in the island wilderness to complete work. These type of applications are unlikely to be awarded residencies. For further guidance we recommend careful review of our Residency Application Guide and Frequently Asked Questions.

Work Samples
Submit up to 5 work samples. The individual filesize limit is 8 MB. Please follow a file naming format that includes work sample number, name(s), title (optional) and date (optional), in that order. Not following the below file naming format may result in your work samples not being seen.

NAME YOUR FILES— 01-Firstname-Lastname-Artwork-Title-Year.jpg
02-Firstname-Lastname-Artwork-Title-Year.jpg
03-Firstname-Lastname-Artwork-Title-Year.jpg
04-Firstname-Lastname-Artwork-Title-Year.jpg
05-Firstname-Lastname-Artwork-Title-Year.jpg

REQUIREMENTS— 

• Visual (still image): JPG format preferred, please limit to 5 MB or smaller in file size.

• Writing: PDF format. Limit the TOTAL number of submitted pages to 5 (i.e. 1 page per work sample).

• Audio: MP3 file, up to 3 minutes in length per work sample.

• Film, moving image, performance: PDF format containing URL to clip/excerpt 3 minutes in length or shorter per work sample. Vimeo, YouTube, or similar platforms work the best. Make sure to include password information if the link is password protected.

PLEASE NOTE: With visual submissions, optional additional context (materials, exhibition, etc.) can be included in the image file, or by creating a one-page PDF containing the image and brief text. Do not submit multi-page PDFs for visual submissions. If required by the Selection Committee during the review process, applicants may be contacted to provide additional context about their work samples. 

More information and application portal here.