Writing Residency

The Providence Commemoration Lab Writing Residency is a nine-month program that complements the Providence Commemoration Lab (PCL). The Residency will commission, support, and publish exploratory and place-based arts writing from three authors, writing in dialogue with the Lab’s nine site-specific engagements in Providence. Dr. Liz Maynard will serve as the facilitator and editor in the co-creation of an interdisciplinary and emergent residency process and publication.

ACT and RIHS will commission three authors to write three texts each that address different stages of the PCL’s artists’ process over the course of their 2024-2025 fellowships: development/design; production/implementation; and presentation to the public of the works. The artists will site and stage new, temporary projects on public property that invite unexpected ways of understanding commemoration as a communal process of historical redress and spatial reclamation at Columbus Square, Roger Williams Park, and Public Street. More information about the PCL can be found here. Residency authors’ correlative work will serve as archival “documents” of the process and offer critical perspectives on and interpretations of the work. 

The Residency is place-based and durational; each author is linked to one of the three sites and research, writing and publication will align with the unfolding timeline of the PCL artists. It includes a $10,000 stipend paid out in conjunction with publication in three stages. The Residency is conceptualized and facilitated by Liz Maynard, art historian, educator, writer, and editor, to support and expand arts writing (adventurously conceived) in Providence through a collaborative and community-driven model.

The primary goal of the Commemoration Conversations Writing Residency is to create a platform for writers to explore expansive definitions of arts writing. The Commemoration Lab encourages Providence residents to own and be accountable to new commemorative traditions. Writing is yet another way to explore by whom, for whom, and how stories get told, and also, by extension, how history is written.

The primary intended beneficiaries of this project are members of the Providence arts community, whose practices and impact are insufficiently documented or treated with much deserved critical attention. The producers hope that the Residency will foster arts writing in the “creative capital” for the benefit of artist practitioners in all media as well as writing as its own rich art form. Fostering a varied arts discourse in Providence broadens public conversations around our shared spaces.

Ultimately, the Residency aims to bolster arts infrastructure in Providence. PCL’s intention is to activate neighborhood stakeholder groups and encourage civic participation. Building a discourse and an archive of arts writing offers another way for Providence’s publics to engage vital questions about community, memory, and history in a processual and relational container. We hope this endeavor will generate momentum for others to support arts writing as meaningful cultural production in Providence.

Residency authors will write three texts each, addressing three different stages of the Lab artists’ work over the course of their 2024-2025 fellowships: development/design; production/implementation, and presentation to the public of the works. These texts will be published in three stages, contingent on and correlative with the ongoing schedule of the Lab. We envisage the development and publication of these texts as mirroring the iterative and collaborative ethos of the Commemoration Lab.  

 In support of fostering an expansive definition of “arts writing,” each writer will be supported as they explore three distinct formats:  

• a long-form (4,000-5,000 words), research-driven text, that examines the site, including (but not limited to) its history, publics, and the structure of the Commemoration Lab;
• an interpretive prose/poetry piece (a collection of poems, illustrations, evocative text etc.) illuminating some facet of the site/work explored in the long-form text; and 
• a collaborative text that includes the voices of the artists and community members of the site and situates the artists/work in its place and amongst its publics.  

The texts will be hosted on the Providence Commemoration Lab website and printed in a less media-rich format in a commemorative publication to be shared with Lab participants, libraries and archives. Illustrations and multimedia activations of the text are encouraged and supported.