WOULD LIKE TO MEET is a week-long exchange for artists who are generations apart but interested in bringing their practices together. Hosted and supported by Quarantine, this residency invites pairs of artists with a minimum of a twenty-year age gap to come together to spend a week framed by the provocation ‘what questions do you have for each other?’ 

The residency is aimed at facilitating intergenerational collaborations between artists who have not had the opportunity to work together before. Artists are invited to apply together and to spend the week exploring an area of shared interest, framed by the notion of asking each other questions.

The residencies are self-directed, but Quarantine will offer starting points and provocations as needed as well as being available for advice and conversations. How you spend the time is up to you – it might be a practical testing of an idea in a studio; a week-long conversation in different places around the city; a week spent in a library to explore something you’re both curious about; or anything else you can imagine… 

Artists can be working in any art-form but should have a live element to their practice and feel that their work is resonant with the type of input that Quarantine might be able to offer. The focus is on process and open exploration – there’s no expectation that you’ll produce something tangible by the end of the week (though you can if you want to, of course). You tell us what you’d like to do with a week together and what kind of space you’d like to work in (if any), and we’ll do our best to make this happen.

To foster a culture of sharing learning, at the end of the residency we’ll ask each pair of artists to do a short ‘talking heads’ video (or equivalent) that gives others an insight into your practices, the ideas you’ve been playing with, and the questions you’ve been left with. We hope this will also act as a useful moment of reflection and a way to look forward at what might come next for the artists involved. We’ll share this on our website.

We can support three pairs of artists in total. All artists must live within commuting distance of Manchester, and we are particularly interested in artists who are based in Greater Manchester.  Residencies will take place between 21 November and 11 December 2022 – please let us know your ideal dates when you apply. 

We’ll provide:

• A fee of £750 per artist (£1500 per pair) 
• A budget of £500 (per pair) that you can spend in whatever way you think will be useful or nourishing for your time together – to test something out, to visit somewhere that will feed your practice, to bring other expert voices into your process… 
• Travel costs (within reasonable commuting distance of Manchester)
• A shared meal that brings all the artists and the Quarantine team together 
• Everything we can – within reason – to make your residency happen in the way you’d like it to.

How to apply: 

Please apply as a pair by sending a short biog (and website link if available) for each artist, as well as answering the following questions either in writing (no more than 2x A4 pages) or as a video or audio file (no longer than 5 minutes) sent to [email protected] by midnight on Monday 26th September. 

• What is your age gap and why this collaboration? 
• What area of shared interest will you explore?
• What starting questions do you have for each other?
• What might you use the £500 to bring into the process? 
• What type of space might you want to work in (if any)?
• Is there anything else you need to best support your residency? 
• Do you have any access needs? 
• How do your practices resonate with the work Quarantine makes? 
• What are your preferred dates for your residency? 

Please also ensure each of you have also filled in a monitoring form here. These are submitted anonymously to help us gather data on who our open calls reach and, critically, who we are missing. 

Access and inclusion are at the heart of how Quarantine operates. We recognise that institutional racism, discrimination, and inequality exists in our sector and are dedicated to helping to address this. We particularly welcome applications from people with lived experience of racism or marginalisation. This includes working class, disabled, neurodiverse, LGBTQIA+, global majority individuals, and other marginalised groups, as well as inter-sectional individuals. We have a small access budget to support these residencies and are happy to discuss with you anything we can do to make the application process or residency experience more accessible for you.