About
Activation Residency holds short-term residencies on eight acres of working farmland in Bethel, New York — land in the southern Catskills that has been gathering people for a long time. We offer artists something that is harder to find than funding: time on land, without the pressure to show for it.
Our programs center creative experimentation, ecological connection, and embodied practice. We are a Black-led, artist-run space. We are fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts.
MISSION
To cultivate environments where creative people can rest, experiment, collaborate, and build new visions for how we live with one another and the land.
VALUES
We believe artists deserve time, rest, and material support without pressure to produce. Care is not supplemental to creative sustainability — it is the condition for it.
We design programs that remove barriers rather than create them. This means we occasionally provide stipends so that participation does not come at a high personal cost.
We build programs around peer connection and shared experience. Strong artistic ecosystems grow through collaboration rather than competition.
PROGRAMS
Artist residencies are reshaping how artists spend time together. Inspired by programs like Denniston Hill, The Sable Project, The Wassaic Project, and ACRE Residency, Activation Residency is a contemporary residency finding new ways to honor the social, cultural, and agricultural dimensions of gathering creative people on land.
Our residencies are three to seven days. We support artists at all stages of their practice by facilitating cultural development — not through critique or assessment, but through time, land, and each other. Residents are given space to share ideas, explore interests, and build relationships that outlast the program.
We collaborate with a diverse range of artists, chefs, healing practitioners, and facilitators. Past programs have included Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication and Family Constellations with Meenadchi, and The Nap Ministry with Tricia Hersey.
After years at the Outlier Inn in Woodridge, New York, we now host programs on our own land at Forest Fringe Farm in Bethel, New York — the historic hamlet where the 1969 Woodstock festival took place.
ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
Music · 2019
Writing · 2019
Visual Arts · 2019
Visual Arts · 2019
Painting · 2019
Music · 2019
Music · 2019
Film · 2019
Music · 2019
Facilitation · 2019
Video · 2019
Food · 2019
Visual Arts · 2019
Writing · 2019
Creative Production · 2019
Facilitation · 2019
Visual Arts · 2019
Photography · 2019
Film · 2019
Dance · 2019
Education · 2019
Music · 2019
Music · 2019
Music · 2019
Photo · 2019
Writing · 2019
Video · 2019
Dance · 2019