Location: Greensboro, North Carolina
Mission: Elsewhere is a non-profit organization building collaborative culture through the re-invention of old things. Through its living museum, residency program, and collaborative learning laboratory, Elsewhere generates a more curious, creative downtown Greensboro and globe.
Elsewhere, a living museum set in a former thrift store in downtown Greensboro, NC, is now accepting applications for 2013 residencies. Elsewhere residencies invite artists, curators, scholars, makers, storytellers, archivists, and educators to contribute to and interpret Elsewhere’s concepts, collections, and communities utilizing the museum’s immense 58-year collection of second-hand surplus as resource and inspiration for site-specific projects.
Elsewhere’s three-story museum is an evolving environment of living installations, public studios, and material resources. Elsewhere offers an experimental context for investigating material culture, engaging process and practice, and developing new collaborative approaches. Elsewhere is an active participant in the vitalization of its emerging downtown neighborhood, and an exceptional place for rethinking things in everyday and extraordinary culture.
Individuals and collaborative teams working across media, fields, and disciplines are encouraged to apply. Residencies are for 2-6 week project periods. Creative retreats, internships, fellowships and curatorial fellowships are also available.
Cost: $500 + $50 per week for room+board. A non-refundable $250 deposit reserves your residency spot upon acceptance, and is applied toward your program.
Number of Artists: Up to 6 at a time
Accommodations: Living at Elsewhere is to be immersed within a transforming artwork. It is also a public home set in an historic building with aging architectures and the promise of daily encounter with millions of things. Six artists are in residency at any given time, and shared accommodations are provided on the museum’s second floor in a former 1950s boarding house. The creature comforts are set amidst art installations created from the boarding house rooms. The summer months are hot and rainy, and the fall and spring are crisp. There is no central heat or AC and it can be quite dusty. We think you will be comfortably surprised if you think of it as indoor camping.
Residents participate in our FOOD CO-OP, which sources from local markets, a CSA, and our small kitchen garden. Vegetarian dinners occur 5 nights a week with a rotating team of staff and resident chefs, and the full kitchen stocks self-serve breakfast, lunch and snacks 24/7. Residents participate in a weekly chore schedule. Most find Elsewhere’s communal live-work environment an inspiring component of their residency experience.
Length of Stay: April–November for 2-6 weeks
Demographic: Individuals and collaborative teams working across media, fields, and disciplines are encouraged to apply. Artists, curators, scholars, makers, storytellers, archivists, and educators. Best practices are to work site-specifically and sustainably with the collection, help bridge new audiences with the work and future artists with the museum, and further evolve the function, form, concept and appearance of the living museum.
Benefits: YMCA access with residency, conceptual and material guidance, documentation, event opportunities, intern and volunteer assistance, online presence, living installations, audio/video equipment and lab, access to the community, vintage clothes to borrow daily, $50 artist supply funding, culinary lessons, workshops available (to administer or participate in), sewing/costume making opportunities, library science opportunities, musical sounds galore, woodshop/workshop and wood, bikes available for residents, fellowships, internships, artist talks and public studios.
Deadline: January 4, 2013
Rate My Artist Residency 
This place held a mythical presence in my life. I had known about it through friends going. I remember my first days were just about going around the space to figure it out. What materials could I use and what materials didn’t interest me at all. My fellow residents and I gave an artist talk, southern style, on the front stoop of the building; the front of the building opens up to become an outdoor community-inviting auditorium.
On day three, after our search, discovery, and presentations were over, me and the other residents began our projects. There were previous residents before us just rounding their projects up for their residency period. The overlap was nice and gave a great ebb and flow but an ultimate continuing production level in the space. As we would work in the space, we also learned how to dodge and engage with the community and tourists of Greensboro as they wandered around the first floor hiding in forts, reading out-dated books, playing with the music machine, and sitting in the kitchen drinking some freshly made sweet lemon tea. The space is open to the public as a living museum during the week.
Some days were slow and you thought would never end, some days you wandered the history-rich streets of Greensboro, or some days you worked heavily on your purposed project meeting with the supportive staff and interns to either discuss questions or document works.
Some days, there would be surprises happening right in our ‘living room’. Artists are invited to administer or participate in various workshops. There are chances to get down and dance at hootenannies and chances to rub elbows with Greensboro’s finest hunters at dinner events. One night you will have press from Russia coming in and photograph you eating dinner and the dogs barking out back.
The residency culminates with a big First Friday end (depending on your residency timing) where artists can schedule performances, film screenings, or finish and unveil their month-long project. In just this night alone, at lease 200 people (my guess, and might vary) come in through the door. The excitement is palpable.
Elsewhere is more than a break away in Southern America from the normal hum-drum working lifestyle. I learned how to play again, how to collaborate with my peers and the community of Greensboro, I learned how to improve my cooking skills by making something out of nothing during my dinner shift, I learned how to slow down to Greensboro time and how to thus slow down in life a little bit more, how to appreciate vintage clothing (everything) and I learned how to search around me and my environment (whether in Elsewhere or further in the world) and really try to make the most resources out of my surroundings (you could say Elsewhere is like an advanced level of Publicly Engaged Site-specificity 101).
To sum it up, this place is spectacular and full of potential within your own artistic practice. The people are as sweet as pie and the community is even sweeter. The price is perfect and you get a huge return for your money and investment. I would highly recommend this residency to anyone who is interested in exploring, playing, social practice, performance, culinary arts, costume/sewing projects, photography, video and filmmakers, curious beings, site-specific inventors, musicians, magicians, adventure-seekers, dream makers, and creative intellects of all colorful shapes and sizes.