Michael Wilkerson, in a forward to “Artist’s Communities” the 2000 edition, describes residency programs as “the nation’s research and development laboratories for the arts”. He goes on to explain “they spring from many different roots, but they serve exclusively to nurture art and support artists at the most vulnerable and invisible junctures of the creative process. Artists’ communities may be in a position to take a leadership role in a number of critical efforts: restoring the centrality of artists to our culture; developing new ideas of community and extended family; giving the creative process the same measure of esteem and significance as product, which is badly needed in all sectors of our society, not just the arts.”
In supporting the creative arts
through residency programs, artists’ communities are able to provide within the private sector, much needed opportunities for the individual artist. This is especially important at a time when public funding for the arts in America has become stagnant and unresponsive.
World wide, the need and demand for residency programs continues to grow. In this broader context the concept takes on the aspect of necessity. As the world’s population grows and cultures overlap and sometimes collide, the spirit of the creative arts stands to play a more important role than ever before in unification and understanding. As new facilities come into being we can only be encouraged by the presence of the need that brings them to life and by the possibilities that lie dormant in each life and talent nurtured by them.