This year we are offering four Artist(s) Residencies.

These residencies provide artists or groups of artists with a budget, studio space, equipment, technical advice, expertise, and support for production and dramaturgy as needed to develop their projects. (A dramaturg is someone who helps you to write plays. They give ideas and advice to make the story better.)

Read our Residency FAQs here

| Discover Residencies

If you are chosen for one of the Discover residencies:

• you will get £5,000 to work on your project
• have up to 2 weeks in a studio to work on your project. You do not have to use the 2 weeks all at once. You can spread out the time over 3 months.

| Discover (Dumfries & Galloway)

This residency is open to an artist or group of artists who live in, or want to make work for, Dumfries and Galloway. The goal is to create a new performance work that can tour rurally in Scotland. It is for artists with lived experience of the challenges of living in a rural area. We are working with Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival and The Stove Network (through the What We Do Now project)

Application deadline: Tuesday 10 September at 10am.

We will contact you to tell you our decision by Thursday 31 October.

| Discover (Writer)

This residency is for writers who want to start work on a piece of new writing for theatre. Writers need to have had at least 1 written professional work made. This can have been in any form.

Application deadline: Tuesday 3 September 2024 at 10am.

Artists will be contacted about the outcome by Friday 25 October 2024.

| Develop Residencies

If you are chosen for one of the Develop residencies:

• You will get a budget of £15,000 for your project
• You will get other kinds of help. We will tell you about this below.

| Develop (Extended Reality (XR) Performance)

This residency is for theatre artists and technologists to work together to develop a new immersive performance that tells a story

XR Technologies could include mixed reality technologies – like 360 theatre (using a 360 degree film camera), Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Ambisonics (360 sound and spatial sound).

For this residency, we are working with the Creative Media Academy at University of the West of Scotland).

Stage 1 Deadline: Monday 23 September.

We will contact you by Friday 25 October.

| Develop (Artist in Community)

This residency is for an artist to create a community-driven project over six months with the community users of Possobilities in North Glasgow. The artist will spend 1 day per week at the Possobilities Centre working with the community. The residency is a way of learning more about where we’re based and how artists might work with the community.

The residency runs 2 days per week for 6 months.

Possobilities is a voluntary organisation in Glasgow that promotes healthy living that was founded in 1984 by disabled people in North Glasgow - The Centre – Possobilities.

Stage 1 Deadline: Tuesday 20 August 24.

We will contact you by Tuesday 3 September.

Eligibility | Who can apply for a residency?

To apply for a residency, you must:

• Be an artist, in any artform, who has professional experience (but we welcome people who are new to working in theatre or who want to change to a new role)
• Have an idea or project that fits into one of our programme priorities. Programme priorities are important goals that we want to achieve. We will list them below.
• live and work in Scotland
• Have the right to work in the UK
• Be 18 years old or older
• Not be a full-time student

You can apply even if you have not worked with us before.

You can apply to more than 1 residency:

• You can apply once to each of these residencies: Discover (Writer), Discover (Dumfries & Galloway), Develop (Extended Reality (XR) Performance).
• You can apply as many times as you like to Develop (Artist in Community), but each application must be for a different idea or project.

If you apply for more than 1 residency, use a different idea for each application. We will not choose the same artist for more than 1 residency.

We will not choose someone:

• who has been a lead artist (such as playwright or director) on a National Theatre of Scotland main stage production
  
• who has already had one of these opportunities:
  - Starter (Engine Room)
  - Discover or Develop (2022-23)
  - a writers’ attachment with NTS within the last 5 years
  
• who has had more than 3 works which have been commissioned and fully funded. This means that a venue or company has supported your play from the very beginning to being put on a main stage. We use main stage scale to refer to a production which has been presented in a venue with an audience of 250+ with a run of at least 1 week in a professionally funded production. This also refers to productions which have been commissioned by a venue or company from development stage all through to professional production.

| Our programme priorities

For all 4 residencies, we want artists whose project or idea fits into our programme priorities in creative ways. Programme priorities are important goals that we want to achieve. These goals include different types of projects, audiences, and themes:

• Work about climate justice and, or climate emergency. This means thinking about how to talk about the climate crisis in way that is fairer for all people.
• Work about modern Scotland
• Big and exciting events for lots of people (large-scale popular programming)
• Work by, with and for people in areas where theatre companies do not normally put on shows. For example, work that will travel around the countryside to smaller venues.
• “Site-specific” work. This means work that is specially made to fit with a specific place.
• Work by, with and for groups of people who were not treated fairly in the past and are still not included now. For example, disabled people, or People of Colour.
• Work for younger people (18-35)
• Work that celebrates all languages spoken in Scotland, like Gaelic, Scots, and British Sign Language (BSL).

We will host a Artist Residencies Q&A session. Come to this zoom Q&A session with any questions or queries you have about the residencies. Please contact artistresidency@nationaltheatrescotland.com if you have any access requirements - for example BSL interpreter, live captions etc