Annual Update
Published on December 22, 2023 by Eric Sacks
Hello friends of The Artist Residency at Papillon Farm!
Thank you for helping us make our inaugural year such a success. We learned so much this year and are excited to continue and grow the program in 2024!
We accomplished so much in this first year. We met our goals of completing the interior exterior and landscaping at our resident house. We also built two artist studios to be used by our residents. We connected with thousands on social media, held an in-person fundraiser in Little Italy, and ultimately received over 150 nominees for our program! Of course, our biggest accomplishment was welcoming and funding our first cohort of residents! They were Nifemi Ogunro, Shara Lunon, Silas Jones, Sade Abiodun and Dhynne Torres. It was a pleasure welcoming them to the farm and seeing them so inspired in the space and time together. You will always be a part of our family at Papillon Farm.
One of the main challenges we faced this year was figuring out a model for attracting and receiving applications for our residency. We ultimately went with a nomination system where people would donate (as little as a dollar) and in turn be able to nominate an artist of their choice. This worked well for us, but we will be thinking in the new year if we would like to continue this model, especially as these nominations ultimately made up a major portion of our budget. Another challenge we faced this year was related to weather! We learned that construction in the Catskills is not easy during the rainy seasons of April May and June. We love the rain because it is what makes Papillon Farm such a lush and wild paradise. However, this year we will make sure to better account for the weather when we are scheduling various aspects of our 2024 plan!
So what are our plans for 2024? In terms of capital improvement, we create more housing structures for residents and more art studios. This will allow us to support a larger cohort of artists this year. We also would like to extend our residency period to four weeks. We also would like to invite at least one established artist to mentor or work together with our residents. We also hope to host a "Friends of the Residency" week before the official 2024 season. We want to do this as a way to connect with our donors and alumni and also get some intimate insight into how we can make the experience even more valuable for our residents. These are just some of our many goals and we will continue to update our Open Collective in the early months of 2024 as our vision (and budget) becomes clearer!
Thank you all again for making our little residency possible. Thank you for caring about providing opportunities for artists who might not have them otherwise. Thank you for helping us bring the beauty and inspiration of Papillon Farms into more and more lives. We can't wait to see where things go from here and we appreciate you for joining us on this ride.
Thank you for helping us make our inaugural year such a success. We learned so much this year and are excited to continue and grow the program in 2024!
We accomplished so much in this first year. We met our goals of completing the interior exterior and landscaping at our resident house. We also built two artist studios to be used by our residents. We connected with thousands on social media, held an in-person fundraiser in Little Italy, and ultimately received over 150 nominees for our program! Of course, our biggest accomplishment was welcoming and funding our first cohort of residents! They were Nifemi Ogunro, Shara Lunon, Silas Jones, Sade Abiodun and Dhynne Torres. It was a pleasure welcoming them to the farm and seeing them so inspired in the space and time together. You will always be a part of our family at Papillon Farm.
One of the main challenges we faced this year was figuring out a model for attracting and receiving applications for our residency. We ultimately went with a nomination system where people would donate (as little as a dollar) and in turn be able to nominate an artist of their choice. This worked well for us, but we will be thinking in the new year if we would like to continue this model, especially as these nominations ultimately made up a major portion of our budget. Another challenge we faced this year was related to weather! We learned that construction in the Catskills is not easy during the rainy seasons of April May and June. We love the rain because it is what makes Papillon Farm such a lush and wild paradise. However, this year we will make sure to better account for the weather when we are scheduling various aspects of our 2024 plan!
So what are our plans for 2024? In terms of capital improvement, we create more housing structures for residents and more art studios. This will allow us to support a larger cohort of artists this year. We also would like to extend our residency period to four weeks. We also would like to invite at least one established artist to mentor or work together with our residents. We also hope to host a "Friends of the Residency" week before the official 2024 season. We want to do this as a way to connect with our donors and alumni and also get some intimate insight into how we can make the experience even more valuable for our residents. These are just some of our many goals and we will continue to update our Open Collective in the early months of 2024 as our vision (and budget) becomes clearer!
Thank you all again for making our little residency possible. Thank you for caring about providing opportunities for artists who might not have them otherwise. Thank you for helping us bring the beauty and inspiration of Papillon Farms into more and more lives. We can't wait to see where things go from here and we appreciate you for joining us on this ride.