graduate research-creation residency
february 18-24, 2025
gibraltar point centre for the arts, toronto island, ontario, canada
Image: Discussion Island, Simon Pope (2018). Production still.
About
This new thematic residency at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts on Toronto Island (Ontario, Canada) provides additional, extra-institutional peer-support for creative practitioners undertaking graduate research-creation projects.
Convened by artist Simon Pope, during the February 2025 reading week/mid-semester break, this week-long residency on Toronto Island provides studio space, accommodation, and peer-led discussion to supplement the support provided by your host institution, committee or supervisory team. Emphasis will be on your own creative practice and its relationship to Masters and Doctoral level research processes. As such, there will be ample opportunity for self-directed work in the studios, as well as group and individual meetings addressing questions that emerge from your own project. You are encouraged to present work-in-progress at one of the sessions at the end of each working-day, and to share insights into your own research process with your peers.
We will also touch on more general concerns, such as how to shape a research-creation thesis or project in relation to disciplinary and institutional expectations, the interdisciplinary potentials of research-creation methodologies, approaches to academic writing, and strategies for the presentation and examination of your project. One-to-one meetings attend to the particular details of your project in a familiar diagnostic, supervisory/tutorial mode.
The residency is self-directed, enabling residents to make work in the studios, with daily group meetings which Simon will guide towards discussion of research methodology, research-creation/practice-led processes, literature review, research validity, thesis formats, writing formats, etc. There will be a one or two masters students attending, but largely this will be skewed towards doctoral work. Simon will encourage participants to present their work to each other throughout the week, and to focus on questions that have emerged for them – primarily about the research process, but also on their specific research question and context.
The residency can accommodate a maximum of 16 residents, and Simon will be holding 1-2 hour meetings with each of them individually at the start of the week – studio visits in effect – so that they also get significant one-to-one conversations about their project, and some time to open this out to the wider group as the week progresses.
accommodations
This residency is hosted by the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts on Toronto Island, Ontario – a 10 minute ferry ride away from Toronto’s downtown on the Treaty land of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. More information on facilities are at https://gibraltarpointcentre.ca/
Residents will have private bedrooms, along with access to a shared studio, shared kitchen, and a shuttle bus service to and from the venue from the ferry docks.
The large communal kitchen has space for residents to prepare meals. The ferry docks in downtown Toronto, with supermarkets near Union Station (train link to the airport), so food and cooking supplies can be purchased there and then brought to the Centre via ferry and bus. Alternatively, a local delivery service can drop off food in advance.
Transart students are responsible for accommodation fees of $405.50 CAD (approximately $285 USD) for accommodation/studio space on the island, to be paid to the residency organizers directly via invoice. Residents are responsible for their own meals, and they should bring food or order a delivery to the island from a local provider.
bio
Simon Pope is an artist with over 25 years experience of working within art schools and universities, convening MA/MFA programmes and supervising doctoral students. He holds a practice-led research degree (DPhil) from the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford and is currently a Research Associate at the University of Exeter (UK), an Eccles Fellow at the British Library, and a supervisor for Transart Institute/Liverpool John Moores University’s practice-led PhD programme.