Martin O’Leary, Pervasive Media Studio’s Community Lead reflects on what we learned from the random selection process for our Winter Residencies.

“Last year, as part of our annual Winter Residency programme, we experimented with a semi-randomised selection process for artists. Instead of asking for detailed proposals, applicants submitted short expressions of interest. From these, we randomly chose twelve artists to move forward to a shortlisting stage. Each artist was invited to visit the studio to discuss their ideas with our team, and final selection was based on a combination of a written proposal and interview. Each of the shortlisted artists was also paid a stipend for their time. This process was inspired by the work that Jerwood Arts have been doing with their 1:1 FUND."

We were blown away by the quality and depth of the conversations we were able to have with everyone on the shortlist, and we were delighted to be able to fund three wonderful artists through this scheme. Their projects have just begun, and you can read about their ideas here.

Read Martin’s whole blog here - where he talks about the process, why we chose to do this and how we might do things differently in the future.

As Studio Community Lead, Martin supports our community of residents in their creative and technical work.