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Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

I could be the only person to have thought this, but when I saw this was a residency advertising money and accommodation I assumed this was a grant for an arts/culture programme. If it’s just me that thought that then I’m clearly too naive, but if ten people do then it might be worth adjusting the copy.

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Makes sense, it certainly is the case that these programs tend to pay people, though I have kind of learned to treat that with a bit of suspicion (having run lots of programs of that kind).

As they say, "if you are not the customer, you are the product", and I really wanted this fellowship to not be the kind of thing where the actual underlying motivation is some kind of recruitment scheme that drives the program objectives, while looking on the surface like a thing that is optimized to help the residents.

Yeah, the point of most artist residencies is that the artists are the product, not the customer. The general idea is that artists and art make a place more attractive to visit, so the residency brings artists to your place to attract an art-consuming customer demographic. Professional artists understand this dynamic and are very comfortable with it, and being the product in this way can be a very symbiotic relationship since (1) you get paid and (2) being in the new place with new people brings new ideas.

This seems to be more of a training camp or a writing intensive than a residency, but I am not sure what the appropriate name for that is.

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