Marquette Creative Residency extends deadline for applications

MARQUETTE — The Marquette Chamber of Commerce is extending the deadline for people interested in the Marquette Creative Residency.

The original deadline to apply for the residency was the 15th of December, but it has been extended until January 5th to allow more time for applicants, and three applicants will be selected for the residency. Along with extending the deadline, the application fee has also been waived to encourage more people to apply.

The residency is an opportunity for artists from out of state to live in Marquette for three months while they work in their field of expertise. Those that are selected will be living in the newly constructed One Marquette Place, and will be given access to Ampersand on Washington Street as a work space.

“The idea for the creative residency really hit a couple of years ago when the state of Michigan chose Marquette as one of five cities to test drive ideas for energizing the creative economy, and creative entrepreneurship,” said Josh MacIvor-Andersen, the chair of the Creative Residency Sub-committee of the Chamber of Commerce. “So one of the ideas that we had was to create a cooperative working space, for people doing freelance work can gather and have office space. And one of the other ideas was the creative residency that would draw people from outside of the state to our town, to come and work in whatever their discipline is, and share that experience of living and working in Marquette with their own communities.”

There is no specific art form that is required to be eligible for the residency and any form can apply for the open spots. The innagural three residents all had varying fields of expertise: Breesa Culver, a podcaster from Portland, Matthew Conboy, a photographer and art educator from Pittsburgh, and poet and journalist Megan Alpert from Washington D.C.

“All three came and lived in sort of a communal space in Marquette and were incredibly productive, and also incredibly engaged with the community,” MacIvor-Anderson said. “They did workshops. They lectured at the university. And were just really open to working with the people of Marquette.”

The upcoming residency would take place from March 1st until May 31st of 2019. MacIvor-Anderson also expressed his excitement about the ways in which the creative output has helped shape the local economy.

“A lot of towns in Michigan were defined by industries of extraction. For us, it was copper, it was iron. And as those industries shift and diminish a bit, a lot of people are wondering ‘what is it going to be? What is our economy going to look like?’ And there are many of us that really see, and really believe that it is the creative economy that is going to fill that vacuum, and we see it every single day in this town. And it’s pretty exciting for me to see an industry of extraction that draws from Marquette, the creative output. And this is Beth Millner Jewelry. And this is Studio Rad Designs, these are people with an international reach who are doing their work in town and having it go internationally. So part of what we’re doing here is using this residency to infuse new energy into the creative economy of Marquette.”

The art field is diverse, and MacIvor-Andersen urges anyone out of state that has a passion for their craft to apply for this rare opportunity.

“One of the unique things about the Marquette Residency is it’s not exclusive to traditional art, it’s open to any creator. It’s open to architects. It’s open to video game designers. It’s open to anybody involved in the creative economy, so we really encourage people to apply.”

For more information, or to apply for the Marquette Creative Residency, click here.