ArtHouse Jersey has announced an exciting opportunity for artists to spend a week immersed in the historic walls of Elizabeth Castle in St. Aubin’s Bay.
ArtHouse Jersey’s Artist Lock-Ins are professionally facilitated residencies that bring creative people from a variety of disciplines, ages, backgrounds and experiences together to learn from each other and to respond to their surroundings. For its ninth iteration, taking place between Sunday 9 and Sunday 16 March 2025 this residency offers twelve adventurous artists the chance to explore, collaborate, and innovate in a truly unique setting where art, nature, and community converge.
ArtHouse Jersey offers a week of uninterrupted creativity where the pressures of daily life are left behind, and the focus is entirely on artistic exploration. The Artist Lock-in is facilitated by Sue Hill, Founding Artist of WildWorks – the renowned international theatre company best known for its 2011 production of ‘The Passion’ with Michael Sheen in Port Talbot. In association with WildWorks and Jersey Heritage, this unique project is produced by ArtHouse Jersey and provides artists with the time and space to consider new ways of working and to collaborate with people of different practices and artforms. ArtHouse Jersey first launched the project in 2012 in a private garden in St. Brelade. Eight Jersey born-artists, including Karen Le Roy-Harris and film director Michael Pearce, took part in the inaugural project.
Throughout the 2025 residency artists will create a wide variety of scratch work as part of their tasks working across mediums, including sculptures, dance pieces, films, theatre performances, sound and visual installations and original music. Artists are encouraged to not only play to their strengths whilst creating, but to also consider new and unfamiliar ways of working. They will remain on the islet for the duration of the residency, fostering a truly immersive experience.
Accommodation at the newly refurbished Elizabeth Castle is provided as well as meals, and materials.
This international residency is open to artists and arts professionals who are over the age of 21 from all disciplines and backgrounds. Artists must have a committed professional practice, and regularly present their work to an audience, whether through performance, exhibition, or community engagement. Those who have never experienced a residency before are particularly welcomed to apply.
Director of ArtHouse Jersey, Tom Dingle, said: “I am extremely pleased to see the return of our Artist Lock-In in 2025. This is a project that we began as an experiment as Jersey Arts Trust in 2011 and has since seen over 100 brilliant artists take part in what they describe to be a transformational process. Many of these artists, who are a mixture of local and international, have gone on to have pioneering roles in our wider programme, whilst all continue to be ambassadors for the incredible experience they had here in the Island during the Lock-In. We are particularly looking for artists who have an established practice and who regularly share their work with an audience and are keen to recruit a nice mix between artists from Jersey with those from overseas. A week making work in a castle with other creatives led by highly acclaimed facilitators – it’s surely an artist development dream!”
The deadline for applications is Monday 11th November. More information can be found here.
Picture credit: Gareth O’ Sullivan
