What is a residency session at Mildred’s Lane?

Mildred’s Lane hosts a unique residency program of intensive, 1-to-4 week “sessions” during the Spring and Summer months. See descriptions of this summer’s residency sessions here.

Session topics and collaborators vary year to year, guided by the Mildred’s Lane Advisory Council. Each session is a unique embodiment of our pedagogical vision, through which hierarchies of teacher/student, institution/individual, artist/nonartist are dissolved. Sessions create a learning environment for creative collaborators to swarm around topics of mutual interest, always in dialogue with the site-specific ecologies of Mildred’s Lane, a 93-acre home and project-site in the deep woods of Pennsylvania.

The model for residency sessions has been developed over more than two decades of experimental social practice at Mildred’s Lane, and the format of each session remains variable and project-specific. Participants in a session become integral collaborators in its final form.

What could I learn at a residency session?

Fellows can also be sponsored by their workplaces, as professional development. Deepening skills in collaboration, encouraging visionary thinking and strategy, exposure to broader networks, and space to develop new ideas are all potential benefits of attending a session.

Mildred’s Lane provides a unique frame for learning and growth, both personal and professional. Experimentation and exploration are the ways we approach living and working together.

Past fellows have left Mildred’s Lane with a renewed sense of direction, with their own practice; a deepened understanding and commitment to true collaboration and dialogue; sparks of new ideas to push toward, prompted by the session’s thematic content; meaningful and lasting relationships with other fellows, guest participants, and staff; along with inspiration to reimagine their relationships to their work and ways of living.

Significant and subtle transformations are possible—as with any experience, what you take away is correlated to your investment.

How can I attend a residency session?

Those who enroll in our intensive residency sessions are called Session Fellows, or simply Fellows. They staySee descriptions of this summer’s residency sessions here. in residence at Mildred’s Lane for the duration of a session, guided by their session facilitator(s) and the Mildred’s Lane team.

Tuition costs cover all accommodations, food, and materials related to sessions. See current tuition costs here.

Fellows are often sponsored by academic institutions. If you are a graduate student or university faculty member, inquire with your institution about funding for research, residencies, and continuing education. Mildred’s Lane has partnered with dozens of university programs and art schools  since 2008. See more information about Sending Institutions here

If you are interested in learning more, please read our current Program Zine for further information and application instructions. Spaces are limited and applicants are encouraged to submit their materials prior to May 1st! If you have questions, please contact us at workstyles@mildredslane.org.

Fellows can also be sponsored by their workplaces, as professional development. Deepening skills in collaboration, encouraging visionary thinking and strategy, exposure to broader networks, and space to develop new ideas are all potential benefits of attending a session.

Being There

Mildred's Lane is an ideal site for institutions, students, individual and group retreats, workshops, conferences, and think tanks. It is a tranquil meadow, deep in the woods, far from distractions, with a unique cultural atmosphere to catalyze productive discussion and making. We can house small groups, with rustic outbuildings for discussions and meetings as well as presentation spaces. Located walking distance in nearby river hamlet of Narrowsburg, NY is a large studio and a project space/gallery for use if organized in advance. Mildred's Lane is a no-service system, but in addition to this bewildering site's amenities, we help organize the freshest seasonal, local, organic produce. 

We are lodging in the deep woods, a world-renowned, large scale, art installation, and vernacular architecture landscape/nature site – a transformative experience. There are daily activities, including intensive workshops, lectures, and seminars by dynamic contributing guests, thinkers, and creative producers that outnumber fellows by three to one during the summer months. We work together – in collaboration – on large-scale artist site works.

We are interconnected, international characters from all disciplines that help guide and create new sustainable habits for the future through the philosophical, experience-based teachings of workstyles. Together we conceptualize and produce socials, public engagements with the town, and the greater community.

Importantly, the experience forms communities, lifelong friends, career networking, especially to Mildred's Lane. Finally, with extended stays and collaboration, projects, and exchange, a Certificate of Plenipotentiary is awarded for a one-of-a-kind knowledge-based experience. 

All visitors must request an invitation to reserve a place or to attend events.

Commons of Mildred's Lane.

Mildred's Lane is a landscape of agrarian outbuildings, camps, artists' installations, a historic homestead, and a whole community of animals, forests, ponds, fields, and streams. The old homestead house is now the Mildred's Lane Transhistorical Society and Archaeological Museum, an ongoing project, and land trust becoming.  We are slowly working on the preservation of a historical site, living with the past, present, and future. Currently, it manifests in the project, Mildred Archaeology, as we slowly repair and install the 1830's house and outbuildings, with parts of the site dating back to the mid-eighteenth century.

The Mildred Complex(ity) project space is the public face of Mildred's Lane on Main Street U.S.A. Closely situated to Mildred's Lane, the storefront is walking distance across the Delaware River in nearby Narrowsburg, NY. After a long series of think tanks on the future of exchange in contemporary art, Mildred's Lane established this off-site storefront-studio-project space for broader social engagement Our town projects aim to explore the dynamics of exchange and exhibition. Practitioners experiment with new ways to integrate communities through interconnecting disciplines that have been over-coded by exclusionary systems.

The town projects manifest in installations, performances, workshops, lectures, debates, town meetings, and, subsequently, more civic involvement. These community collaborations activate this particular geography charged with local environmental activism.

Department of Interstitchiaries is the studio /office at Main and Bridge Street in Narrowsburg, where fellows gather around workshops, making, and sharing ideas. During the summer, the space functions as a presentation space for Town Friday events and workshops. 

A Guide To The Field is a shared curatorial and exhibition platform for artists swarming around practices in the social sphere. It is currently occupying the lower woods of Mildred’s Lane, co-curated by J. Morgan Puett in collaboration with other artists and curators.

Unlike a typical 'field guide,' where one searches for identification and definition of the natural world, A Guide to the Field creates a field by naming it. It offers alternatives to what needs guiding, interpretation, and consumption, with questions defining what a future field could be. Very like a typical gallery, it exhibits and sells things. However, these creative individuals are redefining retail practices for the 21st-century. Artists working in the social sphere respond to topic-driven conversations that emerge as installations – swarmings – in a game-like manner.

Day Visits are by appointment requesting an invitation at the website, and by receiving our announcements about the Town Fridays and Social Saturdays throughout the summer. Saturdays are when we have tours and engage with a set program. However, we also take in destination guests on weekdays by requesting an invitation and making an appointment.

Community Involvement is omnipresent and activated through; A Guide to the Field, Artist's Projects, Town Fridays, Social Saturdays, Exhibitions, Workshops, Events, and more.

Town Fridays. Events and exhibitions hosted by The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space/Gallery, and other town locations. A Seasonal series of local creatives presenting ideas in conversation. Resident Artists in Complex(ity) show installations, performances, workshops, lectures, debates, town meetings, and, subsequently, more civic involvement. These activities are for and with our community building renewable sociality charged with local environmental activism. Free and open to the public.  

Social Saturdays. Mildred's Lane, the site, is open to the invited public in the summer. Request an invitation to visit and tour the ongoing landscape projects and vernacular installations, all highlights of the site. On Social Saturdays, a renowned artist lectures or performs, and we experience artful bonfires. These are events are announced throughout the season.