PAIR: Pieter Artists In Residence

Access to tech and creative industry employment

East LA City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

PAIR: Pieter Artists-In-Residence, will address the need for creative studio and performance venues, financial support, marketing, tech and access support for BIPOC, Disabled, LGBTQIA+, Immigrant artists who are wildly underrepresented in LA’s arts platforms. This community has been historically excluded from LA arts spaces while receiving fewer opportunities to advance in their creative and artistic careers. Pieter has the opportunity to be a rare resource by offering this series of 6 Artist Residencies in Pieter’s welcoming, accessible, beautiful studio and performance venue. In a city where most dance and performance is concentrated on the westside, Pieter is an important hub in East LA’s Lincoln Heights, with a 15 plus year history of being a site for dance, performance and experimentation. This project serves as an opportunity for Pieter to provide more resources and support to its surrounding community, and Greater LA.

The PAIR program will use Pieter’s performance and creation venue in Lincoln Heights, which houses a 100 year old 3000 sq. ft. Ballroom, as a creation and presentation venue for six 6-8 week long residencies. Each residency will provide an artist or artist collective with a living-wage stipend, 30 hours of studio space, tech and marketing support, production support (including photography and documentation), and coordination of access needs to welcome a diverse audience. At the close of each residency, artists will share their work in a free offering of a performance, class series and/or workshop or artists talk, depending on the nature of their residency. 
PAIR aims to offer vital and sometimes life changing opportunities for both emerging and established artists, who identify as BIPOC, Disabled, LGBTQIA+, and or Immigrants. PAIR seeks to help under-resourced creatives make significant strides in their artistic careers, build networks amongst artists and arts organizations, and support increased employment and creative opportunities.
PAIR is a continuation of Pieter’s long history of residencies that provide artists space, funding, and resources along with free public offerings that foster arts learning and community gathering. Pieter’s goal is to use this funding as a launch pad for accessing further long-term funders to support PAIR as one of our anchor programs, ensuring this becomes an annual replicable offering for LA creatives to support a vibrant arts ecosystem in LA.

The PAIR program prioritizes employment in order to strengthen LA’s creative economy. The largest issue facing BIPOC, Queer, Trans, Disabled, Immigrant and other marginalized artists is access to and discrimination in employment and arts opportunities. Each residency provides a living-wage stipend to ensure artists have the freedom to focus on new and developing works. Pieter will provide the support necessary for artists to also strengthen the non-creative tools needed for a career in the arts - e.g. program descriptions, visual documentation, access needs, and marketing and production support. Building these skills and resources better positions artists to apply for & receive other residencies, teaching jobs, or artist grants. During a time when everyone is facing greater and greater economic challenges, the PAIR program supports LA County’s creative economy in ways that center the real-world needs of artists and marginalized people.