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The Saari Residence is pleased to announce an Open Call for the 2025 Residency Program. We welcome applications from professional artists for the international Saari Residence in 2025. The residency periods for individual artists are two months long, and the residency includes a work grant in addition to accommodation. Artists groups can apply for group residencies in the summer of 2025.

Application period: 1–27 March 2024
Saari Residence
Mynämäki, Finland
saariresidence.fi

Saari Residence, maintained by Kone Foundation, is an international residence for artists in Mynämäki, Southwest Finland. Located in a culturally and historically significant countryside setting, the Saari Residence offers an excellent and inspiring working environment supporting artistic development and creativity.

Professional artists from all fields of art can apply for a residency by presenting a work plan in the application. Residence participants are encouraged to delve into their artistic work and to develop potential new directions for it side by side with the other residents.

The residence’s long-term activities and thinking are underpinned by an ecological approach, which also covers social and psychological sustainability. The keywords are slowness, insight and change. When selecting artists forthe residence, whether they work with ecological topics is not one of our selection criteria; instead, our focus on ecology lies in the residence’s overall activities.

The main purpose of the residency is not to network within the field of art or to host exhibitions or performances. No exhibition or performance is required at the end of the residency period.

Artists can apply for individual and group residency places. Successful applicants receive a working grant, accommodation, and workspace.

The four two-month-long working periods for individual artists and work partners take place in spring and autumn. During each period, there are seven artists, one Saari Invited Artist and one researcher working at the Saari Residence.

From June to mid-August, all the premises of the residence are reserved for groups of artists (minimum three people, maximum 18) working for a period of 2 to 4 weeks.

Half of the residency spots are given to artists living in Finland, and the other half are allocated to artists coming from abroad. The selection will represent various art fields, including both emerging artists and artists with longer careers.

We encourage those coming to the residence from outside Finland to apply for a grant for ecological travel to cover their travel expenses.

Artists arriving from Global South can apply for flight support and visa fees (processing and possible travel). Otherwise, we do not fund flying or other unsustainable means of transportation.

The travel support must be applied for at the same time as the residency grant; you cannot apply for it retrospectively.

Every year, the Saari Residence provides work facilities for around 50 individual artists, researchers or working groups. During its history, the residency has hosted around 750 artists and researchers from more than 50 countries.

Last year, 1,064 individual artists and working groups from 86 countries applied for residency. A residency for 2024 was granted to 3.3 per cent of the applicants.

APPLICATION PERIOD
The annual application period for residencies taking place in 2025 opens on 1 March and ends on Wednesday, 27 March 2024 at 4 p.m. Finnish time (Eastern European time, GMT +2). Only applications submitted via the online grant service during the application period will be considered.

APPLYING
Open call for residencies is always for the residency spots for the following year. 

The two-month individual residency periods are January to February 2025, March to April 2025, September to October 2025 and November to December 2025, while the group residencies for 2 to 4 weeks take place during themonths of June, July and August 2025.

Submit your proposal through the online grant service. Applications cannot be sent via email or outside the online service. 

Please read our guidelines carefully before applying. 

WHO CAN APPLY?
The residencies are intended for individual professional artists, fiction writers, poets, novelists, translators, curators and critics, and artistic collectives (workgroups or established organizations with a business ID, the minimum group size is 3 people) of all disciplines and all nationalities for the purpose of carrying out a project proposal presented in advance. We welcome artists at all stages of their professional life from emerging to well-established.

Work partners can apply for individual residency in a joint application.

The Saari Residence takes into account the perspectives of diversity, inclusion and equality. We are actively developing accessibility in our operations. We strive to implement positive special treatment in the application process to ensure diversity.

Artists with families and partners are also welcome at the residence. You can also bring your dog to the residence: one of the apartments is suitable for a person with a dog.

The residencies are designed for artistic work. Priority is given to multidisciplinary, new, or non-mainstream themes and fields of art.

Researchers or non-fiction writers cannot apply for residency through the open call.

The language used in Saari is English.