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Draw to Perform is a wonderful and enriching experience for established and budding artists alike. During my stay, I learnt so much from the dynamism of the programme, my fellow artists, the visiting artists who held workshops, and of course, Ram!

During my stay, I spent a lot of time walking around Brighton, and the generosity of the place was both inspiring and restorative. During the process, there was not a day I wasn’t growing, both artistically and as an individual. I was learning to push forward, a step at a time, towards the final performance.

Draw to Perform offers a brilliant opportunity to develop your impulses, sharpen your vision, but most importantly, to surprise yourself. D2P was truly an unforgettable and precious experience, one that I will hold close to my heart for a really long time.

Zoea Tania Chen, Singapore, Nov 2019

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Attending this 15-day Residency has been an incredibly valuable experience. It was my first Artist in Residency and it has exceeded my expectations. Having had 15 days to work without any distractions of the responsibilities of everyday life was an incredible experience. It allowed me to really listen, see and feel. I discovered new ways to channel my inspiration and was able to use techniques from the workshops to enhance my performances.

The selection of International artists and their incredible experience they brought to the table was amazing. Having each of us present a short slideshow at the start gave us an idea about each other processes, ideas, backgrounds and personalities. Having been able to collaborate with these wonderful International artists has made it clear to me how important it is to share our knowledge and experience in order to develop as an Artist. Our backgrounds, ages, and cultures were so diverse. It opened my eyes to a broader way of thinking and creating. In our workshops, everyone reacted different to the tasks at hand and led to unexpected actions, emotions and connections. I learned to be more in tune with myself and to let my instincts guide me in my inspiration and learned to act on this on a much deeper level. This will have a great impact on my future work.

The workshops were very enriching. I enjoyed the experimental mark making using sound, movement in space and learning how to make conscious movements where you end one movement and allow this movement to be before you start the next movement. The workshop with Marega Palser was a stand out to me. It was fantastic borrowing her for feedback on our ideas for our final performances. The workshops with Ram were lively, open to interpretation and unexpected actions were encouraged to further explore. Working with sound as part of a performance or drawing was new to me and I ended up incorporating sound in my final work. Ram provided challenging and encouraging feedback on our ideas for our final performances. It really assisted me to see what was really important in my work and how to make it an engaging experience/performance for the viewer.

The gallery and studio visits were very well organised and it was so nice to be able to talk to Oliver Hein and Kiki Stickle about their processes, art practice and how they use their shared space.

The public performances were great fun. We had a couple of solo performances on the day and a couple of group ones that sparked a lot of positive reactions by the public and even a few people from the public participated in the group performances.

The Copperdollar studios were absolutely amazing. It had lots of light and the owner, Kate, was really accommodating to keep us warm and comfortable. The biggest challenge for me was the restrictions of the studio. Instead of letting this hinder me, I saw this as an opportunity to use this to lead my way of thinking and creating to areas I hadn’t thought of going before.

The best part was of the residency was having other like-minded Artists to share this experience with. There was always someone there to:
– share ideas with
– get feedback from
– having a person to practice with
– have a brainstorm with
– provide or receive technical or practical support from someone
– bring something from the apartment if you had forgotten something
– someone that was able to record your processes by taking photos or videos
– have a laugh with or burst out with
– share a meal with or go supply shopping with
– or simply provide a bit of emotional and mental support.

I have made friends for life during residency and am looking forward to creating with them in the future once again. I can nothing but highly recommend this residency.

Mieke van den Berg, Australia, Jun 2019

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The D2P residence has far exceeded my expectations. Workshops and personalized coaching with artists really liberated my drawing practice and opened up new horizons. Working time in the workshop allowed to explore and exchange with the other participants. Visits to museums, galleries and artists’ studios were inspiring. I come back from this residency with not only new tools and a new approach to my artistic practice, but also – and most importantly – with a rich network of international contacts that I intend to keep active. People I met during this residency are dear and precious to me. Thank you Ram for putting together this rigorous, relevant, rich and intense program.

Violaine Lafortune, Canada, Oct 2018

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Thank you for this incredible residency! It was an inspiring experience with this amazing crews. The workshops and artists talks here really gave me a lot of inspiration and passion for doing performance. I would not forget the day we had the collaborative performances in the city. It is wonderful to see the surprising reaction and feeling for the audiences and ourselves. The communities with you talented people literally moved my idea went further than I did alone. The most important thing is I feel full of love in this lovely team.

Those days changed my mind and my practices of making art a lot. I am grateful for everything in this residency. Looking forward to next meet and work together. Many thanks.

Hiuyee Wu, China, Oct 2018

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I had the opportunity to participate in an artist residency with Draw To Perform in Brighton, UK, for two weeks. Coming from a background in painting with hopes to explore the performative aspects of drawing in an experimental format I was not disappointed. My fellow residents were motivational, professional, supportive and offered multiple perspectives from diverse experiences. The shared studio/open format working space allowed for unstructured dialogue and experiments, as well as for more formally prepared workshops, activities, and presentations from visiting artists. Through studio visits, gallery and museum tours, attending live performances, as well as executing our own collaborative public actions we were thoroughly immersed in the environment and its art scene.

Working toward a final performance was a challenge that forced me to try out methods that I hadn’t explored before, allowing me to take bold steps into new territory. I feel that the work I was able to accomplish, as well the knowledge gained from relevant workshops and dialogue, has helped me better discover myself as an artist and a person in a truly exciting way.

Rachel Obranovich, Switzerland, Oct 2018

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The residency has been a fantastic experience and more than met my expectations. I have met and worked with an amazing group of international artists and learned so much from them and the workshops.

The workshops were varied and both challenged and encouraged me to try new approaches. The tutorials with the guest artists, Kimvi and Echo, were invaluable in helping me to make the transition from drawing into performative drawing.

The day of public performances out on the streets of Brighton was a great way to work individually and collaboratively and to gain confidence in performing in public.

I really liked the studio space and appreciated the amount of access to the space, e.g. all day and evenings. My only comment about the space was the understandable worry about making a mess and would suggest that if the venue is used for future residencies that perhaps a heavy duty plastic could be taped securely down across the whole floor space before the residency starts rather than needing to spend time cleaning the floor each day.

The presentations by the other residency artists really helped to get to know each other and promote collaborative working for the public performance day.  The group meals were also really good way to get to know each other and created a real team spirit. I also found the performance drawing film night really useful learning experience.

Carrie Mason, UK, Oct 2018

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The D2P residency was a very rewarding and exciting experience that surpassed my expectations. I learnt a lot from both the other artists in residence and from invited artists. I had the opportunity to test new approaches and strengthen my practice and to build an amazing long-term networking.

The set of activities organized by its curator Ram Samocha were really interesting and enriching, especially the workshops and talks where performative drawing artists, including Ram himself, helped us to experiment with new perspectives on mark-making, sound, spoken and written language, movement and performance. I also very much enjoyed our visit to local artists’ studios and the interesting conversations we held with them.

Regarding the group of artists in residence, I think the selection of participants was very good. Sharing a studio space with such talented artists, who came from different backgrounds and countries, facilitated an interesting exchange of ideas. It helped me to take into account different points of view and to develop exciting collaborations.

The public performance day was an experience that I found particularly rewarding since it allowed us to collaborate in different actions and locations, and to have an organic audience that didn’t expect us to perform at all. It was very interesting to notice the difference between this kind of audience and the one who intentionally goes to a gallery expecting to see artists performing, and to see how many unexpected things can happen when you perform in the public space.

In terms of my practice, it was pushed forward in several senses, partially thanks to the inspiration coming from the venue itself, partially thanks to the feedback coming from Ram and my peers. My site-specific practice responded for the first time to the historical memory of the place, and not just to its architecture. I managed to scale down in one of my performances, which I consider a significant achievement since usually, I tend to work on a very large scale. Sound gained a special importance in both of my performances compared to my previous works, in which it used to be important to some extent but not as fundamental as in the works developed during this residency. Last, but not least, I managed to work without using any traditional drawing materials, which I perhaps consider to be the biggest change. All of these interesting new approaches emerged from the structure and environment provided in the D2P residency. The experimentation developed there has totally opened a new world of possibilities that I can now keep exploring individually in my studio.

In terms of things that could be improved, I would recommend that a short presentation about every participant’s practice would be officially included in the program during the first days, as all of us agreed that it was very useful and helpful in order to get to know each other, and to find differences and similarities in order to plan possible collaborations.

I would also recommend that more informal meetings are scheduled in the program, such as informal dinners in the studio or simply try to spend more of the participant’s spare time together. This will help to strengthen even more the relationships between the artists in residence and will help to build even more long lasting networking that will facilitate future opportunities.

Overall, my level of satisfaction with the D2P residency program is very high. It is an excellent opportunity I would recommend with no hesitation to any artists interested in performative drawing.

M.Lohrum, UK, Oct 2018

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The residency has been a wonderful experience, I have learned a lot and enjoy two hard workweeks. The best of the residence have been the artists, the human group we met. The exchange between artists who came from different parts of the world, but especially the different works, the different ways to work and understand performance and drawing have been the main thing for having an amazing experience. I am grateful for meeting so different people who teach me a lot.

So, the best thing in the residency was been for two weeks with these other artists, the level of knowledge and the quality of all their works. I think we have also a really good time; two weeks of residency are perfect time. Another great thing was the workshops and meeting with other artists, most of all when we have a long time with them as Echo Morgan and Kimvi, because there we had a real feedback and a good knowledge of their works, thoughts, and feelings.

I really love the two performance sessions, in the streets and in the studios, the space for work was nice and always the best people, people, people!!! And the most important feedback, I will do it again, and I extremely recommend the residency.

María Vallina, Spain, Oct 2018