Fogo Island Arts is announcing an open call for an experimental new residency dedicated to research into community economies and alternative economic models.
Historically a collection of outport fishing communities, Fogo Island’s most valuable assets were tied to the mercy of the sea. Access to these bountiful, but sometimes fickle and treacherous, waters enabled Fogo Island to remain predominantly a subsistence economy, trading for supplies with merchants, until late in the twentieth century. By then, industrial fishing trawlers streamed in from afar, using new technologies including more sophisticated nets, sonar, and the capacity to factory freeze the catch onboard, symbolising the arrival of a globalised pursuit of these assets. Subsequently facing a potential ‘modernisation’ – and resettlement – project by the Newfoundland government in the 1960s, the communities of Fogo Island determined to remain on the island, with the fishers consolidating into a cooperative that would enable the local community to take part in (and take on) the market economy. However, this global market soon revealed itself to have devastating effects on the local community, leading to declining populations, both at sea, and on land. The cooperative enabled the people of Fogo Island to diversify their assets more quickly than many other fishing communities in the region, but the impact of this decline had already rippled throughout the island. Today, Fogo Island continues to respond to the ebbs and flows of fish quotas, outside capital and local resilience, continuously recalibrating its footing amongst global economic tides.
As we navigate the swells of climate crisis with our increasingly corporate, extractive, and financialised frameworks dragging us along, places like Fogo Island remind us that adaptation and resilience are needed more than ever. In this spirit, this new residency will welcome research around heterodox economic thinking and alternative economic models, particularly from practitioners working at the intersection of arts and economies. What do economies look like when they are rooted in, and underpin, community? How could these ways of relating work to integrate nature and culture? What types of models could help us envisage novel ways of understanding assets, sharing resources and working collectively?
This residency will provide an opportunity for the selected resident(s) to live and work on Fogo Island, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada for a period of six weeks, up to three months. A budget of up to 25,000 CAD will be provided to support travel to Fogo Island and a new project or the development of an existing project for the selected resident(s). Alongside the project budget, the resident will be provided with accommodation, as well as a vehicle on Fogo Island. Successful candidates will be responsible for acquiring the necessary visas and driver’s license permissions, Fogo Island Arts will help facilitate this process. The residency period will commence from late 2023.
