BCAR Alachua County Teacher/Artist Residency

2025 Timeline

  • Application opens: April 7, 2025

  • Deadline for submission: April 30, 2025

  • Announce Recipients: May 7, 2025

  • Residency: July 13-27, 2025

Alachua County is filled with talented, dedicated artists who are also highly skilled and committed, certified full time public school teachers. Their lives are spent trying to balance the challenge of expressing their artistic selves while pursuing their profession as a public school educator.

The BCAR (Bryson County Artist Residency) program is designed to honor and nourish the artist in the educator by providing up to six public school educators from Florida with the opportunity to pursue their artistic work in the inspiring and fecund environment of the Bryson County Retreat.

A Bryson County residency is a gift of time and space for artists to attend to their work. There is no requirement to produce. It is an intensely personal time for concentration and join a community of artists from different disciplines with which to share and learn. Invited artists can seize the opportunity and find themselves more productive than at any other time in their creative lives. At the conclusion of the residency, resident artists will collaboratively produce an event open to the public, in which each artist will explain and/or demonstrate their work.

Eligibility criteria:

  • Full-time arts teacher in an Alachua County Public School with 5 consecutive years of teaching (e.g. creative writing, music, theatre, dance, visual art) Note: charter schools only eligible if managed by school district (eg having control over curriculum and admissions).

  • Plans to teach in an Alachua County Public School the year following the BC.AR program

  • Provide work samples required in each genre of residency plan (maximum of 3 files at 100MB per file)

Residency FAQ:

  • What is expected? While there is no requirement to produce completed works during the residency,  resident artists are encouraged to use this gift of time to work on current works or new bodies of work.

  • What is provided? Each artist will be provided a bedroom and bathroom in one of the three homes at the retreat. All houses are thoughtfully furnished with full kitchens, dining areas and laundry facilities. Some artists will share the living space as the homes are one, two and three-bedrooms with private baths. Work areas or studio spaces are available and the retreat will work with artists to accommodate their specific needs as much as possible. Access to Hickory Pond, Lake Santa Fe and the 200 acre retreat property are open to explore and enjoy.

  • Groceries and other items can be delivered directly to the residences.

  • What is NOT provided? Meals (except a welcome dinner); travel support; art supplies/specialized equipment; accommodation for spouses/family/guests/pets (this is a solo residency)

Bryson County Retreat:

The Bryson County Retreat is a not-for-profit artist retreat found in a 200 acre mixed pastural, pine, cypress and oak-forested and swamp-centered conservation area sandwiched between the 5000-acre Santa Fe Swamp WMA, Lake Santa Fe and Hickory Pond in Waldo, FL . Its homes have been lovingly and expertly refurbished and outfitted to maximize comfort and inspiration. Unique work spaces inside and outside the homes and outbuildings provide an opportunity for writers, painters, poets, playwrights, sculptors, composers, and other primary creators to work in new arenas.  Learn more about The Bryson County Artist Retreat here.