Call for applications 2021

De Ateliers is an artists’ institute open to artists at the beginning of their professional career. It offers a two-year studio and tutoring programme that is best tailored to the needs of highly motivated artists who wish to strengthen their artistic foundation, develop their ideas and deepen their practice in a focused, critical environment among peers from around the globe. The programme is centred around weekly individual studio conversations, with regular and guest tutors, most of whom are practicing artists. The aim is to create a better understanding of one’s artistic position and process by offering a multiplicity of perspectives and critical feedback.

De Ateliers is dedicated to studio practice in the widest sense. It considers the studio to be a crucial locus for artistic production, one which serves as a malleable, porous membrane between artists and the world and that offers finely tuneable conditions for focus, reflection, engagement and exchange. The studio can be a place located in the eye of contemporary reality, where research, thinking and reflection is concentrated in the experimental act of making.

The individual and intensive nature of the De Ateliers programme, with weekly one-on-one studio visits by tutors on Tuesdays, demands a highly motivated and committed attitude. For those artists who are actively looking for regular critical feedback and who have an open attitude towards a wide range of artistic voices and opinions, the generous time and space the De Ateliers programme offers can produce a life changing experience.

De Ateliers is a small scale institution, with 20 spacious studios housed in a monumental studio building in the center of Amsterdam. It offers access to basic workshop facilities, a library, public programs and connections to relevant art and knowledge institutions in Amsterdam and beyond. To facilitate and support their stay in Amsterdam, participants at De Ateliers are able to get access to shared housing, and stipends to cover basic costs of living.

Although there is no formal age limit for applications, our experience is that most applicants are under 28 years old. Command over English is required. A completed art education is not required. All applications are reviewed by the artist tutor team of De Ateliers, and assessed along criteria like potential for development, artistic urgency, and an interest in the visual/material/formal possibilities of art practice in a studio context.

The deadline to apply for the working year 2021-2022 (starting on September 1, 2021) is March 1, 2021. Applications are open from January 1, 2021. The selection procedure takes approximately four months. Applicants are informed on the status of their application by email. Names of new participants are announced on the De Ateliers website early July.

For more information, please visit www.de-ateliers.nl/en/de-ateliers/programme/.

Apply here