Your imagination needs space.
Our residency programme offers time and space at Coombe to pay attention to process.
Residencies typically last anywhere between 3 days to 3 weeks.
They are for artists of all kinds, from writers to musicians to playwrights and potters. They are also for producers, curators, directors and anyone else working professionally in the arts.
Typically time is spent reading, researching, thinking, rehearsing, writing, making, talking and walking.
The majority of residences are for rehearsal, research, writing, artistic development, planning and strategic direction, problem solving and the opportunity to bring people together who are working with each other remotely.
Available in 3 essential formats
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We work with a range of partners to deliver specific projects and residencies. Typically these take over all the spaces at Coombe for 5-10 days.
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Hire the smaller accommodation ‘Artist House’ (2 bedrooms) or larger Long Barn (11 bedrooms) or combine the two.
See fees and facilities below.
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We provide short residences of up to 3 nights/4 days for up to 3 people to include food & accommodation, particularly to those making work about or connected to, migration, climate change and human rights issues. These are funded by Coombe and the income we generate through our other courses and projects. Applicants need to cover their own travel and time/fees, we cover food/accommodation. Apply here
“[time at Coombe] enables many different moments in any creative process - time for reflection and consolidation, time for research, time for re-thinking and clarification, time for visioning and dreaming, time for resting and re-gathering. All of those moments are essential components of making artistic work and are often the moments which are most difficult to fund/afford/make space for, but Coombe supports artists in this unique and un-pressured way.”
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Costs of residencies at Coombe range from £12,600 +VAT for five days for the whole site with producer support through to fully subsidised and funded sort stays.
If you’re interested in partnering with us or hiring the space get in touch and we can give you a quote based on your requirements.
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Artist House - small house in the courtyard wtih double room, single room, mezzanine with sofa bed, living room with open fire, kitchen & bathroom.
Long Barn - 11 bedrooms (4 doubles, 7 singles) living room with open fire, kitchen, two bathrooms, 2 showers, 4 toilets.
Studios - Riley Studio 1 x space 9m x 5.3m + Jiranek Studio 8m x 5m (floor) 3m x 5.3m (stage) + pottery + print workshop + office.
Outdoor space/s Courtyard with outdoor eating area, field, stream, veg patch, chickens, fire pit.
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There is limited availability throughout the year because the residencies sit alongside our courses and down time when we do our own planning, resting and research.
Bristol Old Vic has committed to residencies for four writers at different levels of experience for a period of five years, starting in January 2025. Those writers are Winsome Pinnock, Hannah Khalil, Sam Parker and Muneera Pilgrim. Over the five years, the Theatre will use their resources and expertise to allow the writers time and space to develop and present new work. Additional to that, they will use resources and work in partnership to support the space between those commissions, connecting the writers with each other and ensuring they feel embedded and at home in our theatre.
As part of that annual commitment the writers will come to Coombe for a five day residency to get connected.
Working with Bristol Old Vic
SchumacherWild are launching a new Foundation Course. The transdisciplinary course creates a dialogue between disciplines: connecting craft with philosophy, between ecology and poetry, between economics and phenomenology, between design and mythology - it’s a polyphonic way of learning that responds to the individual and the group and examines fundamental questions from multiple perspectives - How should rulers be ruled? What is the difference between ancient and modern truth? Is an age of crisis a time for despair, or a unique opportunity for renewal? The course will provide opportunity for exploration through nature observation, writing, walking, dialogue and creative practice and is being run in three modules over five weeks.
Coombe will host one of the residential weeks as part of Module 3: INTER-ACTIONS – Learning From and Creating With Others.
Working with SchumacherWILD
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Schumacher College was co-founded on the Dartington Hall Estate in nearby Totnes in 1990 by Satish Kumar, John Lane, Stephan Harding, Anne Phillips, and others. They were inspired by E. F. Schumacher, the economist, environmentalist and author of Small Is Beautiful, which argued that the growth of capitalism came at a very high human and planetary cost. The first course ran in 1991 with visiting teacher James Lovelock, best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis.
In 2003 I started working for the Dartington Hall Trust in the arts department, over the 12 years that I worked there, we collaborated with the team at Schumacher. As Head of Programming I learnt a lot from interactions with the faculty and visiting speakers including Satish, Anne, Stephan, James Lovelock and Margaret Wheatley.
The physical college and the foundation that ran it closed last year, now a new kind of organisation – SchumacherWild, has formed with support from the Satish Kumar Foundation to continue the work. -
More information on the course see here
For info on the closure of the College on the Dartington Estate see here
