 Hi everyone, my name is Sebastian Sanza Santa Maria, former co-founder of Residency Unlimited. And I'm Ashley Tucker and the Program Director at Artistic Freedom Initiative. The title's missing. So today we're going to talk to you about a residency program for at-risk artists. It's titled The New York City Artist's Safe Haven Prototype. The prototype supports artists who are persecuted for their work, threatened on the basis of their political or religious affiliations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity, or has been forcibly displaced, needs a respite from dangerous situations, or from countries experiencing active violent conflict or oppression. The concept was workshopped back in 2011 when Residency Unlimited created a panel discussion on artist residencies in conflict areas in partnership with Goethe Institute. And it was subsequently workshopped at the Collaboration Laboratory on Wasan Island in Canada in its partnership with Freedimensional. Some of you may know Freedimensional as a 10-year project activating at-risk, supporting at-risk artists through the International Artist Residency Network. And from that, the idea came that while it's complex and energy-consuming, and difficult to support, to get artists out of danger once they are out and in places like New York City, they're left to the challenges that is being here with little access to community or resources. And so the premise is that like-minded organizations and institutions and initiatives would share resources together in support of artists who are here temporarily or permanently depending on their situation. And so basically short-term, long-term, and providing resources like psychosocial resources, legal housing, employment, education, professional development. As my side from Residency Unlimited, which some of you know supports visual artists within the residency context, that organization would extend its professional development to a visual artist at risk. And this was in 2012, so seven years later. The challenges that happened back then that took so long for the program to take form was basically what everyone deals with in the city and that's housing. So it took a while to get to it. So now we're going to get to it. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about sort of how this coalition came together and what each one of these partner organizations represents within the coalition. It really started, as Seb said, with the housing. West Beth, some of you may know West Beth Artist Community over in the West Village of Manhattan. For a long time, very much an institution. They approached Todd Lester, formerly a free-dimensional now of ArtistSafety.net with the idea in mind that they had a little bit of surplus housing and they wanted to utilize that for the purposes of helping in some way with the Syrian refugee crisis. And speaking with Todd, he kind of steered them in the direction of looking at at-risk artists as a really interesting and important way that they could contribute this surplus housing. At-risk artists may need a shorter-term housing period than perhaps a refugee might need, for example. So it seemed like this was a smart way for West Beth to utilize this resource. Some of the other resources that were missing in the development of this program were legal services, for example, for talking about artists who are coming from other countries. Certainly, if there are no immigration attorneys who can help them with the legal work that they need to be able to stay and work and continue to create art, then, again, it's not possible. So Todd and ArtistSafety.net were really called upon to be sort of the masterminds behind developing the strategy and capacity building. They began to identify some various partners that they could bring on board who would really sort of complete the picture and fill in the gaps that had existed since 2012, as Seb mentioned. So the first organization is the one that I'm the program director of, Artistic Freedom Initiative. Our mission is essentially as immigration and human rights attorneys to provide pro bono immigration representation to artists under threat. So in addition to that, we also facilitate resettlement assistance that looks like matching artists with residency programs, grant fellowship opportunities, emergency funds, things of that nature. And this residency program is a part of that resettlement assistance that we offer. Lastly, we also partner with arts and cultural organizations, museums, galleries, curators to put on exhibitions, performances, and create these platforms and opportunities for artists to showcase their work. So our contribution to the coalition is primarily providing the legal services that these artists need in order to be able to stay and work. The West Beth, of course, providing that critical piece of the puzzle. They've offered us, at this point, we have two active units, and we are hoping to extend that up to six over the course of a few years. This is a look inside, actually, the first studio that they offered us. I'm very proud to say that I went shopping at IKEA and got all the furniture for this and built it all myself, including a bed frame. Pretty impressive, right? So not only do we offer legal services, but IKEA construction services as well. We have a second unit that's active now, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And so then Residency Unlimited provides the artistic support. Residency Unlimited started in 2009 as a sort of alternative format to the centralized studio programs that exist in the city. And the program really sort of is in tune with the concept of the partnership that is that Residency Unlimited has an event space, but essentially it works in a horizontal, decentralized way, and it really thrives by creating relationships and partnerships with other organizations and other institutions, whether it's to levy a gallery or a studio space or help an artist ride a horse down Broadway. I did that once. And yeah, so it provides the resources that a visual artist would need to nurture his or her practice. And then ArtistSafety.net really is sort of the resting place for the original free-dimensional and critical resistance fund, which started almost now 15 years ago. Todd Lesser, the founder, started with free-dimensional and then essentially really plays a role as the glue for all the coalition partners for this prototype and also provides sort of expertise on intake and experience on the complexities of identifying and activating artists at risk. The Pan-America's Artist at Risk Connection is a relatively new program, though Pan-America's been around for a long time. They are a free expression advocacy organization essentially working with writers at risk. So the second unit that's currently active at the West Beth is managed by Penn, an artist at risk connection in conjunction with Fordham University, who has made space for a writer at risk to do a teaching fellowship at Fordham University. So we have a visual artist in the first unit and a writer in the second unit. These are our artists. Hadi Nasiri was our very first artist in the first unit. He's from Iran, visual artist, multi-disciplinary, though also interested in film. The second artist here, Kanchana, she's the writer at risk that I mentioned. She's in the second unit. Hadi completed his year-long fellowship residency at the West Beth with us in the summer, this past summer, and he's since been replaced by our second visual artist in residence, Rashwan Abdelbaki, who is from Syria. He is a painter and printmaker and we're very excited to share that he will be on exhibit in December at the Queens Museum. We're opening a show there for a month and he will have his beautiful paintings there. So come and see him and meet him. And then the project is supported by the Shelly Dawn and Rubel Rubin Foundation, the Art and Social Justice Grant that we got funded for this year and we're actively awaiting the answer for next year. Yeah. And then upcoming. So this is What's in Store. We're hoping to expand the project to up to six units so we can provide for more artists. We are working on a guide to safety hosting that's New York City-specific and that can be replicated to other cities and in conjunction with that, we want to do some workshops and training for folks who are interested in trying to do something similar. And there's our new website, so check it out. Thank you.