Public Lands Collaborative Residency
Location: Cabin at Shotpouch Creek
The Public Lands Collaborative Residency supports creative teams engaged in storytelling projects that have the potential to help re-imagine and shape the future of public lands in the United States.
Rooted in the belief that storytelling is a powerful tool for stewardship, the residency offers space, time, and financial support for residents to develop a project about public lands that leads to public engagements such as readings, publications, workshops, or collaborative community projects.
America’s public lands span more than 600 million acres of mountains, deserts, forests, and shorelines. From iconic National Parks to remnant prairies, from beloved recreation areas to critically important wildlife refuges, these lands are one of the largest shared experiments in collective stewardship on Earth.
Public lands remind us that democracy extends beyond human communities to include the soils, waters, and species with whom we share this continent. These lands are living systems and civic institutions, shaped by the push and pull between conservation and exploitation, recreation and restoration, and legacies of dispossession and the promise of shared stewardship. In this ever-shifting context, every trail, forest, and canyon can become a site of negotiation and debate. The stakes are high.
In a time of ecological and cultural transformation, these lands call us to rethink stewardship — not as ownership or control, but as an ongoing conversation across generations, disciplines, and cultures. Public lands invite questions about who belongs, who decides, and what values guide our shared future.
During the Public Lands Collaborative Residency, we invite residents to explore questions like: How does caring for the land reflect how we care for one another? How does caring for and managing these lands reflect who we are and who we aspire to be? How do public lands shape our cultural identity and our sense of what is possible in a changing world? How can collaborative inquiry across disciplines help us imagine alternative futures for public lands?
The residency takes place at a cabin on a 70-acre nature reserve that reflects a long-standing commitment to shared stewardship. Residents are invited to be in relationship with the land as both refuge and inquiry site while they reflect, ask questions, and shape their collaborative work.
Residency Details
The Public Lands Collaborative Residency is open to interdisciplinary collaborative pairs. One person in the pair must be a creative writer. The other person in the pair may be:
- An artist working in any discipline (e.g., visual arts, performing arts, sound, etc.)
- Someone working in the humanities (e.g., historian, philosopher, theologian)
- Someone working in ecology or a related science field
- Another writer working in a distinct field (e.g., a creative nonfiction writer working with a poet, a fiction writer working with a policy writer)
The pair must demonstrate a work trajectory that addresses environmental issues or involves place-based inquiry, either through previous solo or collaborative projects.
We encourage applications from people whose work is informed by lived experience, cultural knowledge, or long-term engagement with place, including Indigenous, rural, and historically underrepresented communities. Applicants must be based in the U.S. and at least 18 years old at the time of application.
Selected residents will receive:
- Exclusive use of the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek for up to three weeks from August 2026 to September 2027. The residency can be consecutive (i.e., three full weeks) or broken into shorter stays (e.g., three residencies of one week each). While most of these stays should include overlapping residency time with both collaborators present (the space has two bedrooms), some days may be split between the pair. For instance, two weeks are completed together, but each resident might complete a third week solo.
- Please read about the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek to make sure the space works for your collaboration.
- An honorarium of $3,000 per recipient, which may be used to cover travel costs to the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek during the residency period(s) and travel to Corvallis for the public event.
- Professional documentation of outcomes and promotional support for related events.
- A culminating opportunity for public presentation at PRAx at Oregon State University (e.g., participation in an exhibition, reading, performance).
- Additional funding for shipping artwork to PRAx for an exhibition if needed.
Residents are expected to:
- Develop a creative storytelling project related to public lands during the residency year.
- Schedule and complete residency time at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek within the award period.
- Participate in a public program, exhibition, or presentation at PRAx between September 2028 and June 2029.
- Acknowledge Spring Creek Project and PRAx in public presentations and publications related to the residency.
- Provide their own transportation to the cabin, which is not accessible by public transportation.
- Application deadline: May 15, 2026
- Notification of acceptance: June 15, 2026
- Residency period: August 2026 to October 2027. Residencies at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek.
- Public presentation at PRAx: Between September 2028 and June 2029 (Exact dates TBD)
Applications are due May 15, 2026, via Submittable. Choose one collaborator to be the primary applicant and to submit one application for the collaborative pair.
A diverse panel composed of artists, writers, scientists and arts professionals will evaluate applications based on selection criteria that include:
- Quality and strength of work samples
- Demonstrated trajectory of work engaging environmental issues or place-based inquiry
- Likelihood that the residency will result in work that engages communities in thinking about public lands
Final selections will reflect a balance of disciplines, perspectives, and approaches.
This program is supported by the Spring Creek Project.