Seedpod is Punctum’s funded regional live arts residency program.

Seedpod residencies in 2025 are produced in association with the City of Ballarat – Creative City. They offer an opportunity for live arts and contemporary performance artists to investigate their practice and develop new work.

Punctum’s Seedpod residencies generate arts practice and new work development opportunities for creators of live arts & contemporary performance.

Through Seedpod we offer the right conditions and relationships for artists to grow their practice in a responsive, rigorous setting of enquiry, experimentation, and collaboration.
It provides a safe context of open, considered dialogue with colleagues, technicians, audiences, reviewers, and producers. It opens doors to creators seeking a testing phase to encourage exchange with audiences, creating the stimulus needed for deepening practice, innovation, and understanding ‘next steps’.  In this way we contribute to regional ecologies of practice.

A Seedpod residency funds and supports artists for the equivalent of one week of self-determined research to fully develop their proposition, and one week in-situ development to experiment, create and then test their idea with audiences/participants.

In 2025, two Seedpod residences will receive funding and professional support.

Our 2025 Seedpod residencies offer artists who live, work or study in the city of Ballarat the time, funding, resources, and space to test ideas, push the boundaries of their creative practice, and understand how their work makes meaning with members of the public.

In 2025 Seedpod artists are invited to investigate the field of ‘contested sites’.

A contested site is where competing meanings can be found and interpreted. It may be a public space, a place, a building, a body, an object, a way of working, a symbol. It could be historically understood as a contested site, one which currently ‘holds’ contestation, or one that through a future lens may well become contested. The fissures, fault lines and tensions of these contested sites might be cultural, social, historical and/or environmental.

A contested site includes but is not limited to:

• Cultural and historical sites that are associated with different narratives, memories, or identities of different communities.
• Natural and environmental sites that are affected by different interests, policies, or practices of different stakeholders.
• Public spaces and social sites that are shaped by different forms of power, inequality, or resistance.
• Objects when they are seen as a symbol of heritage, culture, or power.
• Symbols when they are seen as a representation of meaning, emotion, or action.
• Ways of working when they are seen as a reflection of values, norms, or practices.
• Bodies when they are seen as markers of identity, difference, or belonging.

Seedpod artists will be expected to offer a public sharing of their exploration as a way of testing and understanding how their proposition works. 

Each Seedpod residency offers:

• $3000 for artist fee, project materials, accommodation, travel
• $2,000 in-kind producing, production management, some technical support (subject to availability)
• $500 in-kind professional marketing and box office coordination
• $500 in-kind dramaturgical/mentoring support
• $500 in-kind documentation/review writing
• One week of in-kind access to meeting rooms and one week of in-kind access to studio space in the City of Ballarat equipped for research, development, rehearsal, meetings and access to presentation sites
• Support to appropriately engage with Traditional Custodians

Getting started with your proposal

Please get in contact with us via hq@punctum.com.au if you would prefer to apply in an alternative format, or if there are any barriers we can assist you with during your proposal process. To prevent loss of progress in case of an internet outage, we recommend writing your responses on a Word document and paste them into the form.

To help you start thinking about your proposal, here are some tips from the review panel to consider.

• If your work draws from cultural traditions, tell us about those traditions
• If your work is processed based, tell us about your process
• If you need assistance translating let us know
• Be specific about your ways of making which you are seeking to use during your Seedpod residency
• Propose URL links that give an indication of your past work
• If you link to your web page or blog, make sure it’s up to date
• If you mention how your work has been received in the past, include links to reviews/responses
• If the Seedpod residency is a step in a new direction, talk about what has informed your work in the past and how it is influencing this new direction
• Tell us where you understand your approach, concept, materials used, or form might sit within or contribute to contemporary performance and live arts practice
• Use short phrases or if you prefer, dot points

 
The opportunity to submit your proposal opens on 25th November 2024 and closes at midnight 28th January 2025. Artists will be advised of the results before March 7^th 2025.

We strongly recommend you arrange to discuss your idea with Punctum’s Artistic Director ahead of submitting it. 
Jude Anderson – hq@punctum.com.au 

Punctum and the City of Ballarat acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the unceded land on which Punctum’s Seedpod residencies take place, the Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung People.