Call for Applications: Two Residencies at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts, Toronto Island

Graduate Research-Creation Residency

Dates: February 17 – 23, 2026
Cost: $850 CAD (incl HST)
Deadline: November 28, 2025, 11:59pm ET

Application Form

This residency at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts provides additional, extra-institutional peer-support for creative practitioners undertaking graduate (Masters and PhD) research-creation projects.

Convened by artist Simon Pope, during February 2026 (reading week/mid-semester break for some universities), this week-long residency on Toronto Island provides studio space, accommodation, and peer-led discussion to supplement the support provided by your host institution, committee or supervisory team. Emphasis will be on your own creative practice and its relationship to Masters and Doctoral level research processes. As such, there will be ample opportunity for self-directed work in the studios, as well as group and individual meetings addressing questions that emerge from your own project. You are encouraged to present work-in-progress at one of the sessions at the end of each working-day, and to share insights into your own research process with your peers. We will also touch on more general concerns, such as how to shape a research-creation thesis or project in relation to disciplinary and institutional expectations, the interdisciplinary potentials of research-creation methodologies, approaches to academic writing, and strategies for the presentation and examination of your project. One-to-one meetings attend to the particular details of your project in a familiar diagnostic, supervisory/tutorial mode.

This residency is for creative practitioners currently enrolled either on a Masters or PhD programme, at any stage of the process, and undertaking a research-creation/practice-led project; or those preparing to apply to or prior to beginning a doctoral programme and wishing to develop or review their proposed project. More information.

About the Convenor
Simon Pope is an artist with over 25 years experience of working within art schools and universities, convening MA/MFA programmes and supervising doctoral students. He holds a practice-led research degree (DPhil) from the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford and is currently a Research Associate at the University of Exeter (UK), an Eccles Fellow at the British Library, and a supervisor and Projects Coordinator for Transart Institute practice-led PhD programme.

Simon Pope’s Popocatépetl, Iztaccíhuatl… A memory of a walk between two mountains, reconstructed by Karla Ibarra at Radisson Blu Downtown Toronto (2023)

Walking & Art: Yet More Discussions At The Wayside

Dates: June 1 – 8, 2026
Cost: $980 CAD (incl HST)
Deadline: March 20, 2026, 11:59pm ET

Application Form

The Theme: Walking & Art
Contemporary art has a long-established and well-documented relationship to walking. Whether used as a technique for drawing lines on the Earth, or a way of asserting collective sovereignty on stolen land, walking is now accepted as one of the many ways that artists make work. It is also, and equally, deployed as a method in neighbouring disciplines within the arts, humanities and social sciences. As such, it is always subject to new academic and cultural “turns” as they emerge.

Walking is also intrinsic to many of the quotidian, spiritual, philosophical, social and political aspects of our lives and provokes myriad questions for us as artists.

We acknowledge that there are archetypal conventions of “walking art” that do not adequately represent the extent of interest or investment in walking as a practice, or the questions that walking may invoke for artists right now.

This residency is open to any, and all, approaches to walking as art, and encourages participants to grapple with the questions that arise for all those who have a stake in this area of artistic practice. More Information.

The Residency
This residency gives you the opportunity to bring these questions to the fore, and to work through them, in practical ways, among your peers. We invite you to share insights and experiences, and to address with us the questions that arise from your practice with us, and with other participants. We encourage you to take full advantage of the opportunities presented for working beyond the studios at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts, and to consider how you will enable other participants to engage with and gain insights into your practice.

The Focus
The proposition to the artists taking part in the residency is straightforward: to join us in working-out the current relationship of walking and art. This begins by considering the influence of recent “turns” in art and other disciplines; and taking into account the ‘histories of practice’ in what is now an established artistic field.

Our aim is to find a way beyond any limiting, technical definitions, and to think beyond the label of “walking art” so as to acknowledge the many ways that walking forms part of an artist’s practice.

Who Is This Residency For?
Visual artists – or those in neighbouring disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences – with an interest in how walking is deployed in practice, and in the theories that support or provide critical insights into the relationship of walking and art today.

About the Convenors
Sarah Cullen and Simon Pope
We are artists with an interest in walking and its relationship to mobility, mapping, landscape, and sociality. We often collaborate on projects focusing on these themes. More information available here.

Sarah Cullen MOTHRA November 2024

MOTHRA: Artist-Parent Project

Keep your eyes peeled and ears open for an announcement about dates and application information for MOTHRA 2026!

Instagram @artistparents

Alëna Skarina @spagoosi

Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts (known as Gibraltar Point) is an artist residency and retreat centre on Toronto Island/Mnisiing, Ontario, Canada. Existing in the former historic elementary school, Gibraltar Point has been a home and host to artists since 1999.

Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts*
443 Lakeshore Avenue
Toronto, ON M5J 2W2
Instagram @gibraltarpointto

* Formerly Artscape Gibraltar Point, this site is now managed by ArtHubs Toronto Inc.