Shake the Movable Creative Space

Reflections from Gwangju's 30-Year Residency Celebration

When an invitation landed in my inbox to speak at the Gwangju Museum of Art’s 30th anniversary forum for their artist residency programme, I felt a familiar thrill.

After fifteen years of developing Peshkar’s Global Canvas methodology and building international partnerships across four continents, there’s still something deeply exciting about contributing to conversations that might just reshape how we think about artist development on a global scale.

The forum’s title – “Shake the Movable Creative Space” – immediately caught my attention. It wasn’t simply a celebration of three decades of Korean residency practice; it was a provocation, a challenge to reimagine what artist residencies could become in an era where the old models are creaking under the weight of contemporary realities.

Where It All Began

Korea’s artist residency movement has a remarkable origin story. It all started here in Gwangju with Palgakjeong in 1995, emerging alongside the alternative space movement that was transforming Korean contemporary art. From there, programmes like the National Changdong and Goyang Residencies, and Ssamzie Space, reshaped the landscape through the 2000s, spreading rapidly across the country.

What struck me most during the forum was how boldly Gwangju itself has pioneered international reach. In 2009, they established an overseas residency in Beijing’s Chaoyang District EXEX Art Zone, dramatically expanding possibilities for regional artists to develop international practices. That kind of ambition resonates deeply with what we’ve been building at Peshkar.

The Crisis Point

But the forum didn’t shy away from difficult questions. The 2020s have brought significant challenges to Korean residencies. Private programmes have scaled back considerably, and some public institutions have suspended operations entirely.

The reasons are complex and, frankly, familiar to those of us working in community arts internationally. Residencies are no longer functioning as the attractive “career devices” they once were for artists. Creative conditions have diversified enormously, online-based international exchange has expanded, and various support systems have multiplied – all reducing the perceived necessity of physical mobility that residencies traditionally required.

There’s also the uncomfortable truth that some residencies have developed unprofessional operational structures, unnecessary administrative interference, and ineffective promotion and outcome management that actually hinder rather than support artistic creation.

The Questions That Matter

The forum kept returning to essential questions: What does the 30-year history that began in Gwangju actually mean now? How have residencies functioned in our rapidly changing contemporary art environment, and what needs to be redesigned?

What I appreciated about these conversations was the recognition that residencies aren’t simply support programmes – they’re ecosystem platforms connecting artists, localities, cities, cultural policy, and international networks. The challenge isn’t about quantitative expansion; it’s about redesigning the essential functions of residencies: artistic experimentation, international exchange, and the connection between locality and globality.

A UK Perspective from the Margins

When my turn came to speak, I found myself sharing Peshkar’s experience of navigating similar questions from a very different context. Our Global Canvas methodology has evolved through fifteen years of learning, much of it from getting things wonderfully wrong before finding approaches that actually work.

I talked about our Creative Europe-funded Under 25 Routes project, where young artists from Oldham, Lisbon, Valencia and Manchester discovered that genuine cross-cultural collaboration requires more than shared studio space – it demands willingness to be changed by encounter. I shared how Brexit had forced us to become what I call “fleet of foot” – developing rapid-response cultural collaboration that prioritises authentic artistic development over bureaucratic compliance.

The Korean colleagues were particularly interested in our upcoming Peshkar Artist Lab launching in 2026, which we’re designing for reciprocity from the ground up using meanwhile spaces across Greater Manchester. Rather than traditional institutional infrastructure, we’re creating agile frameworks that enable international residencies without the administrative overhead that can suffocate creativity.

Post-Industrial Parallels

One of the most generative conversations at the forum explored the parallels between post-industrial communities in different parts of the world. When I mentioned that our Young Digitals Festival work had travelled from Oldham’s community libraries to CICA Museum’s converted industrial spaces in Gimpo earlier this year, several Korean colleagues immediately recognised the resonance.

Both contexts – the former mill towns of Greater Manchester and Korea’s reinvented industrial spaces – understand something important about creativity emerging from the margins. The most authentic cultural innovation often happens away from the pressures and expectations of metropolitan centres, in spaces that global economic forces have supposedly left behind.

What I’m Taking Home

The forum reinforced my conviction that the future of artist residencies lies not in competing with established cultural hierarchies, but in creating alternatives that serve communities and artists who might otherwise remain invisible to mainstream institutions.

The global residency networks – AIR Japan, Res Artis, and others born from the post-Cold War expansion of cultural exchange – demonstrated one model. But perhaps what’s needed now is something more nimble, more responsive to how artists actually develop their practices in a networked, hypermediated world.

As I flew back to Manchester, I kept thinking about the forum’s framing question: how should “Korean-style” residencies operate, and what public practices are needed? Replace “Korean” with “British” or “Northern” and the question becomes equally urgent for us.

What Gwangju reminded me is that these aren’t questions any single organisation can answer alone. They require the kind of international dialogue and genuine exchange that events like this forum make possible.

Looking Forward

As Peshkar approaches our 35th anniversary in 2026, with an international symposium planned for March, the conversations from Gwangju will inform how we shape those celebrations. The relationships built during this visit – combined with the connections established during our September exhibitions at CICA Museum and meetings at SeMA – suggest exciting possibilities for sustained UK-South Korea cultural exchange.

The residency model isn’t dying; it’s evolving. And those of us committed to creating meaningful international opportunities for artists – particularly young artists from communities that rarely see themselves reflected in global cultural conversations – have essential contributions to make to that evolution.

Gwangju started something remarkable thirty years ago. The question now is what we’ll build together for the next thirty.

Jim Johnson is Executive Director and International Projects Lead at Peshkar Productions, an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation based in Oldham, Greater Manchester. Peshkar’s Global Canvas publication documenting 15 years of international arts collaboration (2010-2025) is available now.