Floating Tower Immigrant & Refugee Artists Retreat
at Chase Hill

Since 2016 we have been in residence with the Blue Building in Manhattan, where we presented most of our NYC productions.

 

As is the case with many performing arts organizations, during the pandemic we had to halt our live performance activities at the Blue Building and beyond. We witnessed many of our group members, friends and longtime collaborators in NYC—especially those working on self driven, non funded projects— experiencing hardships.

 

Scarce support was available to creative individuals and independent artists who did not have the right network to rely on, and particularly young people who were in this country on an Artist Visa or under an Asylum status. Some faced the dilemma of leaving the City, the profession, or both.

 

After rethinking our entire modus operandi— Floating Tower has made the decision to expand beyond the activities of our core collective to help support other artists, and projects whose mission aligned with ours. 

 

To that end, we are now in the process of building a year-round artist retreat in North Adams, the Berkshires, that will serve as a laboratory for Floating Tower’s original projects, and also as a hub providing artistic residencies and creative support to immigrant and refugee artist driven projects in performing arts.

 

The residency program had a soft launch in summer 2022. In 2023-24 we are  experimenting with various formats of ad-hoc residencies to determine the most effective ways to support project creation of projects. Our individual residencies are entirely free of charge to the artists and by invitation only.