Freelands Studio Fellowship Information Session
An opportunity to hear from artists connected to the South West who have undertaken the Freelands Studio Fellowship
This online session offers the opportunity to hear from artists connected to the South West who have undertaken the Freelands Studio Fellowship; to provide insight and information to anyone considering applying to the current call for fellows 2027/28.
Artists Kelsey Cruz-Martin and Alice Corile will share their fellowship experiences, and Freelands Foundation Curator Rosie Hermon will give an introduction to the programme, with time for questions from attendees.
The Studio Fellowships provide artists with a studio in an art school, access to research, technical and workshop facilities, mentorship and opportunities to develop their teaching practice. Fellows receive a bursary of £28,000 for the year.
A Studio Fellowship creates an environment in which the artist, faculty, and art students can build a symbiotic relationship. As well as offering art students insight into the practice of an early career artist, working alongside students can also afford an artist the opportunity to examine their own working methods and practice.
The Freelands Studio Fellowships are open to artists with a studio-based practice, who have received an undergraduate or master’s degree from any of the partner art schools: Bath Spa University, Belfast School of Art, Birmingham School of Art, Cardiff School of Art & Design, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee, Falmouth School of Art, Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen.
About the Artists
Kelsey Cruz-Martin is a multidisciplinary artist exploring experiential knowledge, voice, and the relationship between language and the body. Working across sculpture, sound, writing, spoken word, print, and installation, she creates environments that invite deep listening and embodied attention. Her sculptural practice often considers the body as an interface: a threshold where embodied, technological, and linguistic systems meet. Through material experimentation and speculative narratives, she explores how these systems shape identity, memory, and voice. Cruz-Martin was awarded the Freelands Studio Fellowship at Cardiff Metropolitan University (2025/26), culminating in her solo exhibition A Shell Stood for Zero (2026) at g39, Cardiff.
Alice Corile is currently 6 months into her Studio Fellowship at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. Her work often starts with fragile moments when communication slips - awkward exchanges and gestures missing their mark. She regularly reflects on experiences in her Polish family, where language stretches across generations and doesn't quite reach. These moments of missed connection become material for Alice’s practice. She is fascinated by the emotional residue they leave behind, shaping relationships and the environments we inhabit. The marks we impress on each other and space. Her process involves a gentle misuse of materials, creating systems meant to falter, echoing the imperfect nature of memory and translation - what is misheard, mistranslated, and altogether missed.
The meeting will take place on Zoom, please sign up via the link below.
Freelands Studio Fellowship Information Session registration link.
About the Freelands Studio Fellowships
Launched in 2021 as a Painting Fellowship, and expanded in 2023 to encompass wider studio practice, the Freelands Studio Fellowships build on the legacy of art school
fellowships. Often providing a first step into teaching, fellowships enable artists to develop their own practice while fostering a symbiotic relationship between teaching and art-making that enriches the artist, art students and wider art school community.
A fellowship provides a rare yet vital environment in which an artist and art student can build a co-learning relationship. For students, the presence of a Fellow offers immediate insight into the practice of an early career artist. For an artist, working alongside art students gives them the opportunity to examine their own practice within an educational context and to build their own approach to teaching.
The Freelands Studio Fellowships is an annual programme in partnership between Freelands Foundation and UK universities who co-develop the programme. Fellows are selected by the partners in annual callouts to alumni of the participating universities.
Please see the open call for further information about the Fellowship.