About the residency

Mornington Peninsula Shire's Artist-in-Residence program has taken place for over 10 years, and is now facilitated by MPRG. 

The AiR program invites visual artists, cultural practitioners, curators, writers, musicians and researchers to undertake a 2-to-6-week residency to engage with the natural and human histories of the site, to explore challenging ideas, experiment, connect and collaborate.

The residency offers artists dedicated time devoted to the development of their practice, situated within the unique environments of Police Point Shire Park and Point Nepean National Park.

These are nationally significant cultural heritage sites, located on the lands of the Boonwurrung-balug, one of the six clans of the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation of Victoria. It is a culturally significant site for the Bunurong people who know the area as Monmar, named for the white trunks of the Moonah trees common to this area.

Themes for the program include raising broad awareness and appreciation for our environment, creative development about coastal concepts and/or the heritage of the area, responses to the impacts of climate change, and ecological ways of being. The residency supports practitioners working with these themes and is specifically generative for artists with place- or context- based practices. 

Taking place in three historic cottages at Police Point, the residency is not simply a place to reside but a communal space that can lead to experimental collaboration and discourse between participants.