Visiting Critic-in-Residence at ATNCS: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership
Application Period: March 9-23, 2026 (Deadline: March 23, 2026 11:59pm CST)
Virtual Info Session: March 11, 2026, 4:30pm CST (RSVP)
Application questions are available here.
About ATNSC
ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership is an artist-run urban retreat center, sound and literary repository, and experimental shapeshifting space dedicated to holistic health and the nurturing of transdisciplinary practices of socially engaged Indigenous artists and artists of color. ATNSC seeks to reclaim this place for people to heal, create, read, collaborate and forge relationships.
While ATNSC is a borderless project, everything that happens here begins from its homebase in the western territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, originally stewarded by the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora peoples. ATNSC’s Akhsótha Gallery, archives, and residency are housed within a renovated home within Cleveland’s historic Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood.
Residents at ATNSC will be hosted by the organization’s founder and director M. Carmen Lane, a two:spirit African-American and Haudenosaunee (Mohawk/Tuscarora) artist, writer, and experimental educator.
About the Residency at ATNSC
This opportunity is for applicants who are curious about or historically connected to Cleveland. Critics will be asked to use the time to study Cleveland and receive a deeper understanding of place through the distinct and established lens of ATNSC. Our hope is that you will use this time to be immersed in the city in ways that will unlock new and complicated inquiries and ideas around the history and culture of Cleveland.
We’re seeking critical writers who want to contribute to ATNSC’s devotion to place reclamation and using art to “reveal and excavate the complex histories of a place through art’s ability to tell complex stories.” Following the residency, the critic will shape and write a piece on a topic of their choice with the support of a dedicated editor at Sixty Inches From Center who is working across the entire program to spin threads of connection between writers across all of Sixty’s residencies.
Additional Information
What the residency includes
- $1000 honorarium
- Paid travel
- Housing for the residency period
- Access to The John D. Carter Resource Library for Consciousness & Change and the Paul O’Neill Murphy jazz vinyl collection
- Introductions to artists, organizers, and cultural workers in Cleveland
- A curated reading and reference list inspired by ATNSC
- Publication opportunities with Sixty Inches From Center
- A community share-out gathering, hosted by ATNSC
Residency Focus + Guiding Themes
ATNSC and Sixty are seeking residents whose work and interests are aligned with the following themes and inquiries. Please note that these are starting points for your areas of interest and to help guide your time in Cleveland. When you begin to shape your writing, you can explore these ideas through a topic, artist, artistic practice, or cultural element of your choice:
- In what ways does Cleveland as a city–its artists, residents, history, and culture–represent a microcosm of the country and the world at this particular moment?
- How can critical writing be used to explore Cleveland (as a city, its neighborhoods, etc.) holistically?
- What does it mean to practice humanness, rigorous love, and hospitality within arts writing and criticism?
- How can critical writing in Cleveland help to expand thinking around borders (or borderless lands), Indigenous definitions and lineages within this land, and the dissolution of colonial concepts of borders? How can we approach borders more porously? How do we not reinforce colonial borders?
Residency Length + Dates
Length: 7-14 days
Date Options: June 10 – 24, 2026 or June 15 – 27, 2026 – July 31, 2026
Residency Timeline
- Internal Call Application Period: March 9-23, 2026
- Application Review: March 23-31, 2026
- Participant notified: April 23, 2026
- Residency Period: June 1 – July 31, 2025 (Exact dates TBD)
Accessibility
ATNSC is a multi-floor residential space that requires stairs to access. We are committed to answering and addressing any accessibility questions or needs. Please indicate any questions or requests you may have in your application.
Who Should Apply + Eligibility
This opportunity is for critics based in other parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes region who are interested in spending time in deep conversation with the artists, people and cultures of Cleveland. We especially encourage applicants connected to Indigenous, diasporic, and queer communities, folks living with disabilities, and those historically underrepresented in arts publishing.
Selection Process
Sixty Inches From Center is inviting writers, cultural workers, artists, and other collaborators who have worked with us in the past to apply by submitting an application. The critic-in-residence program team and residency partners will be reviewing the applications.
This program is part of a larger network of Critic-in-Residence Programs happening across the Midwest as part of Midwest Satellites, a Sixty Inches From Center initiative focused on co-created projects between Sixty and aligned collaborators across multiple regional cities. Learn more about the Critic-in-Residence Programs here.