About
We believe in the power of art to build bridges between people, expand perspectives, and nurture empathy across economic and cultural boundaries.
Artist Residencies
We offer immersive place-based residencies that support interdisciplinary artists, musicians, thinkers, and organizers. Residencies prioritize creative feedom, restoration, adn site-specific inquiry. Artists are invited to engage deeply with the land, with each pther, and with their own practices without the pressure to produce.
We offer a variety of creative programming including yoga, meditation, dance, screenprinting, relational skill-bulding, harm reduction demonstrations, self-defense classes, live performances, candlemaking workshops and other alternative crafts.
Ecological Format
Our artist residency programs provide artists with the opportunity to build rapport with each other and the land as well as learn off-grid skills that strengthen natural world sovereignty by demystifying the use of compost toilets, fire pits, solar power, rainwater, generators, and propane.
Community LearningWe host workshops, salons, community meals, listening sessions, panels discussions, and movement instructionals that bring people tgether across disciplines and identities. These offerings center embodied knowledge, deep listening, mutual aid, and care.
Donate by check to:
64 Ferndale Loomis Rd #1
Liberty, NY 12754, United States
Send gifts of stock and marketable securities to:
Finance/Fiscal Sponsorship Officer, Alan Lamb at
sponsorship@nyfa.org
64 Ferndale Loomis Rd #1
Liberty, NY 12754, United States
Send gifts of stock and marketable securities to:
Finance/Fiscal Sponsorship Officer, Alan Lamb at
sponsorship@nyfa.org
Mission
As a Black-led artist-run space we prioritize creative experiments, ecological connection, and embodied practice. We believe that art thrives when artists are supported emotionally, spiritually, and materially. Our mission is to cultivate environemnts where creative people can rest, experiment, collaborate, and build new visions for how we live with each other and the land.
Values
Care InfrastructureWe build systems from how we host residencts to how we design the land that prioritize rest, nourishment, cnsent, and mutual support.
We approach the land as a teacher and collaborastor. Our design pracrices include permaculture principles and generational stewardship.
We center Black, queer, trans, and Indigenous futures. We uphold decolonial approaches to land, learning, creative practice, and work to redistribute resources to communities historically denied access.
Experimentation & Play
Art is allowed to be unruly and indeterminate. Our spaces invite improvisation, failure, curiosity, spaciousness, and joy.
Community Roots
Our work is built in collaboration with neighbors, local growers, regional artists, and community partners. We believe creative ecosystems grow through shared effort, transparency, and relationship
Story
The first year twenty artists gathered at the Outlier Inn in Woodridge, NY. They shared meals, skills, grief, visions, and experiments. They left with lifelong friendships and a shared belief that communal creativity could be a force of liberation. For years the space took different shapes to meet the real needs of artists in residence becoming a flexible, responsive, ever-shifting constellation of people committed to each other’s growth.
In 2020, everything changed. The global uprising following the murder of George Floyd forced a deep reckoning. The residency had grown beyond its original form and required a new direction; one that centered Black agrarianism, sovereignty, and long-term stewardship.
Five years later that turning point has blossomed into a sibling project; Forest Fringe Farm, a diversified vegetable farm and social arts site committed to nurturing the next generation of queer cultural workers of color. Here, young artists learn how to design and host their own programming in the very woods that this community helped purchase.
We are now entering the next phase of our development building the infrastructure and ecological systems needed to support the land for generations to come. Kamra has continued their training in permaculture and is integrating Black and Indigenous land technologies to repair the oversaturated soil, restore water flow, and stabilize the ecosystem.
We’ve made it this far together. And there is so much further to go. If you believe in Black futurity, ecological repair, creative freedom, and we invite you to join us in building what comes next.
Donate by check to:
64 Ferndale Loomis Rd #1
Liberty, NY 12754, United States
Send gifts of stock and marketable securities to:
Finance/Fiscal Sponsorship Officer, Alan Lamb at
sponsorship@nyfa.org
64 Ferndale Loomis Rd #1
Liberty, NY 12754, United States
Send gifts of stock and marketable securities to:
Finance/Fiscal Sponsorship Officer, Alan Lamb at
sponsorship@nyfa.org
Artists-in-Residence
Artist
2019
Writer
2019
Artist
2019
Artist
2019
Artist
2019
Artist
2020
Musician
2019
Facilitator
2019
Artist
2019
Chef
2019
Artist
2019
Artist
2019
Creative Producer
2019
Facilitator
2019
Artist
2019
Photographer
2019
Filmmaker
2019
Artist
2019
Artist
2019
DJ
2019
Musician
2019
Musician
2019
Photographer
2019
Writer
2019
Videographer
2019
Dancer
2019
Programs
3 to 5-day residencies form the core of our format. We support and facilitate the cultural development of artists and participants at all levels of process from emerging to established art professionals. We provide our residents with a platform to share their ideas and interests.
Activation Residency collaborates with a diverse range of artists, chefs, healing practitioners and facilitators. Past programs have included Decolonizing Non-violent Communication and Family Constellations with Meenadchi and the Nap Ministry with Tricia Hersey.
Moving from the Outlier Inn in Woodridge, New York, we now host at our own farm. Based in the historic 1969 Woodstock hamlet of Bethel, New York at Forest Fringe Farm. We will spend the next five years building an integrated regenerative whole site design.
Earthly Pleasures was the first artist residency held at Forest Fringe Farm in July 2024, marking a new chapter in Activation Residency’s land-based programming. This intimate, week-long gathering invited artists to slow down, connect with the land, and explore creative practice through sensory engagement and ecological presence.
Residents participated in guided walks, shared meals, somatic and sensory exercises, and workshops focused on Black and queer ecological futures, while also having spacious time for independent making and rest. The program blended structured grounding practices with open studio days, communal dialogue, and optional skill-shares.
Earthly Pleasures offered artists a rare environment free from production pressure—supporting restoration, deepened ecological awareness, and lasting community bonds. Many left with renewed clarity, new tools for land-based creativity, and an expanded sense of how pleasure, care, and environment can shape artistic practice.
Donate
Donate by check to:
64 Ferndale Loomis Rd #1
Liberty, NY 12754, United States
Send gifts of stock and marketable securities to:
Finance/Fiscal Sponsorship Officer, Alan Lamb at
sponsorship@nyfa.org