Idle Hands Incubation Award

Overview

Idle Hands invites emerging and mid-career artists based in New York City to apply for the Idle Hands Incubation Award. The award provides a $10,000 unrestricted stipend, professional mentorship, and a culminating exhibition in their Williamsburg, Brooklyn loft space.

Eligibility

Time-based media artists residing and working in New York City (all five boroughs eligible). Artists must be emerging or mid-career.

Theme: Rooting

Rooting is approached through the lens of time-based media, including film, video, sound, performance, and other durational practices. Rooting is an ongoing and active process of connection to people, places, rituals, histories, communities, and systems of care. Artists are uniquely positioned to explore the long-term structural complexities of relationships and the dynamic forces in giving meaning to the spaces, connections, and practices that guide how and where we root.

Themes to Explore

• Place, geography, and environments that shape identity and experience
• Community, kinship, chosen family, and collective care
• Ritual, repetition, and everyday practices of belonging
• Memory, inheritance, ancestry, and cultural transmission
• Migration, displacement, return, and questions of home
• Cycles of growth, decay, adaptation, and renewal
• Interspecies collaboration and community

Media

• Film
• Video
• Sound
• Performance
• Other durational time-based media practices

Award

• $10,000 unrestricted stipend
• Professional mentorship
• Culminating exhibition in Williamsburg, Brooklyn loft space

Submission Deadline

• August 4, 2026