Independent Arts Producer Residency

In August 2026, Producer Hub will pilot a week-long Independent Arts Producers Residency at Tofte Lake Center in Ely, Minnesota, and adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

This week-long residency will be focused on creating time and space for independent producers in the performing arts to aid their work in the field in a natural retreat environment. This time will be primarily unstructured. The goal is to create time and space to relax, ideate, and be in community with others. 

Residency Dates: August 5–11, 2026

Tofte Lake Center, Ely, Minnesota

Residency Details

This residency provides participants with:

– Accommodations and travel to/from Tofte Lake Center
– $700 stipend for the week
– Dinners each evening of the residency. Breakfasts and lunches will be done on the resident’s own. 

You can take a look at the website to get a sense of the beautiful and natural environment for this residency here. 

Eligibility

You can apply as an individual or as a group up to 3 people who are part of a producing team or collective. Please take a look here to see what the accommodations would be for different sized groups. 

Those best suited for this inaugural residency are independent arts producers who are looking for dedicated quiet time to restore and reflect on their practice and/or looking for time to ideate and develop new ideas around their producing practice.

Application Details & Timeline

This application process will include a written application. After internal evaluation, finalists will be interviewed before selection. 

Application Deadline: January 26, 2026 at 10am ET 

Finalist Notification: March 2026 

Residency Selection: April 2026

Residency Dates: August 5–11, 2026

SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION

Frequently Asked Questions

  • An independent producer to us is someone producing work in the performing arts outside of an institution and in the non-commercial space. If you’d like some more guidance, you can see some of the producers we fiscally sponsor here and featured on our Instagram. 

  • Nope! You can be at any experience level. It is more about articulating how you will utilize the time while partaking in the residency. 

  • A strong application has a clear articulation of how dedicated unstructured time would be beneficial to your producing practice. You don’t have to have every hour spoken for but you should be able to generally speak to the overall hope for your time while in residence. We hope to see your passion for the work that you do as a producer and why time away from the space where you mainly produce would be useful.

  • Dinners will be provided each night of the residency. Breakfasts and lunches are on your own. There will be transportation to the grocery store a couple times during the residency.

  • Flights to/from Minneapolis Airport will be covered by Producer Hub, along with ground transportation to/from the airport to Tofte Lake on the first and last day of the residency which is 5 hours from the airport. 

    If you choose to drive yourself to the residency we will cover gas/tolls (with receipts) up to twelve hours from Ely, MN. 

  • No! You just need to have independent arts producing as a meaningful part of your practice.

  • There is internet in Roadhouse (the communal building). You will not have access to the internet in your cabins so we encourage you to think about the amount of time you need to spend online during that week. One of the intentions of the retreat is to be offline as much as possible.

  • There will be limited cell service based on your carrier. You should be able to send texts and receive calls and based on your carrier we can help you find the best spot on campus for that as needed.