Waaw is an artist/volunteer run residency, situated on the Saint-Louis island in the Senegal river. In Saint-Louis, the picturesque decay of the colonial town contrasts with the cultural expressions of contemporary West Africa. The population take great pride in their traditions, and religion has a strong position. We invite artists and craftspeople to take part in the sensory feast of Saint-Louis.

This residency provides a rare opportunity of living and working fully in the physical present. We encourage slow ways of working and do not expect you to present finished work by the end of the residency. Rather than using the picturesque environment as material for your social media feeds, we hope you will be able to exit the photo documentation mode, to go off-line to the greatest extent possible, and see what processes this may generate for your artistic practice and beyond.

In our selection, we favour projects with relevance to the Senegalese context (see right). This time, we particularly welcome applications from artists working in sound, textiles, illustration and drawing. Four selected artists will be working at Waaw at the same time.

Waaw provides individual or shared work space and some project assistance and mentoring, including assistance in establishing contacts locally. There is free wifi, but the connection is unreliable at times. Accommodation is provided at a B&B run by a Senegalese family in a neighbourhood at walking distance.

End-of-residency presentations and shows are welcome - but by no means obligatory. Please see the Waaw residency page (link on the right) for practical details on costs etc. We offer no grants, but selected candidates who have paid the registration fee will be issued a letter of support for seeking grants elsewhere.

Weare now inviting artists for a four-week stay between 2 and 29 December 2023. Unfortunately, there is no flexibility as to the arrival date as there will be an initial orientation programme. Please note that extensions before and after this period are not possible. If you would like to stay on in town after 29 December, we can help you find accommodation, but workspace or assistance beyond this is not available.

This residency period falls in the dry season. Expect afternoon temperatures between 25 and 35 degrees and night temperatures around 20 degrees Celsius. The climate aside, the Senegalese environment may be challenging in other ways: hopefully you are not oversensitive to light, noise, smell or dust.

To apply, send an informal letter to the address info(át)waawsenegal.org. Please  tell us why you would like to come to Waaw and what you would like to do during your residency. One A4 sheet will do fine. Please answer these questions, attach a concise project plan, if relevant, and link to relevant work or documentation of it online. If you must attach files, please limit yourself to 2 single relevant works (not more!). NB: We are not interested in detailed cv's or artist's statements. Please make sure that your email message is not heavier than 10 MB - otherwise we may not be able to take your application into account. Thank you for your understanding.

We would like to hear from you by 31 March 2023 at the latest. The list of selected artists will be announced by 10 April.

Hope to see you at Waaw!