Works & Process At The Guggenheim Initiates LaunchPAD 'Process As Destination'

Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, is proud to announce LaunchPAD "Process as Destination." Over a period of two years, the pandemic recovery initiative will support artists through their creative process by knitting together a region-wide network of sequenced and made-to-measure fully funded residencies and public showings.

Recognizing that performing artists continue to face vulnerabilities including unstable income, lack of access to rehearsal space, and limited opportunities for prolonged collaborations outside of requisite productions and finished premieres, Works & Process fosters a new model for collaboration with LaunchPAD. The program weaves together a constellation of at least eight residency partners throughout the Hudson Valley and Long Island that will collectively and cohesively support New York performing artists. Works & Process will provide collaborators with living wages, transportation, and healthcare insurance, while residency partners will provide studio and theater space and housing. As a result, each LaunchPAD project will receive prolonged support through a series of sequenced and fully funded residencies across different geographic regions and residency spaces that respond to artists needs in a made-to-measure way. When ready, select LaunchPAD projects will premiere at Works & Process at the Guggenheim as well as with partnering presenters.

LaunchPAD underscores the Works & Process core mission to support artists and illuminate the creative process. LaunchPAD will serve as an incubator encouraging artists and audiences to embrace artistic process as destination, with an understanding that how work is created is as important as the final product. Woven into each LaunchPAD residency will be classes, open rehearsals, and in-process show-and-tell sessions that will encourage appreciation for the complexities of the artistic process and build future audiences for its performing artists. LaunchPAD will support today's leading performing artists and nurture a vast array of performing arts disciplines and historically marginalized artists.

Continuing our pandemic response, LaunchPAD demonstrates how performing arts organizations can collectively and more cohesively support artistic process. A two-year pilot, LaunchPAD will annually support at least ten process-driven, new work development opportunities for over one hundred artists, with 40 weeks of artist residency each year. LaunchPAD is a direct extension of Works & Process's successful and pioneering bubble residency program, which produced 25 socially distanced residencies in the Hudson Valley for 247 artists at the height of the pandemic from August 2020 to June 2021.