Hi, everyone!

This is Anastasia from the St. Petersburg Art Residency. About a month ago we’ve launched virtual SPAR — our response to the global corona crisis.

Thanks to your involvement and amazing contributions this platfrom became a vibrant space to share art, meet likeminded people, give and get support that is needed right now.

We are so excited to see this initative develop and expand. Right now we have about 130 posts, over 300 comments and almost 6000 views.

Today we’ve put up a donation button that you can see on the home page. I would like to explain why we decided to ask for support and what we are going to use this money for. 

The SPAR program relies on project funding. This means that when there are no artists at the residency in St. Petersburg we don’t have any stable financing. Still, we decided to create virtual SPAR and run it on a volunteer base. It was important for us to support artists worldwide during these challenging times and show that even during the lockdown cultural production is still going on. 

Our capacity is very limited and with the platform growing every day it’s getting harder and harder to operate it. But instead of slowing down or putting it on hold we want to take it to a whole new level. 

We are planing to focus on three main tasks:

1 – Technical improvement

We want to improve your experivence in the virtual studio, add new tools and make it easier for visitors to navigate.

2 – Promotion

We would like to promote the platform online, advertise on social media and different professional resources. And by promoting the platform we will be promoting your art. 

3 – Publication

We are planing to publish a catalogue and send a printed copy to all who contributed. This will not be just pages from the website printed on paper. We want to conduct interviews, invite art critiques and curators to reflect on your work, and make a professional art publication. 

We also have a lot of other ideas in mind: live interviews on Instagram that we already started, bringing in curators for online studio visits, creating a member area where you can get assistance and advice on practical issues like building a strong portfolio, filling out a funding applications, and much more. 

We understand that everyone is having a really hard time right now, also financially. We will be thankful for any support that you can provide. Whether it is making a donation or spreading the news and promoting your participation in the project. 

Thank you and see you online on virtual SPAR!

Use the donation button on the top of the page to support us!