The Art Space Residency

The Art Space · 15 to 27 August 2026

A workshop
every day.

Every day belongs to one artist. They bring their craft, their materials and their way of working, and for a morning or a whole day you make alongside them. What you make joins the Living Gallery, staying with the residency until the Open House. Come for one. Come for several.

See the programme
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How it works

No experience needed. Just come and create.

Each workshop stood on its own, so you could come for a single day without committing to the whole residency. Materials were usually included, though occasionally you were asked to bring something along, and the artist guided you from the beginning.

What you create stays here at the Art Space until the Open House, where it is exhibited alongside everything made across the residency. From there, you are welcome to bring it home, either at the Open House or any time after. Each workshop also leaves behind one piece, sometimes a collective work, to become part of the Living Collection.

Every workshop was donation based, and everything the day included was the same whatever you gave. The programme below is the run as it happened.

The Art Space Hotel from the air, in the Alentejo countryside

The programme

15 to 27 August 2026

Eleven workshops across the run, and two days the residency keeps for itself.

A stoneprint by Jyoti Graziano: the face of a carved deity transferred onto a flat stone

Saturday 15 AugustFull day

Sacred Stoneprints and Altar Creation

with Jyoti GrazianoJyoti works with the imagery of the sacred across spiritual traditions.

Learn the technique of transferring an image onto stone, and spend the day making a sacred stone of your own. Together the group builds an altar installation that stays with the residency, and Jyoti gives a talk on what altars have meant across different cultures, and on how to relate to one day to day. Your stone comes home with you at the end of the residency.

See the workshop →
Shankari seated at the ceremonial altar before a gong

Sunday 16 AugustAfternoon

The Art of the Heart

with ShankariCacao ceremony and sound healing facilitator.

We welcome you at the pool with a drink, time to arrive, settle into the calm surroundings, and connect with the other participants before the day begins. From there, we move into a sacred cacao ceremony, co-creating a protected, heart-centred space together. From that place of love and presence, colour and painting are invited to flow freely into a collective artwork, held throughout by a live sound healing journey on ancestral instruments. Together, we co-create the very tablecloth that will host the To Gather Together dinners in the days that follow.

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A collage by Erika Prib: a winged insect above a woman in white, gold geometry behind her

Monday 17 AugustMorning

Create Your Personal Energy Map

with Erika PribInterdisciplinary artist making symbolic works that bring presence and harmony into a space.

An intuitive collage workshop, where you make a personal energetic map: a visual manifestation of an intention, a vision, or an inner landscape. We begin with a gentle grounding and centering practice, then work with a wide spread of materials, textures and imagery until your own visual language starts to appear. No artistic experience is needed, and you leave with a piece that holds your own direction back to you.

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Lucia Maria at work on a large painting, outdoors under the trees

Tuesday 18 AugustFull day

The Womb of the Space

with Lucia MariaDesigner, architect and art therapist, and one of the residency's vegan chefs.

A designer, architecture apprentice, and art therapy facilitator, she works with the principles of our inner "Mother Nature", using raw materials to bring the creation itself to life. A unique work, built collectively over the course of a day: an installation Lucia Maria calls the "womb of the space", which becomes the symbolic anchor point for the Art Space throughout the remainder of the residency. The piece is composed of cork, tiles, wood, and eucalyptus, elements that serve as a metaphor for the art therapy process taking place simultaneously. You leave as a co-creator of an elemental piece that remains on-site, while taking with you fresh guidelines to use as a reminder point on how you choose to embrace yourself in the individual and collective field.

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The Art Space Hotel from the air, the pool and the Alentejo hills beyond

Wednesday 19 August

Closed Creating Day

with Philine and whoever is here

A day without a workshop and without a dinner. Philine, and any of the artists still around, spend it making things for the space itself: the pieces that hold the rest of the programme rather than the ones that hang in it. Nothing to book, and no visitors.

Closed to visitors

Two sweeping brush-and-ink forms on cream paper, by NOAH

Thursday 20 AugustAfternoon

Kali Grafi and Shamanic Songs

with NOAH and Luciana SantanaNOAH works in calligraphy and philosophy, Luciana Santana in song and Amazonian ancestral tradition.

An afternoon in two halves, and one booking covers both. NOAH, who works under the name Nataraj, opens with Kali Grafi: calligraphy as gesture, brush and ink moving between scripts and traditions, from Devanagari and Arabic to letters nobody has written before. Luciana Santana then carries the room into shamanic song, the ancestral singing of the Brazilian Amazon, sung together rather than listened to. Dinner follows at 19:00 for whoever would like to stay, and the two of them play a concert at 20:00.

See the workshop →
A driftwood wall hanging by Philine Allard: a stone and a shell bound in jute to a weathered bar

Friday 21 AugustMorning

Create Your Own Natural Totem

with Philine AllardArtist, energy guide and Qi Gong teacher, creator of natural totems.

A morning of movement, presence and intuitive creativity. We open with a guided Qi Gong practice to wake the body and make space, then work with a gathered collection of shells, feathers, driftwood, rope and other natural elements to build a totem of your own. No experience is needed, and your totem is exhibited through the residency before it comes home with you.

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A gesture drawing from one of Bruno's life drawing sessions

Saturday 22 AugustFull day

Life Drawing: Gesture and Observation

with Bruno PalmaAnimation concept artist and life drawing facilitator.

A focused life drawing session with a live model, moving from short gesture poses into longer studies. Welcoming for every level, from complete beginners to experienced hands, with the emphasis on observation, movement and presence rather than perfect finish. Every piece made becomes part of the Open House exhibition on 27 August.

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Igor Świeczak photographing in the Alentejo countryside

Sunday 23 AugustMorning

In Search of Beauty

with Igor ŚwieczakPhotographer and creative director exploring beauty through intuition, atmosphere, and visual poetry.

In Search of Beauty is a photography workshop about learning to see with more patience, presence, and trust. It is a space to slow down, notice the quiet beauty in details, light, and spontaneous moments, and reconnect with photography as a more intuitive creative practice.

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Jasmine Nalaya singing, head tilted back and hands open, before a tiled arch covered in calligraphy

Monday 24 AugustAfternoon

Homecoming

with Jasmine NalayaSinger, voice facilitator and tea ceremony holder.

A day of returning to your true voice, your inner stillness, and the freedom of authentic expression. The afternoon opens with voice liberation, playfully releasing whatever stands between you and your true essence, then an hour of free time before a tea ceremony turns the listening inward and poetry comes out of the quiet. Live music is woven gently through the whole day, and the evening carries on around the long table.

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Mischa é Volve at his drawing table, his radial line drawings hung on the wall behind him

Tuesday 25 AugustAfternoon

Meditative Art

with Mischa é VolveArtist, performer and psychologist, experienced meditator and former Buddhist monk.

An afternoon of drawing as meditation, led by an artist who spent years as a Buddhist monk. Short partner exercises tune your hand to a slower kind of attention, then two longer sessions give you the room to make a piece of your own, charged with an intention. It comes home with you afterwards, to sit somewhere as a support for your own practice.

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Wednesday 26 AugustFor the artists

The Artists' Day

with the artists of the residency

The one day of the run that belongs to the artists themselves. Everyone who has led a workshop is invited back into the space with nothing asked of them: no teaching, no programme, no visitors. Rest, swim, talk to each other, and be in the room together the day before the Open House opens it to everyone else.

For the residency's artists

Dancers mid-movement in a sunlit room during one of Shandra's Improvisus sessions

Thursday 27 AugustMorning

Improvisus: Somatic Movement and Collective Creation

with ShandraCultural producer, artistic director and movement facilitator, founder of Tesouros Invisíveis.

An invitation to slow down, listen and create together. Through somatic movement, guided improvisation and embodied creative practices, movement gradually becomes a collective painting, until what usually passes between people unseen is there to be looked at. No experience in dance or in art is needed. This is the one workshop whose work does not go to the exhibition: it carries straight into the site-specific performance that closes the residency that evening.

See the workshop →

Places are limited on every day

Leave your email and we'll let you know if a place frees up on a day that is already full, or when the next residency is announced.

More than one day

Come back, and it adds up.

Most people came for one day. The ones who came back for several left with something else: from 3 days their pieces hung together at the Open House as a small body of work rather than three things scattered around the room.

Your work hangs together

Everything made during the residency stayed here until the Open House. Anyone who came for 3 days or more had their pieces shown together, as their own small body of work rather than three things scattered around the room, and brought someone with them to see it.

And the evenings

Most workshop days ended at the long table: a Gather Together dinner that evening, with the day's artist, a different vegan chef and whoever was carrying the room. Some stayed the night at the Art Space Hotel and had breakfast before they went.

Three ways through it

Ceremony and the body

Cacao, sound and a collective painting that becomes the tablecloth for the dinners. An intuitive collage of your own inner landscape. A day of finding your way back to your own voice, and writing poetry out of the silence after it. And a day of somatic movement that turns into the performance closing the residency.

4 days

Also happening

During the Art Space Residency

The Table

Every day

A long table, a shared meal, and whoever is here that evening. Separate from the workshops, and open to anyone who would like to sit down with us.

Join a dinner →

Open House

The last day

Everything made during the residency, gathered into one evening: the work on the walls, music, and the doors open to the village.

Come to the Open House →

For musicians and performers

Would you play one of the evenings?

The workshop days are all taken, but the evenings are not. If you play, sing or perform, there is a long table here every night and an audience who have spent the whole day making things with their hands.

Take an evening