TED, the global platform for ideas and storytelling, and POSCA, a creative brand by uni Brands Corporation, are launching a new kind of artist residency: a globally distributed cohort of artists working across different geographies, cultures, and communities, united by a shared drive to shape public life through art.
Fine Acts, the external curatorial partner selected by TED & POSCA, is leading the curation, creative direction, and coordination of the initiative.
Today, we are announcing a global artist search to identify the first participating artists.
There is no single location. No central studio. Instead:
Thank you to everyone who applied! Results coming on October 30
This year’s residency theme, Visible Mending, explores repair as a creative and civic act. Inspired in part by Kintsugi – the Japanese practice of repairing broken ceramics with gold – the theme invites artists to consider how wounds, ruptures, and imperfections can become sites of transformation rather than something to hide.
Across communities around the world, people are finding ways to mend relationships, restore ecosystems, strengthen social bonds, and rebuild trust. We invite artists to investigate these processes of repair and make them visible through public interventions that spark reflection, dialogue, and collective imagination.
In 2026, four artists will be selected to develop community-rooted public interventions to be implemented in 2027. Each selected artist will receive a total of USD $15,000 to cover artist fees, production costs/community activation, and documentation of the work.
While the term of the residency is one year, this initiative will run for multiple years, expanding the cohort year by year (2027, 2028, and 2029), while building an evolving global archive of civic artistic interventions connected through a shared conceptual framework.
For more information, please see the sections below & the FAQ.
Art can help repair what’s broken. Mending can reveal strength. Imagination can be resilience. Beauty can be a form of civic action.
With these convictions in mind, TED & POSCA are building a different kind of artist residency: a globally distributed cohort of artists working across different geographies, cultures, and communities, connected through a shared conceptual framework around repair, resilience, hope, beauty, and civic imagination.
There is no single location. No central studio. Instead, artists work within their own communities, developing projects that unfold in public space and invite participation, reflection, contribution, and collective imagination. Community engagement is structurally embedded into the work itself, and process matters as much as outcome.
At a time increasingly shaped by fragmentation, isolation, and diminishing shared spaces for reflection, we believe art can serve as a powerful tool: capable of revealing invisible experiences, transforming everyday environments, generating dialogue across differences, and creating forms of connection that conventional institutions often struggle to produce.
Rather than approaching art solely as an object of display, the residency supports artistic practices that engage directly with people, communities, local realities, and shared experience. Each intervention remains deeply rooted in its own context while contributing to a broader collective narrative about participation, imagination, repair, renewal, and the social possibilities of art.
The TED & POSCA Global Artist Residency ultimately exists to support artists who are actively engaging with the social fabric of their communities – artists whose work reminds us that collective imagination, visible acts of repair, and shared acts of meaning-making remain essential cultural forces.
We are looking for artists from around the world whose practices engage directly with people, communities, public space, participation, storytelling, or collective experience.
We welcome applications from a wide range of artists, including:
– visual artists,
– muralists,
– interdisciplinary artists,
– designers,
– community-based practitioners,
– collectives,
– and creatives working across disciplines.
Projects may take many forms, including:
– public installations,
– participatory interventions,
– collaborative processes,
– performances,
– temporary activations,
– workshops,
– story-based works,
– or hybrid approaches.
We are particularly interested in proposals that are:
– rooted in a specific local context;
– participatory or community-engaged;
– conceptually strong but logistically achievable;
– visually and emotionally compelling;
– open to documentation and storytelling collaboration.
June 2026
Global artist search launches
July 31 2026
Applications close
September–October 2026
Artists selected and announced
January 1–June 30 2027
Residency projects developed, implemented, and documented.
Before submitting the application, please read the Program Terms. These Program Terms apply to all applicants to the TED & POSCA Global Artist Residency and supplement the FAQ. By submitting an application, you confirm that you have read and agree to these terms.
By submitting an application you also agree that TED and Fine Acts may store, process, and manage your information in accordance with their respective privacy and data protection policies. For more information, please review TED’s privacy policy & Fine Acts’ data protection policy.
Artists from around the world are welcome to apply regardless of whether they have previously collaborated with TED, POSCA, Fine Acts, or affiliated partners. All applications will be reviewed through the same curatorial selection process. We are committed to a thoughtful and collaborative selection process that evaluates each application on its own merits, including the strength, relevance, originality, and feasibility of the proposal.
Please note that artists do not need to submit fully resolved projects. Selected artists will further develop their proposals collaboratively with the curatorial team following selection.
After you submit the form, a confirmation message will appear on your screen. Please note that we do not send confirmation emails.
Applications are open until 11:59 PM Pacific Time (PT) on July 31, 2026. We strongly encourage you to submit your application well before the deadline to avoid potential connectivity or technical issues. No extensions will be granted.
Due to the high volume of submissions, only shortlisted artists will be contacted and may be invited to a follow-up conversation, and we are unable to provide individual feedback on submissions or selection decisions. Final results will be announced on October 30.
Creativity & Connection Partner
POSCA is a creative brand empowering artists everywhere with versatile, high-quality paint markers and art supplies that work across virtually any surface. An enabler of civic creativity and personal expression, POSCA supports artists in sharing their talent and brightening the spaces around us through participatory, community-embedded projects – fostering renewal, dialogue, and collective expression.
Strategic Media & Global Impact Partner
TED is a nonprofit that believes powerful ideas, powerfully presented, move us: to feel something, to think differently, to take action.
Curation & Coordination Partner
Fine Acts is a global nonprofit creative studio partnering with artists and movements to drive social change through art.
