Four Pew Fellows have been awarded 2025 artist residencies with support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. These opportunities for creative research and development give artists time, space, and inspiration to advance their practices.
The Center offers the residencies through its longstanding partnership with the Artist Communities Alliance. This year, writer Asali Solomon (2022 Pew Fellow) has a residency at Art Omi in Ghent, NY; performance artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko (2020) and interdisciplinary artist James Allister Sprang (2022) go to Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA and filmmaker Rashid Zakat (2021) spends time at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA.
Since 2011, the Center has offered Pew Fellows opportunities to focus on their creative work and broaden their horizons in residency programs for artists of all disciplines. The Center also provides stipends during the residencies to help the artists defray the cost of disruptions to their usual work-life schedules, making the program accessible to more artists.
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“The benefits of this program extend beyond the residencies themselves,” Melissa Franklin, director of the Pew Fellowships program, says. “They give Fellows the chance to not only have uninterrupted time for their work, but to also experience new places, engage with other artists, and bring new perspectives back to Philadelphia.”
Each of this year's artists notes how essential residency opportunities are for allowing artists to step away from familiar, everyday routines and slow down for reflection, deep focus, and creative experimentation. Jaamil Olawale Kosoko says they hope to “return to Philadelphia with renewed clarity and a deeper spiritual connection to the new work I'm creating,” while Asali Solomon says she seeks “a new level of intimacy” with the project she’s working on.
Solomon will undertake her first artist residency at Art Omi, which hosts authors and translators from around the world in a rural setting overlooking the Catskill Mountains. She plans to take advantage of the dedicated time away from her usual teaching duties to work on a new novel.
“My wildest dream would be to work out what some important section of the novel looks like, or at the very least nail down the shape of the thing,” she says. “I have found in the past that getting away from my daily life opens up new vistas in my brain, and I hope that—plus not having to care for my house, cat, or kids—will help me get more done creatively.”
At Headlands Center for the Arts, Kosoko will focus on new writing work in addition to refining a series of performance scores in preparation for a forthcoming international tour. Kosoko anticipates taking inspiration from the Headlands’ Pacific Coast setting, located in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area—one of the largest urban parks in the world, known for its rich biodiversity.
“I'm particularly interested in how the unique ecology of Headlands might influence the shape and spirit of this emerging body of work,” Kosoko says. “Residencies offer the rare gift of uninterrupted time and space—something my practice requires to fully deepen and unfold. At Headlands, I anticipate new routines shaped by the landscape itself, allowing nature and solitude to inform how I listen, write, and move.”
James Allister Sprang, who recently completed his residency, also expected the Headlands’ natural environment to shift how he approaches sound and material, “encouraging a deeper meditative and somatic engagement with the work.” Sprang spent his residency developing his next multidisciplinary, audiovisual project that explores Caribbean cultural practices, “to celebrate the joy and cultural resilience of diasporic communities,” he explains. “I’m hoping for a kind of grounding—a reconnection to the deeper reasons I make this work and how it might better serve the communities I’m part of.” (Sprang shared his experience, post-residency, on Instagram.)
At Montalvo Arts Center, Rashid Zakat recently spent time researching, collecting media, and exploring performances as he develops a new performance piece for his project, Revival!, along with strategic planning for another new project. Zakat says his past residencies have been “deeply influential” to his creative process and development.
Montalvo is situated on a picturesque Northern California hillside next to a forest and more than three miles of hiking trails. “Most of my work revolves around a screen of some sort, so I’m hoping that the beautiful grounds offer a bit of contrast and inspiration,” Zakat shared before his residency began. “I get a lot of inspiration from working in, photographing, and exploring new surroundings, so residencies have become a a critical way for me to sustain my art practice.”
Learn more about the history of the Pew Fellows artist residencies
