IDLE HANDS
INCUBATION AWARD
Idle Hands invites emerging and mid-career artists based in New York City (all five boroughs eligible) to apply for the Idle Hands Incubation Award, offering a $10,000 unrestricted stipend, professional mentorship, and a culminating exhibition in our Williamsburg, Brooklyn loft space.
Timeframe and Deadline
Fall 2026 Cycle Two
- Application Opens: July 1, 2026
- Application Deadline: August 4, 2026 at 11:59 PM EST
- Recipient announced: September 8, 2026
- Award Period: September 8- December 13, 2026
- Exhibition / Public Presentation: December 11-13, 2026
Time- Based Media
Theme: Rooting
For this award cycle, Rooting is approached through the lens of time-based media, including film, video, sound, performance, and other durational practices.
Rooting is an ongoing and active process of connection: to people, places, rituals, histories, communities, and systems of care. Within time-based practices, artists are uniquely positioned to explore the long-term structural complexities of relationships, and the integrality of dynamic forces both fertile and fallow in giving meaning to the spaces, connections, and practices that guide how and where we root—a site we might call home. Places, communities, memories, languages, traditions, sets of relationships: we welcome all of these, and more, as an interlocking understanding of home. Yet the processes of growth and recognition that may lead us out of the dark and towards a more loving and compassionate way of living are not easy. Spreading roots does not mean simply unchecked expansion and communication; it also entails divergence, obstruction, entanglement, and decay. We’re interested in work that fully considers the conditions under which we seek, and find, belonging.
Artists may engage with, but are not limited to, exploring the theme through:
- Place, geography, and environments that shape identity and experience
- Community, kinship, chosen family, and collective care
- Ritual, repetition, and everyday practices of belonging
- Memory, inheritance, ancestry, and cultural transmission
- Migration, displacement, return, and questions of home
- Cycles of growth, decay, adaptation, and renewal
- Interspecies collaboration and communication
- Visible and invisible networked systems
- Acts of tending, cultivation and collective responsibility
- Systems as models for resilience, interdependence, and exchange
Conceptual, speculative, abstract, and formally experimental approaches are welcome. We encourage proposals that examine how connection is formed, sustained, challenged, or reimagined, and how acts of rooting can create the conditions for individual and collective flourishing.
Award Scope of Support and Compensation
IHIA Award Recipient receives:
- $10,000 USD unrestricted stipend
- Access to Idle Hands professional network for mentorship and dialogue where appropriate
- Exhibition opportunity in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
There is no application fee.
Details:
The Idle Hands Incubation Award offers three primary pillars of support:
1. An unrestricted* stipend of ten thousand USD, disbursed in two installments over a three-month award period.
2. Access, within reason, to the Idle Hands network of artists, curators, technologists, publishers, and producers for dialogue, feedback, and professional exchange. Two studio visits with IH internal team and possible mentors included as part of the award production timeline.
3. Usage of the Idle Hands loft space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at the conclusion of the award period, for an exhibition of work produced over the course of the three months.
- *Unrestricted awards are provided without required deliverables or prescribed outcomes, other than an exhibition and/or public presentation of work produced during the award period. Artists retain full creative autonomy and ownership of all intellectual property.
- *Funds are disbursed in two installments:
Round 1: at start of award period
Round 2: at mid-point studio visit
- *The Idle Hands Incubation Award is not operating as a 501(c)(3) organization. Award funds are distributed as private gifts, structured to remain below the applicable U.S. gift tax threshold of USD 19,000 (as of 2025).
- *Idle Hands requests non-exclusive rights to reproduce and use images, video, and related documentation of the work for purposes of publicity and promotion across Idle Hands’ website, social media channels, email communications, and related materials, with full artist credit provided whenever such materials are used.
IHIA Award Finalists receive:
- $1,000 USD unrestricted stipend
Eligibility and Application Criteria
For the inaugural year, Idle Hands will accept applications exclusively from artists based in the New York City metropolitan area.
- Artist collectives, including duos and trios, are eligible to apply; however, the award stipend remains a single, shared amount regardless of the number of participants.
- There is no limit to the number of times an artist or collective may apply if they have not received an award.
- Previous IHIA Recipients are not eligible to apply for (3) years (or 6 cycles) after winning the $10,000 award.
- Award Finalists from previous cycles are eligible to apply again after skipping (1) cycle. For example, if you were awarded the $1,000 Finalist Award in Cycle One, you are eligible to apply again starting in Cycle Three.
On-site Support
- Access to Idle Hands Williamsburg loft space during on-site production period
Two scheduled studio visits with Idle Hands and/or mentor committee - Technical and logistical support for exhibition installation (within reason)
- Small rotating production team for exhibition coordination