New York City Artist Safe Haven Residency Program
Founded in 2017 by Todd Lanier Lester (ArtistSafety.net / FreeDimensional), Artistic Freedom Initiative, Residency Unlimited, and Westbeth Artists Housing, the New York City Artist Safe Haven Residency Program (NYCASHRP) is an innovative urban artist safety hosting program. Arts and advocacy organizations come together to form the NYCASHRP coalition, providing holistic support for international at-risk artists who have faced censorship, persecution, or other threats to their freedom of expression.
Through this coalition, the residency offers artists legal aid, resettlement assistance, professional development, financial assistance for living expenses and artist materials, advocacy, community engagement, and other services. In 2024 and 2025, the program is hosting visual artists and musicians through a coalition that includes Residency Unlimited, Artistic Freedom Initiative, Tamizdat, and Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater.
From 2017 through 2023, the program hosted visual artists, musicians, writers, and filmmakers. To date, New York City Artist Safe Haven Residency Program has hosted eighteen artists from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Congo, Vietnam, Haiti, Uganda, India, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Palestine, and Kyrgyzstan.
Legal & Resettlement:
· In addition to managing the program as a whole, AFI provides artists in residence with legal services and support from our network of pro bono attorneys and extensive resettlement assistance that is tailored to the needs of each individual.
Professional Development & Community Engagement:
· Visual artists: Residency Unlimited provides our visual and multidisciplinary artist residents with unique, customized professional residency programming composed of network support, project and production assistance, exhibition, and public programming opportunities.
· Musicians: Developed and launched by Artistic Freedom Initiative and Tamizdat, the Safe Haven Incubator for Musicians: New York City (SHIM: NYC) matches our musicians in residence with carefully selected mentors. In partnership with Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater and the Joe’s Pub Working Group, SHIM provides musicians with an opportunity to develop a specific work, hone their skills, and expand their professional network.
· Writers & Filmmakers: From 2017 – 2023, professional development for writers & filmmakers was provided by partners including The New School, PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection, Fordham University, Art Omi, and Ledig House. Opportunities included network expansion, teaching positions, and developing new work. (Note: the program is not hosting writers/filmmakers in 2024 & 2025).
Living Assistance
· In 2024 and 2025, the program provides financial assistance to artists in residence for their living expenses and artist materials.
· From 2017 through 2023, the program included free artist housing at the historic Westbeth Artists Housing community in New York City’s West Village. Located in the heart of Manhattan’s West Village, Westbeth Artists Housing is a non-profit housing complex that has provided affordable live-work space to New York City’s artists since the late 1960s. Formerly the Bell Laboratories headquarters, Westbeth was redeveloped in 1968 by the J. M. Kaplan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts into one of the world’s largest artist communities. In addition to 383 housing units, the complex includes a large gallery, theater, visual art, music, and dance studios, community room, and childcare center.
Other Key partners
Todd Lanier Lester (ArtistSafety.net / FreeDimensional), Critical Dialogues, Detroit City of Asylum, Fordham University, Goethe Institute, International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN), Magnum Foundation, New York Film Academy, PEN’s Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), Practitioners-at Risk Network, The New School, The New University in Exile Consortium, and Westbeth Artists Housing.
The New York City Artist Safe Haven Residency Program is generously supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for The Visual Arts, The Wilhelm Family Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Artist Safety Hosting Guide
The Artist Safety Hosting Guide was co-written by Artistic Freedom Initiative and Todd Lanier Lester. It was published in the fall of 2019 with support from our New York City Artist Safe Haven Residency Program coalition, the David Rockefeller Fund, and the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. The guide offers reflections on the history, ethics, and best practices of artist safety hosting in New York City and elsewhere, tracks the development of our coalition-led residency program, and includes a section dedicated to legal assistance for at-risk artists.
List of participating artists and related programs since 2018:
2017: Hadi Nasiri (Iran)
2018: Rashwan Abdelbaki (Syria)
2019: Khaled Barakeh (Syria)
September 19, 2019, Panel: Artist Safety Hosting, A Discussion on Practice: Presentation of a hosting guide that offers reflections on the rise of artist safety hosting and the best practices for its use in New York City and elsewhere. Speakers: Tania Bruguera, Laura Raicovich, Prerana Reddy and others.
2020: Faten Gaddes (Tunisia)
2021-2022: Nazanin Noroozi (Iran)
2022-2023: Alejandro De La Guerra (Nicaragua)
2024: Aida Sulova (Kyrgyzstan)
This program benefit from the support of The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Wilhelm Family Foundation.
