Founded in 2025, Idle Hands supports emerging and mid-career artists working across, between, and against disciplinary boundaries. Idle Hands prioritizes practices grounded in experimentation and critical reflection, with particular attention to work that embraces risk, failure, chance, and generative conflict as essential components of artistic exploration.

Idle Hands envisions an arts ecosystem in which artistic practice is recognized as a foundational cultural force rather than a discretionary pursuit. The organization advocates for sustained investment in experimental, non-linear, and anti-disciplinary practices as vital to a resilient and reflective society.

In 2026, Idle Hands launched the Idle Hands Incubation Award which supports artists working across all media and artistic practices, including but not limited to visual art, performance, sound, writing, sculpture, media arts, and hybrid or experimental forms.

Each Award period is organized around a curatorial theme designed to be broad enough to welcome artists across disciplines, methodologies, and backgrounds, while remaining specific enough to inform the selection process. Applicants are expected to engage meaningfully with the theme; interpretations may be expansive or indirect, but engagement should be intentional rather than incidental.

Selected artists receive:
-$10,000 USD unrestricted stipend
-Access to Idle Hands professional network for mentorship and dialogue where appropriate
-Exhibition opportunity in Williamsburg, Brooklyn


Idle Hands

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Idle Hands

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