WIGWELL LODGE RESIDENCIES

Wigwell Lodge is a property in Derbyshire, owned by The Ampersand Foundation since 2018. Situated in the countryside thirty minutes from Derby, the Lodge is conceived as a residence space to host artists, curators, academics and writer to reflect and work. Wigwell Lodge provides accommodation and living expenses to the person in residence giving them an opportunity to explore and discover the Midlands cultural and natural heritage.

Our current resident is artist Felix Loftus, in an artist residency collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery titled Waste as Resource.

Felix Loftus is an artist and researcher based in London focused on relationships to the land and commoning practices in their various forms. For the residency, he will be looking into the histories of industrialisation, making and technological resistance in the area while prototyping creative methods for re-using smart-phones using a permacomputing approach. Loftus’ prototyping will focus on building solar-powered, automated, landscape cameras and nature cams.

Waste as Resource takes inspiration from a history of DIY and environmental approaches to technology, imaging and/or infrastructures and interested in experimental creative R&D, including the PhD research undertaken by Marloes de Valk through The Photographers’ Gallery and LSBU's Centre for the Study of the Networked Image.

Over the residency, Felix will be sharing notes, documentation and works-in-progress via The Photographers’ Gallery’s online resource Unthinking Photography.

RESIDENCY PARTNERS & PREVIOUS RESIDENT ARTISTS

Artist residency - Wirksworth Festival partnership

In partnership with the Wirksworth Festival, a regional arts festival in Derbyshire that has been running for over twenty years, the Foundation now runs an annual artist residency. Each year, an artist will be selected and invited to reside at Wigwell Lodge for three months in the summer. During the course of the residency, the artist will produce work for the festival.

Previous residents: Ellen Burroughs (2025) https://ellenburroughs.wordpress.com/
Stef Kerek (2024) https://skerekceramics.wordpress.com/ Mustafa Boga (2023) https://www.mustafaboga.com/ Feral Practice (2023) http://www.feralpractice.com/ Jemma Gunning (2022) https://www.jemmagunning.com/ Liane Lang (2021) https://www.lianelang.com/ Mike Shaw (2019) https://michaelshaw.art/

Artist residency - Ikon Gallery partnership

In 2025 we partnership with the Ikon Gallery, a renowned arts gallery in Birmingham founded in 1964, to hold a residency for Singaporean artist Robert Renhui Zhao. Zhao is a multidisciplinary artist whose used his residency to continue his practice of examining the relationship between humans and nature.

Art history residency - Association for Art History (AAH) partnership

In partnership with the AAH to create an annual art history residency for researchers and academics. The residency is intended to give researchers, at all stages of their career, the opportunity to spend focused time on their research/writing while on sabbatical. The residency is available to AAH members and will run for up to four months from October to January each year.

Previous residents:
Dr Victoria Horne, Northumbria University (2025)
Dr Robert Mills, University College London (2024) Susannah Thompson, The Glasgow School of Art (2023)
Dr. Patricya Smith (2022) Prof. James Hellings, University of Reading (2021) Mark Rawlinson, Associate Professor in Art History, University of Nottingham (2019)

Lens-based artist residency - Photoworks partnership

From 2020-24 we partnered with Photoworks to offer a residency opportunity for lens-based artists, running each year from February to June. Arts institutions from across the Midlands came together to nominate the candidates. Photoworks is a platform for contemporary photography working nationally and internationally. www.photoworks.org.uk

Previous residents: Matthew Arthur Williams (2024) https://www.matthewarthurwilliams.com/work Charlie Fitz (2023) https://www.charliefitzartist.co.uk/ Monica Alcazar-Duarte (2021) https://www.monicaalcazarduarte.com/ Freddy Griffiths (2020) http://www.freddygriffiths.co.uk/

Please contact each organisation to find out more about how to apply.