This year for the first time at Looking Glass Arts, we are going to be offering what I call The Neighborhood Residency. These residencies are going to be for our local neighbors, for people in West Fulton and the surrounding areas. They will be day residencies, meaning you won't need to stay the night because you'll be able to go home every day. There will be three kinds of residencies for our neighbors this year. One will be an oral history. One will be a recording residency. And the third will be a writing residency.

I think there are probably a lot of writers in the area that have spent time working, whether it's  on a novel or non-fiction, a personal story, poetry, any kind of writing. We're going to invite some professional writers to come up and work with our local writers to get feedback on your writing and to then have a sharing session at the end of the week where we can all share our writing together.

For the recording part of the local residencies, we're going to open up the barn to our neighbors and anybody that plays an instrument or has written a song or maybe both all in one, you're invited to come to the barn and to record a song or piece of music that you have. We have a drum kit, we have a bass amp, we have an acoustic amp, we have a weighted keyboard, we don't have a piano in the barn, we do have an 88 key weighted keyboard, we have music stands  and...we have comfortable chairs. And if you want to know about specifications, other than that, we have on our website a page that will give you all of our backline so that you can see what will be available to you when you sign up to come for your session in the barn. 

Everyone will be given a three hour slot. You'll be able to sign up for these sessions and an engineer will be present in the barn and work with you to record a song. You don't have to be professional. This is for amateur artists. And if you are a professional, you're also welcome to come in. And we hope that you'll join us and record in the barn anything you've written. Maybe there's even just a lullaby you want to sing to a grandchild or to your own child. As you wish, we're going to be there and we will announce to you  when and where to sign up. And we look forward to seeing you at your recording session. 

For the oral history part of this residency, we are going to open up the barn to our neighbors from West Fulton to come and record a story about your life, your life in West Fulton, something that we'll share with generations to come about you and your time in West Fulton. At the end of the summer when we've collected all of your stories, we will digitize them in a manner that we can then give them to the West Fulton Historical Society.