Eight residencies are available for artists from the New Jersey/New York/Pennsylvania region ahead of the inaugural Heartbeat of the City Arts Festival to take place in New Brunswick this fall.
The festival is a project of coLAB Arts, a New Brunswick-based nonprofit that fosters connections between artists, social advocates, and communities, in partnership with arts, university, government, nonprofit, and corporate institutions. CoLAB received funding from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority A.R.T. Phase 2 program to create Heartbeat of the City, a unique new arts corridor and festival for the Central Jersey region. This festival’s goal is to create new economic and cultural connections between the city’s professional and financial downtown community and the Latine-majority Esperanza Neighborhood.
Organizers say that Heartbeat of the City has the potential to become the largest and most impactful public art festival in the region, leaning on its anchor partnerships to drive local investment, artistic and cultural collaboration, placekeeping, and the creation of a new local economy for fine art that has largely been absent from New Brunswick’s performance-focused cultural development. The one-day festival corridor along Route 27 is almost three-quarters of a mile long, featuring open air galleries and installations, creative and cultural music and programming, and local food entrepreneurs and businesses.
Heartbeat of the City takes its name from the coLAB Arts mural created by Trenton-based mural artist, Leon Rainbow, called “Latido del corazón de la ciudad,” located on Kim’s Bike Shop, right where the Downtown neighborhood shifts into the Esperanza Neighborhood. The mural’s images refer to how the French Street commercial district is one that is always home to the city’s majority residential (largely immigrant) communities. Previously, the street was home to Hungarian businesses, whereas now the storefronts are predominantly in Spanish and the community hails from Oaxaca, Mexico, and other Central and South American nations. The festival corridor on the Downtown Neighborhood side consists of the NJ Transit New Brunswick Train Station, RWJBarnabas University Hospital, Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters, and the future site of Nokia Bell Labs Corporate Headquarters.
coLAB Arts is requesting applications through Friday, February 13, for eight available artist residencies. Artists and artist teams will be responsible for creating a temporary public art installation, to be installed at various locations along the festival corridor.
The Public Art Artist Residency will be for 10 months, from March through December, and will include a free, private studio space with 24-hour access in New Brunswick, and a $10,000 commission to create a new public art piece.
coLAB Arts seeks artists who have a history of creating public art, including but not limited to murals, sculptures, monuments, and landscape design and architecture that speaks to cultural history, placekeeping, memorialization, and commemoration. Art developed using artificial intelligence is not permitted.
Artists who are awarded a residency will be provided free access to a private studio space and are required to utilize that studio space for at least three days per week, and to participate in a monthly First Friday open studio and gallery evening event every month through the end of the residency term with the first event on Friday, March 6, and the last on Friday, December 4.
Selected artists will also receive a $10,000 stipend to use towards the creation of a new public art piece that will be temporarily installed in New Brunswick, September and October 2026.
If awarded a residency, selected artists must carry general liability insurance and be able to provide a certificate of insurance naming coLAB Arts as additionally insured.
Applying artist and artist teams should submit a biography, CV (curriculum vitae) that includes a list of previous public art and/or installation work examples, three references, any available press links, links to website and social media pages if available, and images of past public art and non-public art.
Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis. Early submission is encouraged. Visit colab-arts.org/hotc for more information and the full application.
