DRAWING with PLACE, Creative Retreat, Orkney Islands
Type
Residency
Category
Drawing
Status
Open for Applications
Deadline
July 1, 2026
Application Fee
Free
Host
The Museum of Loss and Renewal
Location
Glasgow, United Kingdom
Lead by artist, curator and educator Tracy Mackenna
7 nights/8 days
Sat 04 July – Sat 11 July 2026
£1350.00 GBP / Book your place via the Booking tab on website page
DRAWING with PLACE invites you to take the time to slow down by experiencing and investigating place through drawing. All forms of drawing are encouraged, activated through experimentation, play, trial and error. Being and working in the ancient environment of the Orkney Islands will stimulate deep consideration of time, perspective, and personal and environmental well-being.
There are just six places available, and participants will be accommodated in 5-star rated self-catering accommodation in the village of Palace, in Orkney’s ancient heart of Birsay.
DRAWING with PLACE is a retreat that has been carefully designed to provide structured workshops that explore and question what drawing is and can be. It will suit all those who are developing, extending, and challenging their drawing practices. Support and encouragement are at the heart of the week, under the careful guidance of award-winning educator, artist, and curator Tracy Mackenna. We welcome participants who think through drawing and for whom drawing is a way to investigate and understand place, and from practitioners who have a strong interest in drawing as an area of practice.
Our Creative Retreat is designed to help you step out of your daily routine, to decelerate, so you can focus your energy through creativity and rest, heightening senses and increasing inspiration. The retreat will give you dedicated time and space to explore your own creativity through a careful balance of guided workshops and uninterrupted personal hours.
DRAWING with PLACE will encourage and support you to be inventive and experimental, to have fun and take risks – all the while being attentive to your remarkable surroundings and your own needs.
The Creative Retreat offers a carefully balanced itinerary with workshops that focus on historical and contemporary ways of drawing, discussion, presentation, making and sharing. Participants will be introduced to the natural landscape and to Orkney’s world-class archaeological sites. By walking, listening, looking and making, participants will activate drawing and mark-making in multiple ways.
Every morning we will step on to the beautiful coastal environment that includes the St Magnus Way pilgrimage route, inspired by the life and death of Magnus, Orkney’s patron saint. At the Atlantic Ocean, just a few minutes walk from your accommodation, Birsay Bay’s 400million year old rock structures reflect how landmasses have moved, and how glacial erosion has sculpted the islands that we know today as Orkney. Intricate and immersive patterns will draw us in whilst the scale of the coastal masses help us consider perspective, climate change, and future scenarios. These locations, along with RSPB reserves and world heritage archaeological sites, will be the sites for a series of tailored drawing exercises. Indoor working spaces next to your accommodation will enable you to experiment, get mucky and test ideas.
Each afternoon is time for you to explore by walking, working indoors or outdoors, reading, recording or simply just being and digesting the morning’s experiences. Late afternoon gatherings are moments to share and discuss and are optional, so you can choose to shape the space, pattern and time you need during this week. Evening gatherings by the shore are an invitation to converse and reflect while watched by the seals in the hypnotic beam of the Brough of Birsay’s Stevenson lighthouse.
7 nights/8 days
Sat 04 July – Sat 11 July 2026
£1350.00 GBP / Book your place via the Booking tab on website page
DRAWING with PLACE invites you to take the time to slow down by experiencing and investigating place through drawing. All forms of drawing are encouraged, activated through experimentation, play, trial and error. Being and working in the ancient environment of the Orkney Islands will stimulate deep consideration of time, perspective, and personal and environmental well-being.
There are just six places available, and participants will be accommodated in 5-star rated self-catering accommodation in the village of Palace, in Orkney’s ancient heart of Birsay.
DRAWING with PLACE is a retreat that has been carefully designed to provide structured workshops that explore and question what drawing is and can be. It will suit all those who are developing, extending, and challenging their drawing practices. Support and encouragement are at the heart of the week, under the careful guidance of award-winning educator, artist, and curator Tracy Mackenna. We welcome participants who think through drawing and for whom drawing is a way to investigate and understand place, and from practitioners who have a strong interest in drawing as an area of practice.
Our Creative Retreat is designed to help you step out of your daily routine, to decelerate, so you can focus your energy through creativity and rest, heightening senses and increasing inspiration. The retreat will give you dedicated time and space to explore your own creativity through a careful balance of guided workshops and uninterrupted personal hours.
DRAWING with PLACE will encourage and support you to be inventive and experimental, to have fun and take risks – all the while being attentive to your remarkable surroundings and your own needs.
The Creative Retreat offers a carefully balanced itinerary with workshops that focus on historical and contemporary ways of drawing, discussion, presentation, making and sharing. Participants will be introduced to the natural landscape and to Orkney’s world-class archaeological sites. By walking, listening, looking and making, participants will activate drawing and mark-making in multiple ways.
Every morning we will step on to the beautiful coastal environment that includes the St Magnus Way pilgrimage route, inspired by the life and death of Magnus, Orkney’s patron saint. At the Atlantic Ocean, just a few minutes walk from your accommodation, Birsay Bay’s 400million year old rock structures reflect how landmasses have moved, and how glacial erosion has sculpted the islands that we know today as Orkney. Intricate and immersive patterns will draw us in whilst the scale of the coastal masses help us consider perspective, climate change, and future scenarios. These locations, along with RSPB reserves and world heritage archaeological sites, will be the sites for a series of tailored drawing exercises. Indoor working spaces next to your accommodation will enable you to experiment, get mucky and test ideas.
Each afternoon is time for you to explore by walking, working indoors or outdoors, reading, recording or simply just being and digesting the morning’s experiences. Late afternoon gatherings are moments to share and discuss and are optional, so you can choose to shape the space, pattern and time you need during this week. Evening gatherings by the shore are an invitation to converse and reflect while watched by the seals in the hypnotic beam of the Brough of Birsay’s Stevenson lighthouse.