You’re working your butt off on a cool creative endeavor but you just don’t have the space in your apartment to do it comfortably and you don’t have the money to do it in a studio where it would be more comfortable. It’s a story we all know, but you’ve got a chance to put a different ending on the story, because Two Trees is offering artists subsidized space that can wind up as low as $700/month.
The cheap rent is part of Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy, a program that the real estate company that owns a ton of DUMBO runs to keep at least some art spaces open in the neighborhood. Through the program, an arts organization or an individual can apply for a three-year lease on studios that range from 700 to 2,5000 square feet, studios which come out to $1/square foot per month.
The program is looking for either arts, educational or community organizations that are engaged with Brooklyn, or to individual artists that are known to do public exhibitions or otherwise engage with their surrounding community. So sorry, if you’re an artists that thrives on alone time and swimming around in darkness and stuff, you’ll probably be SOL applying for this unless you’re willing to share and exhibit and explain all your darkness.
The only catches are that you have to keep your practice up during the course of the three-year lease and you can’t live in the studio space. The first one is probably easy for your thriving creative self, but that second one, well we could see how tempting it would be to ditch your apartment and sleep in a hidden cot in this space. But don’t do it!
The only other catch is that you’ve got to hand in your application by June 15, which is a week from now, so you’d have to get on your horse to get it in. On the other hand, getting to DUMBO might be easier than getting to the Queens Museum, so putting in the time for an application (either group or individual) is probably worth your time.
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