Cargo Bike Artist Residency Series
Date to Publish: 10 March 2025
Headline: An Artist Residency on a Cargo Bike? Sub: Bridging divides through art and cycling.
Quick info: Middle Ground is an artist residency series based on a cargo bike.
Artists ride a cargo bike that is equipped for travelling and has the basics for making artwork.
This first iteration will consist of 3 artist journeys in summer 2025. During a (up to) 4 week period they will, starting in the Netherlands, cycle along a proposed route, meet people, connect to places, and initiate a project that engages directly with the community they encounter.
Detailed info: Middle Ground’s intention, as a roaming art residency, is to connect and reclaim in a society where binary politics and geographies are cut through by anger, fear, and motorways.
Today it is taboo to look for ways to compromise with “the other side” rather than finding solidarity with all people. But sometimes, all it can take is to ride a bike somewhere and talk to someone new, to realise that we’re not so different, and often, we want the same things.
Middle Ground uses the format of an artist residency on a cargo bike for both political and practical reasons.
If the intention of the project is to bridge division, in ways uniting working people from different contexts, then we need to get rid of the walls that shut each other out. Art spaces are often exclusionary, and art ideals are often disconnected from the reality of actual living.
Middle Ground uses the cargo bike to melt these boundaries. When someone shows up in a small village on a huge weird bike carrying colourful cargo, some kind of spontaneous and mutual connection is bound to happen.
Calls to action:
Images: (Click and hover to download)
