LABA 2025 Fellow Application

The 2025 theme for LABA is …. (Drumroll) CHANGE. Become a LABA fellow.

Our relationship with change reaches in two oppositional directions. We fear change, loathe change, long to keep things as they are or reverse things to how they used to be. We long to return to mythical homelands, to gardens, our childhoods, to the people and communities and places we know before change happened. Oh, and yet, what is our lives if not constant change, or the pursuit of constant change? To borrow from our Buddhist friends, permanence or impermanence? Changes in our moods, changes in our bodies, changes in our levels of enlightenment, sometimes premeditated, sometimes sought out through the embrace of new experiences, the lure of unpredictability which we subject ourselves to with the hope that we are changed, if only for now, if only forever.

As culture-makers, we simultaneously pursue change of words, materials, musical notes, ideas, sensibilities, and warn others of easy, shallow change. Change, real change, is never so simple. In Jewish culture, we also toggle between a resistance to change and embrace of constant flux – laws, ideas, customs, feelings are simultaneously fixed, resistant to change, and open to change through careful deliberations as well as dreams and intuitions. Medieval scholar Maimonides believed the Torah was immutable. Meanwhile, Spanish Jewish mystics believed that truth was mutable, and each different time cycles demanded different Torahs.

This year at LABA, we will dive into the paradoxes of CHANGE in our collective souls and individual creative practices. Most importantly, we’ll have a great time talking, eating, drinking, learning, and laughing in the lush, fertile, free-flowing, romantic, super-serious, and endlessly playful environment of LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture.

We invite you to look within, or without, be still, or be active, and interrogate change in your minds and your work.

Information about the Application Process

Application Deadline: Sunday, October 13, 2024, at Midnight 

We encourage artists and culture-makers from any creative field to apply. Past fellows have included choreographers, performers, curators, visual artists, jewelry designers, directors, composers, writers, filmmakers, and bakers.

All applicants must apply to LABA with either a work-in-progress or a concrete project idea connected to the theme of CHANGE. No previous knowledge of Jewish texts is required; however, we encourage a desire to study these texts in an intellectually rigorous, non-religious setting.

Once submitted, the Artistic Director and a panel of artists and faculty will review all applications. Finalists will be contacted for in-person interviews, to take place at 14Y, or on Zoom during the last week of October or early November.

LABA Fellowship Details

Fellows are required to:

• Join for 10 out of 12 study sessions at 14Y. We usually meet once or twice per month on Mondays, from 7 PM – 10 PM (January 2025 – June 2025 and September 2025 – December 2025).
• Present their work-in-progress at one of our LABAlive events, which will take place from September 2025 – December 2025.
• Check in once a month with the Artistic Director about their work.

LABA fellows receive a $1,200 study stipend as well as project support of up to $1,200. During the year, fellows have access to rehearsal space and workspace at 14Y, including the theater.

For any questions, feel free to reach out: CBenSimon@14streety.org

In the meantime, join us in person for our LABA Fall season!