The Centre for Suburban Research (CSR)
The CSR is an artist residence program based in the family home of Justin McKeown his partner and fellow SPARTIST Meabh McDonnell and their child Luke McDonnell. BUT This is no ordinary Artist in Residence program because the reasoning that brought it into being differs radically from that of most other Artist in Residence programs.

The Purpose of the CSR
Our overall objective is to facilitate artistic processes that explore some aspect of the artists relationship with Belfast. As such we ask all artists in residence to leave behind copies of everything they produced while on residence. The reason we want to do this is because we want to understand Belfast as lived reality, beyond its representation and manipulation in the media. By building up documents over the process of several residencies we will be able to achieve this desire. After artists finish their residency we also ask them to Undertake some kind of appraisal of what it was like to live with us for a week. We do this so that the domestic aspect of life in Belfast is not over looked, in fact we belive the domestic to be integral to what we seek to understand.

Image: Nanny Grehan and Justin McKeown discussing the CSR

CONDITITIONS OF RESIDENCY
The residency has 2 conditions:
1. That the family home be respected in light of the childs well being
2. That a copy of all work be left for inclusion in the C.S.R archive

Things to consider before applying for a residency
Although the context sounds interesting it is worth considering some things before deciding to apply…
Luke
Most family activity is centred round Luke, who is 6 years old. Preserving the security of his living environment is our primary concern. Before applying for the residency you should consider that you will be sharing your living environment with a 6 year old child. This means late night partying at your artist residency is out of bounds, as is smoking indoors and getting drunk around the child.
Also, on school days Luke goes to bed around 8pm and gets up around 7am. So expect the early morning noise of the flurry of the school run. Luke will be very curious to talk to you and to interact with you during the evening when he is home from school. He is a very intelligent and artistic child. But being six he has no grasp of social space and privacy so at some point during the residency you may feel a little put upon by him, but this experience will be in no way new to anyone who has experience of children.

Belfast
The environment you will be living in, although friendly, suburban and nice, is also very conservative. So our neighbours will not appreciate you standing bullock/fanny (delete as appropriate) naked in our street waving a dead chicken round your head while reciting your latest leftist critique of contemporary fascist America. That said, the political nature of the local environment, combined with some of the areas near the C.S.R., make it a very interesting context for artistic exploration of dominant value systems and ideologies.