THE
RESIDENCY
A 10-Week Creative Studio for High Schoolers
The project you pitched to your friend on the drive home. The one that woke you up at 2 am.
You know what you want to make. Maybe you even have a name for it. You just haven't had the space to build it.
The Residency is that space.
Opens Spring 2027
The Approach
Most creative projects never get made — especially the ones with no class for them, no category they fit into. Not from lack of talent or time but because the project that only exists in your head never has to be real. It can stay perfect there. The Residency is where it has to show up.
Every Sunday you ship something — a rough cut, three pages, the reworked scene. By Tuesday, your Studio Guide has been through it. Your Studio Mate has left you a note. You've left them one. Everyone's already inside your project.
That's what you show up to every week: not a class. A studio — people who've been in your project from the start, who will ask the right questions and tell you what they see. You make something, ship it, find out what landed, and go back in.
Ten weeks. Then the Showcase — where it stops being something you've been meaning to make and becomes something you made.
How It Works
YOUR STUDIO
DESK
Your own section of the shared digital studio board — where you draft, storyboard, brainstorm, and build. Messily, freely, without cleaning up for a grade. Your space, out in the open. Studio mates move through it, see what you're building, and sometimes drop in to leave a note.
THE WEEKLY
SHIP
Every Sunday by 9:00 PM, you move one artifact — a rough paragraph, a 30-second audio clip, an outline, a storyboard sketch — to our works-in-progress board. You tag your Studio Mate with a specific question. You get real feedback by Monday.
YOUR STUDIO
MATE
Every resident is paired with a Studio Mate — the first person to see your work, every week, all ten weeks. Not just encouragement — a genuine reaction to what's actually on the board. You do the same for them. This is the relationship that keeps the studio honest.
THE
COHORT
A small room of people who are genuinely into what they're making — and into what you're making too. They follow your project week over week. At the Showcase, they're the people who watched it get made.
THE DESK
SWEEP
Twice a week — Tuesday and Thursday mornings — your Studio Guide moves through every resident's digital workspace. Tuesdays: she reviews each Sunday ship and leaves direct feedback on each desk. Thursdays: if you've tagged something you're stuck on, you have a response before the weekend. By the time Tuesday's live session begins, she already knows where you are.
THE TUESDAY
SESSION
Once a week, the full cohort meets on Zoom for 60 minutes. The cohort reviews works-in-progress, and 2–3 residents take the Live Desk — a dedicated block of real-time feedback on their current work. Every session opens with a Brief: a short, focused idea drawn from real practice.
You pitch your project idea to the cohort, get real feedback, and scope it into something you can actually finish. By the end of Week 2, your direction is locked.
The core of the Residency. Six weeks of independent building — shipping every Sunday, getting feedback every Monday, and two turns on the Live Desk. This is where the project finds its shape, and where you find out what you're actually trying to say.
You shift into finishing mode — tightening your work, learning how to talk about your process, and preparing to present. The Residency closes with a live virtual showcase where you walk the audience through your finished project: what you made, where you started, and the moment you're most proud of.
The Week 10 Showcase
The Residency closes with a live virtual showcase — a real creative milestone, not a class presentation. You'll take about 5 minutes to walk the audience through your finished project: what you made, where you started, and the moment you're most proud of. Families, friends, and guests are welcome.
The Showcase is recorded. You'll receive your own clip afterward — a record of the work you made and the moment you presented it.
No judges. No grades. Just finished work, and the people who watched you make it.
What Does a Residency Project Look Like?
A graphic essay — a personal piece told through images and text, where the visual choices carry as much meaning as the words. Designed, sequenced, and finished into something you can actually show.
A self-published zine combining original writing, photography, and design around a topic the student cares deeply about — built to actually distribute, not just exist.
A documentary short — a 5–8 minute film built around a story, place, or person that's been pulling at you. Researched, filmed, and edited into something finished with a real point of view.
A hybrid essay — personal writing taken somewhere longer and stranger: part memoir, part obsession, part cultural criticism, built in a form that earns its length and couldn't have been written by anyone else.
About Your Studio Guide
Kate Arillo has spent her career on every side of creative work — making it, teaching it, and seeing it in students who were still figuring out what they had to say. She's taught writing at the high school and college level and spent nearly a decade in art school admissions reviewing thousands of student portfolios and projects. She built The Studio because she kept meeting students with something real to make — and nowhere serious to make it.
BFA Film/Video · MA English · Former Director of Admissions · Secondary Teaching Certification
More about Kate →For Parents
The model that makes serious creative work possible — a small cohort, a guide who knows each student's project, a real deadline, a public showcase — has always existed. In MFA programs, film schools, art residencies. The Residency brings that structure to high schoolers.
Kate has taught writing at the high school and college level, reviewed thousands of portfolios in art school admissions — including as Director of Admissions — and holds a secondary teaching certification. Your student's project is entirely their own: the concept, the direction, the decisions. Kate's job is to help them build what they came in with.
Students arrive with an idea and leave with something finished — built over ten weeks, presented publicly at the Showcase. The students who get the most out of it are here because they want to make the thing. The portfolio piece follows.
Outside of Tuesday sessions, students spend a few hours a week making, iterating, and responding to their Studio Mate. You'll receive an onboarding email one week before the first session. At Week 5, your student sends you a short video walkthrough of their project and progress. You'll receive a Showcase invitation in Week 9. Questions? kate@thestudio.studio — answered within 48 hours, Monday through Friday.
The Details
Tuition
$1,300 Founding Cohort Rate Spring 2027 ($1500 standard)
Dates
10 weeks · Spring 2027 (exact dates TBA)
Sessions
Day/time TBA
Format
Live on Zoom + async on Miro
Cohort size
Up to 8 residents
Open to
Grades 10–12. Motivated 9th graders welcome to apply.
Showcase
Final week, live on Zoom. Open to families and guests. Recorded — residents receive their individual clip after the event.
The Residency opens Spring 2027.
Leave your email and I'll let you know as soon as applications open.
You're on the list. I'll be in touch.
Also From The Studio
The Workshop and Residency are where you make the work. The Audit is where your college application gets a real read.
The Workshop
For the student who wants to write personal essays — and needs to figure out what they actually have to say. Writing-as-thinking is how you get there.
Learn more about The Workshop →The Audit
An admissions reader's honest take on your full application — what a committee would actually see, where the voice is working, and what the most important moves are before you submit.
Learn more about The Audit →