Several dancers travel to different cities as their careers performing ballets for audiences nationally and internationally. However, their constant travelling does not allow the dancers to gain a sense of place or form a connection with the cities they visit. The objective of this practicum project is to address this issue by producing an ideal environment that is designed for the dancers needs. This will be achieved by analyzing the role of interior design by proposing a Short Term Residence for Travelling Dance Professionals visiting the city of Winnipeg. The design project is a new typology where dancers coming to Winnipeg have the opportunity to stay in one location that will provide housing, dance rehearsal space, and most importantly an opportunity for collaboration and creative synergy to occur. The theories I will investigate are, the Significance of Place and Community, Collaborative Social Environments, and Performance and the Body in Space.

Several dancers travel to different cities as their careers performing ballets for audiences nationally and internationally. However, their constant travelling does not allow the dancers to gain a sense of place or form a connection with the cities they visit. The objective of this practicum project is to address this issue by producing an ideal environment that is designed for the dancers needs. This will be achieved by analyzing the role of interior design by proposing a Short Term Residence for Travelling Dance Professionals visiting the city of Winnipeg. The design project is a new typology where dancers coming to Winnipeg have the opportunity to stay in one location that will provide housing, dance rehearsal space, and most importantly an opportunity for collaboration and creative synergy to occur. The theories I will investigate are, the Significance of Place and Community, Collaborative Social Environments, and Performance and the Body in Space.

This ethnography explores the underground art world in Portland, Oregon by showing how a Portland area artist collective, Oregon Painting Society, navigates their art world. Participant observation, in-depth interviews, and a short latent content analysis triangulate data to show the features and values of the underground art world. Using Becker's concept of art worlds, I show how artists working outside of a traditional art career in a commercial gallery system do their work by exploring how Portland's art world is structured and sustained. I find that group work, cooperation, and resource sharing in a vibrant neighborhood based social network enables artists to substitute resources usually provided by gallery representation and sustain their ability to make artwork without financial support. This is a network that rejects the competitive structure of the commercial system and runs more smoothly the more artists participate in it. I also explore the reasons for Portland's particular ability to support this kind of environment, citing geographic proximity to other art cities, DIY cultural roots, neighborhood structure, affordable city amenities, and a creative class population.

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