Currently 3 active design grants, fellowships and residencies open to applicants in Remote (work-from-anywhere). Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
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The Surface Design Association's Artist in Residence programme is built to develop skills, open up relationships and support fiber and textile artists through a studio project that pushes their practice. The residency is entirely virtual and runs across a full year, which is the point: it removes the travel, housing and time-away barriers that keep many practitioners out of in-person residencies. One artist is selected annually by a panel of SDA staff, board members and committee volunteers. WHAT IT INVOLVES: studio visits across the year, social media programming, and meetings with the SDA community, plus further programming shaped around the resident's own skills and interests, which can include teaching online workshops, contributing to SDA publications, jurying exhibitions or joining panels. FUNDING: a $2,000 studio stipend for the project, plus up to $2,000 in additional compensation for programming work, targeting about $4,000 total. ELIGIBILITY: emerging, mid-career and established artists; US-based and international applicants welcome; students and professionals may apply; applicants must hold current SDA membership (from $85 per year, $60 for students). APPLICATION: a portfolio of 10 images with full artwork information (title, year, materials, technique, dimensions, photo credit), a detailed CV, essay responses on artistic goals, programming interests and professional development, and demographic information. No application fee. The 2026-27 cycle closes 14 August 2026.
Playlab is a nonprofit building public infrastructure for educational AI, equipping communities to create AI tools that reflect their own needs and values; more than 60,000 educators have published apps on the platform. Its premise is that AI is a new design material that should be shaped by many, and that educators should be designers of AI systems rather than end users of someone else's. THE ROLE: visual communication designers own the brand and the surfaces where people encounter and build with it, shaping how educators learn about AI and gain the confidence to tinker with it, and making sophisticated ideas legible without flattening them. Work spans brand expression, storytelling, data and information design, motion, interface and print, taken from concept through produced work and shipped as reusable systems. The job includes getting close to the people using Playlab and the contexts they work in, and helping collect and share their stories. WHAT THEY LOOK FOR: craft that is production-grade with a clear point of view and good judgement about when to ship fast versus slow down; narrative sense, meaning well-reasoned positions on how Playlab tells its story and the ability to turn complex systems into intuitive visuals that stay true to their depth; initiative on fuzzy problems, from defining the space to shipped work, thinking ahead to dependencies and second-order questions; technical fluency across print, web and motion, building with and on AI as a creative material and curating tooling and workflows; and taste, a distinct visual voice with the restraint to leave a rough edge when it serves the work. FIT: at least 5 years' experience with a strong graphic design foundation, a home base in visual communication (brand, editorial, campaign, web) and a track record in at least one other design discipline; able to lead design on owned projects while collaborating across the team; broad knowledge of creative tools and workflows including AI-leveraged ones; genuine interest in learning environments and the people in them; and strength as a producer comfortable owning the last mile to production. BONUS: education or edtech experience, designing creative tech, and a love of creative side quests. The posting explicitly encourages applications from people who do not meet every listed qualification. Culturally the organisation describes itself as sitting between a startup and an R&D lab, with nonprofit governance intended to keep incentives tied to teaching and learning rather than growth.
Playlab is a nonprofit building public infrastructure for educational AI, with more than 60,000 educators publishing apps on its platform. Designers there are responsible first for researching, prototyping and implementing interaction patterns that let educators be makers of technology rather than recipients of someone else's system, then for shaping how educators learn about AI and gain confidence to tinker with it, and finally for the storytelling that carries the work into the world. The two standing questions the role works on: how to expand and deepen what educators can create with AI, and how to lower the floor for who can create and how easily AI systems can be meaningfully deployed in real educational contexts. THE ROLE: as Senior Product Designer you own the design of Playlab's surfaces from prototype through shipped product. WHAT THEY LOOK FOR: craft that is production-grade with a clear point of view, and instincts for when to ship fast versus slow down; product sense grounded in staying close to the problems Playlab is solving, with the ability to hold unresolved questions and keep moving; initiative on fuzzy goals, defining the design space, gathering context and driving through prototyping to a shipped solution while bringing leadership along; technical fluency, building with and on AI, judging what is worth building, and curating custom tooling; and taste across visual, interaction and communication design. FIT: at least 5 years as a strong design generalist with a home base in product design and a track record in another design discipline; able to lead design on owned projects while collaborating across the team; broad knowledge of creative and AI-leveraged tools; interest in learning environments and the people who create them; and comfort getting technical with engineers, possibly pushing code. BONUS: education or edtech experience, designing creative tech, and a love of creative side quests. The posting explicitly encourages applications from people who do not meet every listed qualification. The organisation describes itself as sitting between a startup and an R&D lab, with nonprofit governance keeping incentives aligned to teaching and learning rather than growth.