What: Mount Tremper Arts seeks artists, writers, critics, arts professionals, and students to volunteer in support of our annual Summer Festival in the Catskill Mountains. As a volunteer you’ll be supporting the resident artists and helping in the kitchen or gardens, while still having plenty of time to enjoy mountain splendor.

When: Volunteers are needed in the spring and during our Summer Festival. In the spring, help is needed June 13–15 for our June 14 Garden Party. The spring schedule is otherwise open and flexible—let us know when you’re available.

Summer volunteers are needed every week on a Tuesday-Sunday rotation, July 8–August 26. You’ll be doing 24 hours of work/volunteering during the week.

Perks: A private bedroom or Airstream trailer of your own, with plenty of time for swimming (pool and river), hiking, cycling, reading, or just relaxing. You’ll be staying ¼ mile down the road from Mount Tremper Arts.

Food: In the summer, dinners every night with MTA resident artists and staff, and frequent late night campfires. Breakfast and lunch on your own. If you don’t have a car, we will give you a ride to the grocery store early in the week.

What you’ll be doing: We need help in the garden and kitchen (both prep and washing dishes), help during events (ushers, parking, concessions), some cleaning, and most vitally, good conversation around the campfire. Do you have any special skills? You’re a master carpenter? Or you can tell the difference between perennials and weeds in a garden? Let us know.

Travel: You are responsible for your own travel. If you don’t have a car, it’s an easy 2.5-hour bus ride from Port Authority in NYC; we’ll pick you up at the bus stop in Phoenicia.

About our Volunteer Program: Rather then utilizing unpaid interns to help run the day-to-day tasks of a residency program and festival, we invite other artists and art field professionals to join our community for a few days and help out with caretaking. What’s the difference? A volunteer provides a generously given service, while an intern partakes in unpaid work; a volunteer enters the community as an equal, while an intern is the bottom bracket of a hierarchy.