SPACE Team member Rosa Shipley Interviews Emily Simoness about SPACE’s Family Residency at Colorado Lodge

Introduction from team member Rosa Shipley:

I started at SPACE in 2019, when the time on Ryder Farm was beginning to wind down. That also was the first summer that I met Emily. I’ve come to think of that overlap — where I was a Chef in Residence and she, of course, the Director — as fortuitous, fated, and a gift. I remember her cracking me up in the kitchen, then bringing energy and warmth to the dinner table, then helping me clean up before starting a fire, amidst the flowers and the little creatures and the sunset at close of day on Ryder Farm. 

When she invited me to Big Bear for a new residency — as Holistic Community Support for artists and their families displaced by the Eaton-Palisades fires — I wasn’t sure what to expect. Over the week, I witnessed a phenomenon that was powerful, and profoundly familiar. SPACE popped up somewhere new yet remained unmistakably itself: dynamic, intentional, and radical in its simplicity. Artists had structured time and space to create while their kids engaged in nature-focused arts programming. Three fresh communal meals grounded the days, informal sharings gave shape to the work, and grace appeared everywhere. About as far across the country as we could have gone, she had inspired the very same SPACE. 

Emily and I spoke about what happened, and what might come next:

Rosa: Tell me about what the most recent SPACE experience was like. How did it come about? How did you find it working? And what did it mean to you?

Emily: I think it's helpful to give a little context. I left the organization in the fall of 2021 and hadn’t been involved. In late spring or early summer of 2024, the organization decided to cease operations on Ryder Farm. It was really hard to see something I had created cease to exist. To be clear, the organization wasn’t dissolving — they were just ending programming on the farm.

Through a series of conversations, I got back on the SPACE board at the beginning of this year with a small group. One of the founders was on the board with me, along with three board members who had been there through the closure. We started talking about what SPACE could be now that it wasn’t on the farm. Could it be anything? What would that look like?

From the earliest days, I asked myself: could SPACE exist somewhere other than Ryder Farm? My answer was always yes. The farm setting was beautiful, but what we put together at Ryder was a way of being, a way of being with each other, a set of values — and those could be transportable.

I was feeling reenergized to look at that question again. At the same time, everyone was watching as the Eaton Palisades fires destroyed huge swaths of Los Angeles. Many friends lost homes. It felt really close, and we thought: why not try to serve people who had lost their homes in a place outside of Los Angeles, just like the farm was outside of New York City? That’s how it came to pass.

Rosa: And how did it go? How was it different?

Emily: It was amazing. I didn’t put a ton of pressure on myself. I knew I was moved to do this, and I didn’t want to promise anything beyond that.

We brought five artists to Colorado Lodge, about 90 minutes to two hours outside of Los Angeles, for a five-night, six-day residency — a Family Residency. The kids had a Junior Residency program like a camp, and the parents had time and space to work on their art. The days were structured like all SPACE residencies: three communal meals, a couple of hours of giving back, and informal sharings or reflections at the end.

By day two, staff who had worked at Ryder Farm were whispering to each other: “It’s working.” We saw the experience working on people — giving them the time and space to open up creatively and otherwise. The meals were so nourishing.

The structure of three communal meals provides a lot of the programmatic backbone. At Ryder Farm, we had 127 acres and people found nooks and crannies. At Colorado Lodge we had 2–3 acres, cabins, and picnic tables. People found their groove. Another big difference: these folks had all been through a similar tragic event, which was not true at Ryder Farm residencies. This created its own kind of atmosphere.

People were opening up and giving themselves time to do what they needed to creatively and otherwise.

Rosa: After all the years of doing this, what happens when you create a container for people to do this work?

Emily: Being intentional and managing expectations matters. We tell people what to expect: three communal meals, their kids taken care of, what the structure of their days will look like. Everything else is theirs to architect. People respond to light structure. Meals are simple, but the framework lets people know what’s coming and what they can rely on.

SPACE has always used the phrase radical hospitality.

The seven of us who staffed the Colorado Lodge residency were exhausted afterwards, in a good way. You’re in a service posture. It’s by design. There’s this unspoken, sometimes-spoken: “We’re always here if you need us.”

It allows people to let their guard down and be more available to the work and the community.

Rosa: There’s that quote: In the mundane is sacred. Repetition, ritual, sitting three times a day, knowing everything will be taken care of — that allows for something ineffable. The recipe seems simple. It shows something about the world that this minimalism is so effective.

Emily: Exactly. A dinner party happens once, so there’s pressure. Here, it’s three times a day, which relieves pressure and lets people shift into a different mode. The work informs the community and vise versa. It’s energetic. By day two, we could see people physically, emotionally, and verbally relax. It lets them access parts of themselves we normally protect in daily life.

Rosa: In 2025, how is SPACE more necessary than ever?

Emily:  I think of Therese, who's the other founding team member on SPACE’s board and is one of my dearest friends. She always talks about the urgency, the call, the mandate to get local. Who are your neighbors, who are your people, and how can you be kind and decent to each other? There’s nothing more important right now. Part of what was beautiful about this week at Big Bear: it wasn’t about the outside world.; It was about this little patch of land in California. What’s modeled in our culture is often at odds with that.

People were able to release and be there for one another. Nine months after the fires, how do we hold people in community who’ve been through this experience?

Rosa: Post-media cycle, it seems to be about tuning into actual life.

Emily: Exactly. Regarding the future: I think we collectively realized ‘yeah, this new iteration of SPACE is worth it’. I love the idea of parachuting into places. I’m interested in re-approaching the organization as something that gets to live in a passion space. 

I am sitting with: what is sustainable? I was burnt out by the pre-pandemic push for growth. I want to turn that on its head: small, by design, maybe quarterly residencies.

I love bringing people together this way. I’m passionate about it. I want to keep doing it. Not at the same scale, not the same physical space, but exploring what’s possible when you open up where it could be.