Call for Proposals: “Gathering for Perennial Possibilities”

Temporary Art Installations at Prairie Festival 2026

Deadline: December 5, 2025

The Land Institute

For the past 50 years, The Land Institute has been leading a global movement to transform agriculture and secure a sustainable future, developing perennial crops and systems that work with nature to feed humanity and repair our environment. The Land Institute’s Vision is for a future in which humanity and nature flourish together as a collaborative system: Where diverse, perennial crops cover our farmlands and build healthy soil, water, and communities. Though the Land Institute’s partners and collaborators span the globe, their physical headquarters is located just outside of Salina, Kansas on a working campus of test plots, native prairies, administrative buildings and gathering spaces.

What is Prairie Festival?

Prairie Festival has been a Land Institute tradition for more than 30 years—a space where art, science, and community intersect. The 2026 Festival marks The Land Institute’s 50th anniversary and an expansion of its campus and programming. Land Institute founder Wes Jackson calls Prairie Festival “an intellectual hootenanny”.

Hosted mostly onsite at the Land Institute (with some satellite activities in Salina), Prairie Festival is a weekend-long event that hosts 800-1200 attendees. The event is usually marked by nationally-recognized keynote speakers, artists, live music, and plot tours with Land Institute researchers. Famously, speakers are banned from having powerpoint presentations, and most events take place outside, spread across several acres of the Land Institute campus. Attendees are encouraged to come prepared to walk from place to place amid the dynamic weather of Kansas, and the event is typically rain or shine. Prairie Festival's audience is largely regional, but also inclues university student groups and prospective researchers from the larger Great Plains region as well as international partners and guests. On-site camping is also offered, and beyond formal programming it’s common for campfire conversations to continue into the night.

The official theme for Prairie Festival 2026 is “50 Years of Perennial Possibilities”. The Prairie Festival planning team’s internal purpose statement is: “We are creating a sense of homecoming for the researchers, writers, artists, farmers, and friends (new and old) whose lives are touched by the perennial nature of this place and our scientific work, with a special emphasis on inviting and building pathways for new researchers and donors.”

The Call: “Gathering for Perennial Possibilities”

2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the Land Institute and a joyful return of Prairie Festival after a several year hiatus. As the organization is evolving and expanding, its campus will also be expanding in coming years. The 2026 Prairie Festival will likely be a transition year, utilizing some spaces familiar to past Prairie Festival attendees, but largely creating new pop-up spaces for the event on property adjacent to the Land Institute’s main headquarters. There is a house and a few outbuildings on this property, but most event infrastructure will be temporary (i.e. tents and mowed walking paths) for the weekend.

Over the course of Prairie Festival weekend, there will be multiple opportunities for breakout group sessions and meet-ups with affinity groups that might host 25-50 people at a time. In order to create more intimate and inspiring field experiences for attendees, the Land Institute is seeking artists to vision, design and create temporary outdoor installations that could be used as gathering spaces during the 2026 Prairie Festival. We welcome imaginative proposals that align with Land Institute values as well as our event goal of “creating a sense of homecoming for friends, new and old”. Gathering spaces might be thought of as containers to hold people within or landmarks/forms that people might gravitate around.

Installation times may vary depending on the projects, but all work should be completed and installed on site by 12:00pm Friday, September 25, 2026. Artists are invited to attend the Prairie Festival weekend and speak about their work with audiences as part of event programming.

Proposals will be considered that address the following criteria:

• The project embodies the ethos of the Land Institute and creates a welcoming, accessible space.
• The project is at a scale which is able to host a gathering of about 25-50 people at a time.
• Installations are expected to be temporary and should not irrevocably alter or harm the land (longer-lasting projects may be considered, but are subject to the approval of Land Institute staff).
• Prairie Festival is a “rain or shine” event. Installations should be able to remain reasonably intact through inclement weather.
• Installations may be visited by event attendees throughout the day and nighttime, and safety during times of low visibility will be considered. Proposals for projects that can be activated differently during different times of day/night are also welcome.
• It is unlikely that access to electricity or running water will be available at all installations, but if these are required at the project site please state so in the proposal.
• The scope of the project should be reasonable within the allotted timeframe and resource availability. (Artists should factor in the cost of materials and labor, although some local material and labor support may be available from The Land Institute, depending on the project.)

Awards

• $5,000 unrestricted project stipend.
• A residency period will be provided between January - September 2026 (prior to Prairie Festival weekend) in order to spend time studying the site and developing plans for installation in coordination with Prairie Festival event staff. Exact dates and duration of the residency will be determined based on availability and project need.
• A complimentary weekend pass to Prairie Festival 2026.
• Lodging during Prairie Festival 2026.
• Documentation of selected artists’ work will be featured at the Salina Art Center September 9 - October 18, 2026

Submitting a Proposal

Please send an email with the following to Prairie Festival Coordinator Kelly Yarbrough at prairy.kelly@gmail.com by 5:00pm Friday, December 5, 2025 with subject line: “Gathering for Perennial Possibilities 2026”

1. Artist CV including your contact info, website, and social media handles (if applicable)

2. Names, contact info, and your relationship to 3 professional references who can speak to your work as an artist

3. Project Description and Images (Please package this into one PDF document)

a. Tell us about your vision and intention behind this project. Is this an expression of an existing body of work for you, or something totally new?

b. Tell us generally about the production process and timeline that you anticipate for this project between January - September 2026.

i. Is it something that will require multiple visits to the site over a long period or time, or something that can be fabricated off-site and installed the week of the event?

ii. What materials do you anticipate using, and do you foresee any challenges in acquiring the materials?

iii. How much assistance will you need to create and/or install the work?

c. Include some kind of visualization of the proposed project such as sketches, mock-ups, or photos of similar past work. Include at least some measurements to describe the scale of the project.

Teams or collaborators may apply together. Artists are encouraged to submit compelling project ideas even if they may stretch the bounds of the call. Submitted proposals will be reviewed by a committee of TLI staff and regional arts professionals who may reach out with further questions after the submission deadline. We expect artists to be notified by the end of December 2025.

Prairie Festival 2026 Site

More site photos are available upon request.