Ribadavia · O Ribeiro · Galicia
ID Coliving.
Artist residencies for creartistas
A month where the only thing you have to do is your own work
At home there’s always something. The washing machine. The group chat. Dinner. The day job. Family. That urgent thing that turns out not to be that urgent. Things that come up. And your project (or your portfolio) is exactly where you left it: in a drawer.
ID Coliving is a 17th-century convent in Ribadavia with seven rooms, work spaces, a library, a cloister and eleven other people doing exactly what you’re doing. You come for a week, two, three, or the whole session. And you work, and work, and work.
You move forward, and forward, and forward. Full throttle, with no excuses and nothing getting in the way.
RIBADAVIA
O Ribeiro · Ourense · Galicia
What it is
Not a hotel with wifi: a place built so you REALLY produce
You’ve spent a while thinking that if you just got organised, you’d move forward.
That’s not it.
It’s that at home your work competes with everything else, and it always loses. You’re not short on discipline: you’re short of a place where the only thing happening is your work.
Here you arrive with a project and a plan. You settle into a granite house with big rooms, daylight and silence, and you shape your days however works for you. Around you there are five, eight or ten other people doing the same — and that changes your output and your inspiration in ways you would not imagine.
What people say most when they get home
It isn’t the convent. It isn’t the big rooms or the library. It’s the people. Spending three weeks next to others who also get up to draw, who understand what you do without you having to explain it, and who tell you the truth about your work.
You can’t buy that with a course.
Protected time
Shared work rooms in a 17th-century convent: large tables, a library and a cloister. Nobody interrupts you, nobody needs anything from you.
People who get it
Shared meals and two social events a week to show what you’re making, ask for feedback and see how other people solve it. Nobody here asks when you’re getting a real job.
Mentoring, if you want it
You can add weekly sessions with Ío Bru and use your stay to sort out your career, not just to draw. It’s optional and priced separately.
The house
The old Convent of San Francisco
17th-century granite attached to the church of San Antón, five minutes’ walk from Ribadavia’s medieval centre, with the river Avia right below. High ceilings, stone staircases, big windows and that thick silence only old buildings have.
Today it works as a guesthouse: seven en-suite rooms, a cloister, a large kitchen, a dining room, a library and several common rooms. During the residencies, the house is yours.
- Work rooms free to use at any hour.
- Historic library: a place to get inspired, to share, and to breathe in some history.
- Shared kitchen and dining room, plus cloister and courtyard to step outside.
- Wifi in the common areas.
Your workspace
What’s at the convent and what you bring
What you’ll find here
- A desk of your own in every room.
- Large work tables in the common areas, with good daylight.
- Power, wifi, and room to leave your set-up out for your whole stay. No packing up every night.
- A messy room for easel painting, for two people (on request).
- A4 scanner, black-and-white laser printer and projector.
- Basic stationery and craft tools: scissors, an A4 guillotine, glue, hot glue guns…
What you bring
- Your usual tools: sketchbook, pencil case, tablet, laptop.
- The specific materials your technique and project need.
- A concrete project to work on. This isn’t a course: you come here to produce.
Two weeks before you arrive we email you the exact packing list.
Where you sleep
Seven rooms, all en-suite
The two on the first floor work best as single or double-bed rooms. The five upstairs are large and work as twins. If there’s demand, they can be rearranged.
1 person
Single
Single bed, en-suite shower and a desk for the days you don’t want company.
1 person + companion
Double bed
A double bed so you can come with your partner, even if only one of you is doing the residency.
2 people
Shared twin
Two single beds in a large room, shared with another resident. By far the most affordable option.
Living together
You come to work, but not alone
Everyone keeps their own pace and nobody is supervising anybody. What holds the residency together is what happens around it: cooking together, bumping into each other in the cloister mid-afternoon, and sitting down twice a week to show what everyone’s working on.
- Two social events a week: portfolio session, talk, workshop or game, depending on who’s around. Ío comes over to run them.
- Shared kitchen and meals together when people feel like it: the house is looked after by everyone.
- Outings around O Ribeiro when they come up: hot springs, vineyards and the old town, all walkable.
Optional add-on
Mentoring with Ío Bru
You can come just to work. Plenty of people do, and they leave happy.
But if what’s stopping you isn’t technique — if it’s that you don’t know what to solve first — drawing more won’t fix it. That’s what the mentoring is for: one session a week with Ío on identity, artistic voice, portfolio, pricing and clients. The things no art school tells you.
Illustrator, writer and art director, founder of Ilustrando Dudas and author of La Transformación Creativa (Editorial GG).
How it works
- One 45-minute one-to-one session a week with Ío, at the convent.
- Questions open for your whole stay: you don’t have to save them up for the session.
- A closing session before you leave, to sort out what you take with you and what comes next.
- 200 € per week, on top of your room rate.
- You choose it when you book, and places with mentoring are limited.
Ío doesn’t live at the convent: she comes over for the social events and the mentoring sessions. She keeps a room in case she stays over, but don’t count on it.
Sessions
Next open dates
You can stay one week, two, three, or the whole session. Arrivals and departures are arranged within each window.
Rates
Price per person and stay
| Room | 1 week | 2 weeks | 3 weeks | 4 weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single1 person | 200 € | 370 € | 520 € | 650 € |
| Double bed1 person + companion | 260 € | 490 € | 700 € | 890 € |
| Shared twinprice per person | 135 € | 250 € | 350 € | 430 € |
October works differently
The October session runs 17 days and can only be booked two ways: one week or the whole stay. The whole stay sits halfway between two and three weeks: 420 € single · 565 € double bed · 285 € shared twin. With mentoring, add 500 €.
The longer you stay, the cheaper the week: from 200 € for the first to 162 € for the fourth.
When you apply and confirm your booking we send you the exact price for your stay, with your dates and your room.
150 € holds your place
A hundred and fifty euros per place, deducted from the total. The rest is paid in cash on arrival. No strange instalments, no payment gateway charging you for breathing.
What’s included
- Accommodation in your chosen en-suite room.
- Full use of all shared work spaces, all day, every day.
- The two weekly social events.
- Bed linen and towels.
- Wifi, heating and house utilities.
What’s NOT included
- Travel to and from Ribadavia.
- Meals: the kitchen is shared and each person sorts out their own food.
- Your own project materials.
- Mentoring with Ío Bru, priced separately at 200 € a week.
- Travel or medical insurance.
Twelve places per session
When they’re gone, they’re gone
There’s no waiting list and no extra session: the convent has seven rooms and that’s that.
Who it’s for
This works for you if…
- You have a specific project stuck, and you know what it needs is uninterrupted time, not another course.
- Getting started at home is hard because there’s always something more urgent than your work.
- You’ve been working alone too long and you miss people who speak your language.
- You want to leave with something finished, not with notes.
And it doesn’t if…
- You want a course with a syllabus, a teacher and corrected exercises. There’s no programme here: there’s space and time.
- You want a rural holiday with no interest in moving your art career forward, and no shared living or chores.
- You need your own space, your own hours and total silence. This is a shared house.
If you’ve read this and decided it isn’t for you, good. Better to know now than halfway through October.
O Ribeiro
Where you’ll be
Ribadavia is a medieval town of three thousand people in the heart of O Ribeiro, among vineyards, rivers and hills, with a Jewish quarter, hot springs nearby and a cultural life way beyond its size. Twenty minutes from Ourense by car, forty from Vigo.
Getting here
- Train to Ourense (AVE from Madrid).
- Plane to Vigo or Santiago; from Santiago, train to Ourense.
- Car: free parking nearby.
- Pick-up in Ourense or Vigo: we arrange it with you for a set price, either ourselves or through a taxi driver we work with. Budget it as part of your stay.
How to join
Four steps, no mystery
We ask you to apply because you’ll be living together for weeks. It’s not a talent filter, it’s a fit one. Nobody gets in on portfolio here — you get in on your project.
Application
You fill in the form: who you are, the project you want to work on and which dates suit you.
Availability and price
We email you confirming whether there is room on your dates and the exact price of your stay.
Project dossier
You send us a dossier of your project, we review it and confirm whether you are in.
Booking
Only then do you book your place with 150 €. The rest is paid in cash on arrival.
Questions
What everyone asks
Do I have to be an illustrator?
What if I can’t stay for the whole session?
How do I get there?
Who handles food?
Will Ío Bru be living at the convent during the coliving?
Is the mentoring worth it?
Can I bring my partner or a companion?
What if I cancel?
Can I bring my dog?
A year from now your project will either be finished, or exactly where it is today.
It doesn’t have to be here. But it does have to be somewhere you can’t wriggle out of, with people around and a leaving date. That’s all this is.
P.S. The first session runs 12–28 October and there are twelve places. If you’re thinking about it, think fast.