The Lovely People Place: A Yoga and Art Residency by the Sea in Portugal

A residency shaped by practice

In Figueira da Foz, on Portugal's Atlantic coast, The Lovely People Place is building something part artist residency, part yoga community, part shared experiment in slower living.

It is not a formal programme in the institutional sense. Artists are not handed a fixed schedule or a curator's brief. Instead, they receive time, shared accommodation, studio space, yoga facilities, communal meals, and the freedom to follow their own rhythm alongside other people doing the same.

For the right artist, that freedom is the point.

How the place began

The Lovely People Place began long before Portugal. Around twelve years ago, Madhura, the yogi and creative spirit behind the project, began welcoming travellers and aspiring yogis to a mango farm in Australia. That impulse later expanded to a property in Thailand, then into the Bhava Foundation, a charity connected to biodiversity and ecological conservation.

In 2022, the project arrived in Portugal with the aim of creating a yoga centre. Its first base was The Residence in Figueira da Foz. The following year, around forty young people stayed there, sharing daily yoga, Ayurvedic food, collaborative work, and community life.

The project kept growing. In 2024, The Lovely People Place added Casa Grande, a former agricultural centre with a large yoga hall, spacious workshops, high ceilings, and room for more ambitious creative use. Sixty people visited that year. In 2025, that number grew to 125.

In 2026, they added The Old Cafe, a peaceful building two minutes from the beach. It is now being refurbished as a future art and yoga space, shaped by natural light and the rhythm of the coast.

Community without constant performance

Day to day, the place is carried by Madhura and a changing community of volunteers, many of whom find the space through Workaway. The house motto is simple: "leave things better than you found it."

That idea shows up in practical ways. Someone cooks a meal. Someone leads a workshop. Someone cleans, repairs, teaches, listens, or brings a new practice into the house. The place is built through small contributions, not through one fixed model of what a residency should be.

The atmosphere, as the team describes it, is a "home away from home." Kindness, mutual respect, and connection are treated as part of the structure, not as decoration around it.

Still, this is not a residency for artists who need a packed calendar or constant external input. Much of the day is self-directed. There is community, but there is also space to disappear into your work.

What a day can feel like

Days often begin with a shared breakfast, followed by a community-led yoga practice. Each session depends on who is present. One morning might be shaped by a teacher with years of experience. Another might be more informal, led by someone sharing a practice they know well.

After that, the day opens up. Artists can work in the shared studio, study, rest, walk to the beach, spend time in personal practice, or join others in the communal spaces. Meals bring people back together.

Workshops happen naturally when residents want to share something: meditation, breathwork, Thai massage, ecstatic dance, acro yoga, knitting, crochet, cacao ceremonies, and whatever else the current group brings with them.

Making work there

The residency welcomes artists and yogis who want their practices to sit side by side. That might mean a painter using the studio during the day and joining yoga in the morning. It might mean a writer who needs a month of quiet structure. It might mean a musician, photographer, tattoo artist, designer, or visual artist who wants to work independently while living inside a creative community.

Artists are given dedicated workspace within a large shared studio. The space is versatile, but the residency is self-directed, so artists should bring the materials and equipment their work requires.

The Lovely People Place is not offering a fully supplied production studio with a technical team. It is offering the conditions for focused work: time, space, a shared house, a daily rhythm, and a community that understands practice as something you live with.

Who it suits

The Lovely People Place is best suited to artists who are already engaged in their practice and do not need an external structure to begin.

If you need deadlines, tutors, production support, or a formal programme, this may not be the right fit. If you value independence, community, shared meals, daily practice, and the possibility of unexpected conversations changing the shape of your month, it may be exactly the right kind of place.

Residents arrive on the first day of each month, with a minimum stay of one month. Residencies run from April 1 to October 31 each year. You can find The Lovely People Place on Artaway and apply from the listing.