MARCH ENSEMBLE VOL. 7

The 7th annual March Ensemble challenge begins on March 1st, 2025.

Each day for 31 days, we will release a creative prompt on our Instagram Stories. The prompt can be used in any way — as a guiding light, a jumping-off point, or just some peripheral inspiration. The resulting art is published the following day on Instagram as well as this online archive.

Thank you for being here and supporting us in making each March abundant with art.

If you’re interested in joining the 2025 Ensemble, DM us on Instagram or fill in the form below.

See you here - every day, every March.

x, the march ensemble

MARCH ENSEMBLE VOL. 6

The 6th annual March Ensemble challenge has begun.

Each day for 31 days, we will release a creative prompt on our Instagram Stories. The prompt can be used in any way — as a guiding light, a jumping-off point, or just some peripheral inspiration. The resulting art is published the following day on Instagram as well as this online archive.

Thank you for being here and supporting us in making each March abundant with art.

If you’re interested in joining the 2024 Ensemble, DM us here or fill in the form below.

See you here - every day, every March.

x, the march ensemble

March Ensemble Vol. 3

Hi again! Remember us from last March / A HUNDRED YEARS AGO?


We’re on for 2021 and a week away from the third installment of March Ensemble. Here’s our elevator pitch: “Challenge: Create and publish a piece of art every day for a month and shake off that winter sludge”. During our first two years, the 31-day March Ensemble challenge has produced well over 200 individual pieces of art.

In addition to the ever-evolving core collective, we’ve included folks we call the “Extended Ensemble” — creators that don’t take part in the marathon but whose art gets highlighted during one designated day in March. March Ensemble is still new and scrappy, and it’s been fun finding different ways to put on this little shindig. This year we’ve decided to make more room for the Extended Ensemble and have switched up our overall format to facilitate the shift.

We’re going back to the root of our mission while simultaneously kicking our own asses even harder. Our goal has always been to create without overthinking and allow room for experimentation, so this year we’re taking a page from one of our favorite methods of sparking creativity. 

Let’s talk about Brian Eno and his “Oblique Strategies”. 

In short, Oblique Strategies is a collection of prompts that are designed to stir your brain, inspire the uninspired, and promote lateral thinking. Each prompt is different. Some “strategies” consist of specific suggestions, others are more abstract and ambiguous. Examples include: 

“Don’t be frightened of clichés.” 

“Give the game away.” 

“Cascades.”

(Learn more about Oblique Strategies by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt here and here)

Every day for 31 days, our artists will receive a creative prompt at 00:00 Eastern European Time. They can use the prompt however they want — as a guiding light, a jumping-off point, just some peripheral inspiration, anything. This is where the Extended Ensemble gets included in the process more tangibly than ever:  Each member will be allocated a day in March and they will receive the same prompts that the core Ensemble will be using that day.

If you’d like to take part in our weird little journey, learn more about the challenge or join us for the ride in any other way, please follow us on Instagram. You can message us through this form or by directly emailing us at marchensemble2021@gmail.com. The days for visiting artists are filling up, so please reach out soon!

All artists and forms of art are welcome and you don’t need to be a professional artist or even contribute whatever art you usually like to create to join us. We’re more about the ethos than the outfit. 

See you in March! xx

MARCH ENSEMBLE VOL. 2

We’re on for 2020. More artists, more art, more creative weirdness.

The Ensemble has grown but 2019 alumni Noora and Mel are among the crew and will keep the original ethos behind the challenge alive.

We’ve opened up the process this year and let artists decide their own timelines and goals. Some will be creating art every day, some will be sharing art twice a week.

We have let go of all hard rules except for one: you can only share previously unpublished art. This experience is about letting go of debilitating perfectionism, overthinking, and artistic doubt.

The Ensemble has 31 days to get experimental with what they do and with what they share. This is a safe space to tinker with demos, drafts, outlines, and little snippets of art in the junk drawer.

If you aren’t in the core Ensemble but have art you’d like to submit, we regularly post ‘Extended Ensemble’ Instagram stories highlighting art from different folks. Email us at marchensemble2020@gmail.com or send us a DM through Instagram @marchensemble.

This experiment is for everyone - keep us posted on your journey.

We’re happy to have you along for the ride.

The March Ensemble

THE SHORTER VERSION

We’re a group of creators in a winter slump.

We’ve decided to kick our own asses into motion and stay creatively active throughout the month of March.

We have committed to a challenge: Create and publish a piece of art every day in 03/19.

We are Mackenzie Bartlett, Mel Salmi and Noora Kulta.

THE LONGER VERSION

It’s cold and gross outside. It’s a challenge to find motivations for the smallest things when all you want to do is cocoon and hibernate. We’ve decided to push ourselves to create more this March by publishing one piece of art every day and in the process cleaning out our cluttered heads in preparation for Spring.

We will only be uploading previously unpublished work.

Every day in March of 2019, Mackenzie, Mel and Noora will upload a piece of art - in any form. Natalie will be publishing one piece of writing per week. Not only will we be creating entirely new pieces, we’ll also be cleaning out our junk drawers. You might see rough demos, newly-developed photographs, old drawings, unfinished scripts. Actually, it’s hard to say what we’ll end up with. We don’t know yet.

Let’s see where this goes.