Picture this for a moment, that your workday involves waking up to the ocean, and from your standing desk you watch birds and foxes hop about in your yard while your tiny (and mildly reserved) Chihuahua, Mikey, keeps you company. Are you there? Can you see it?
Our neighbors, Michael Todd Cohen and Adrian Dallas Frandle, do just that every single day. They live and work from their home in Stratford, overlooking the ocean. I recently sat down with the duo to learn more about the Lordship house, and how they came to the idea of turning their private home into a public space, an inviting place for fellow creatives.
What struck me most (outside of the view from their living room) is that Michael and Adrian embody “seeing one’s self as part of a whole.” They live, breathe, and think community – and, if I may infer a tad, see themselves as stewards of a cause bigger than themselves.
A little over six years ago, Michael gave up his corporate job in New York City, and Adrian, a poet, purchased a home in Lordship as their escape from New York City. Eventually, they decided to truly call Stratford their home, leaving behind the inherent hustle and bustle known as the NYC grind. They had settled on a mid-century modern style house on the coastline. During our time together, Michael shared the history behind the home which they had decided to purchase after his mother died. “This was the first house in Lordship owned by a Black family,” he said. “A Dr. Elliott and his family.” Once Michael and Adrian discovered this fact, it only fueled their intention to turn their home into an accessible, community space for all.
Here in Stratford, they were able to deepen their own creative work – Michael as an essayist and visual artist, and Adrian as a writer and poet. Michael shared that the moment they bought the house they knew that it wasn’t necessarily “theirs.” During the pandemic, Michael and Adrian started a letter writing exchange on Twitter (pre-X) and formed a strong, committed exchange between writers. What fun to receive an actual letter in the mail rather than a dashed off email on a screen! It took on a life of its own, and when they moved to Stratford, as Michael shares, “We wanted to offer a space where people feel safe.”
Their letter writing endeavor turned into a fellowship program for writers and has now become the lordship house. With so many federal funding cuts made by the Trump Administration to programs like The National Endowment for the Arts, the lordship house provides fellows not only with one of the best views along the Long Island Sound, but with much needed funds to help subsidize expenses ranging from travel costs to stipends for childcare. As creatives themselves, what Michael and Adrian do for their fellows is done with care, thoughtfulness, and understanding.
Writers and artists often have full-time jobs to support themselves or their families with basic needs, like paying the rent or mortgage, groceries and transportation, leaving little to no financial room to feed their creative soul, which sometimes costs money.
Writer’s Workshops and/or retreats can be out of reach for many with expensive destination gatherings facilitated by well-known writers like Rebecca Walker, who hosts writing retreats in places like Hawaii and Nicaragua. Or Elizabeth Gilbert, known for her national bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love, who hosted the BIG MAGIC Creativity & Wellness Retreat in Georgia with a cost of upwards of $800.
What Michael and Adrian offer as part of their Writer Residency is four days, three nights of access to: the outdoors; healthy, bed-and-breakfast style homemade meals by Adrian (for breakfast and dinner); a clean, welcoming, homey space with privacy; a full library of over 1,000 books; and perhaps best of all, the opportunity to fill one’s creative soul with time and space to produce.
lordship house puts Stratford on the map as a sought after destination for artists across the country. Local organizations like the Cultural Arts Alliance of Fairfield, which seeks to grow the arts community in Fairfield County by providing programs and funding for artists, help too, just in different ways. Once fellows finish their residency, they are then a part of the Fellowship Council, which works together to select the slate of candidates to consider for the next residency.
Michael and Adrian are intentional about making their private home a public space for creatives to be taken care of, even if only for a short time, in community with people who understand, who support diversity, and who know that tender love and care changes us, in the best way possible.
Nikkya Hargrove is a mom, wife, author, and owner of Stratford’s only bookstore. She enjoys cooking dinner for her family, binge watching (any) television show with her wife, and spending time experiencing life with her family and dogs.
Wonderful article about special, selfless individuals who just want to make this town and this country a more welcoming place.