The article is developed from a paper presented at the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) Access, Learning Careers and Identity Network Conference 2017: Exploring Learning Contexts: Implications for Access, Learning Careers and Identities. It explores how the recontextualization of creative practice and communal living as part of a pedagogic device reveals the ideology behind what constitutes a professional artist and a successful art student. This is achieved through the application of Bernstein’s theories of horizontal and vertical discourse in conjunction with his theory of the pedagogic device to a case study based on a residency at ‘The Artists’ House’, based in Canale Di Tenno in Italy. It was found that the participating students were able to perform those successful creative practitioner identities that were regulated by official art and design pedagogic discourse. However, the Artists’ House residency also reproduced disadvantage. Those students who did not take part were in danger of being positioned as unsuccessful creative practitioners because they could be seen by tutors, their peers and themselves as not being gregarious, risk-taking or globally orientated.