Creating Compelling Artists Calls: Tips on How to make your opportunity stand out

Welcome to our tutorial on how to create an attractive opportunity for artists. We believe that every artist deserves a fair and realistic opportunity to showcase their talent, and as a platform, we are committed to providing just that. Here are some tips to help you create an opportunity that artists will love:

First, let's look at the Types of Opportunity you could offer:

When creating an opportunity, you can offer a range of options such as Art walk/trail, Artist Book fair, Artist talk, Arts vacancy, Commission, Competition, Conference, Contemporary Art fair, Designer/Maker Fair, Exhibition, Journal/Publication, Mentoring, Open studios, Participatory project (general public applying to take part in an art project), Residency, Studio Spaces, Volunteering, Workshop, Other (Specify).

Make Your Opportunity More Attractive:

To make your opportunity more attractive, providing as much detail as possible is essential.

When creating your opportunity, ensure you provide the following information:

1. Who you are.

2. The reason for offering this opportunity.

3. Any past experience with organising such exhibitions.

4. Where is the venue? (If it is online, could you be more specific?)

5. Who is going to visit the exhibition?

6. What are the benefits for artists taking part in your exhibition?

Please note that not everyone reads the FAQs, so we recommend putting all relevant information into the main description, even if you repeat them in the FAQs.

Dos and Don'ts: When offering different types of opportunities, we suggest the following:

1. For volunteering, list the benefits for the artists. Opportunities that offer exposure but gain monetary from the artist are discouraged.

2. Taking commissions or expecting artists to pay a small fee to submit their work or to pay a fee once they have been chosen are common practices.

3. If an artist is required to pay a fee to submit their work or participate in an event, the organisers should clearly explain the reasons for the fee and the benefits that the artist will receive in return for paying it. Essentially, the more money the artist is being asked to contribute, the more important it is for the organisers to clearly explain why that money is necessary and what the artist can expect to gain from paying it.

4. Expecting artists to work for free, mentioning possible future benefits, and offering exposure or non-direct benefits could trigger complaints from artists.

5. Refrain from requesting original designs to be produced to be used for sale without agreeing to pay royalties. It's not fair to ask an artist to create an original design for you to use for commercial purposes (e.g. selling merchandise) but not compensate them for their work. It's important to respect the artist's time and effort and compensate them fairly for their creative work.

6. We suggest refraining from including a date of birth field on your submission form. Instead, change it to an optional age-range drop-down.

7. Including pictures is another effective way to make your opportunity more appealing to artists. Depending on the type of opportunity you are offering, you can upload images of the venue space, past exhibitions, workshop photos, and more. This can give artists a better idea of what to expect and help your opportunity to stand out from others.

8. Creating a curator's profile can help the artist get a feel for you as a person to work with.

9. To make it easier for people to pay any fees attached to your opportunity, we offer Stripe as a payment processing option. This ensures that people can make payments as part of the submission process and allows you to easily track who has paid by checking against the submission list. This gives you more time to focus on judging, answering questions, and managing your opportunity effectively.

Additional Tips:

1. Make sure you have enough time to judge submissions. Since many people tend to wait until the deadline to submit their work, it's important to ensure that the deadline for artwork drop-off is not too close to the submission deadline.

2. Allow a buffer period of at least two weeks between the application deadline, the delivery of artworks, and the collection of artworks afterwards. This will give you ample time to process submissions and organize the exhibition.

3. While we don't allow direct links that lead to submission forms outside of CuratorSpace, you can always include other social media links, such as Instagram or Facebook, to help the artist get to know you better. This will help build rapport and trust with the artist community, making it easier to work together in the future.

If you have any questions or need more information, please don't hesitate to get in touch. We hope this tutorial has been helpful and wish you all the best with your opportunity.