We post open calls here most weeks. This is the companion piece: how to actually apply, with the specifics that matter for technical, interactive and time-based work, which is harder to submit than a painting and routinely loses out for avoidable reasons.
Start with the uncomfortable fact. A panel may look at several hundred applications. Yours will get two or three minutes on the first pass. Everything below follows from that.
1. Read the call, then decide honestly
Before writing anything, answer:
- Am I eligible? Nationality, residency, age, career stage, student status. Panels discard ineligible applications without reading them, and a surprising number of applications are ineligible.
- What do they actually want? A call for “digital art” from a museum with a gallery means something different from one from a festival with a projection wall.
- What do they give? A fee, a production budget, travel, accommodation, technical support, or just wall space? A show you must ship to and install at your own cost can lose money.
- Have they shown work like mine? Look at previous editions. If nothing resembles your practice, you’re probably paying to educate a jury.
Skipping calls is a skill. Five careful applications beat twenty rushed ones.
2. Documentation is the application
For technical work, your documentation is your work as far as the panel is concerned. Minimum:
- A short video, 60–90 seconds, showing the work running, with people using it if it’s interactive. Not a trailer, not an edit set to music. The panel needs to see what actually happens.
- A longer full-length video available as a second link for anyone who wants it.
- Stills that read as thumbnails. They’ll be seen small.
- An installation shot if it exists. It proves the thing has been built and survived contact with an audience.
The commonest failure in this field: gorgeous renders of work that has never been installed. Panels notice, and it reads as risk.
3. Write for the reader
Keep the first paragraph plain. Say what the work is, physically, and what a viewer does with it. Not the theory. One panelist reading fast should be able to picture the room.
Then, in order: what it’s about, how it’s made, and why you. Cut jargon — every field has words that sound like content and aren’t. Use the call’s own language where it’s genuine: if the theme is “prototype,” address prototypes.
Answer the questions asked, in the order asked. Reusing a generic statement that ignores the form is visible immediately.
4. The technical rider and the budget
This is where technical applicants separate themselves, and where most under-invest.
Include, briefly: space required, power, network, mounting, light conditions, whether you need a dark room, how many hours a day it runs, who maintains it, and what fails if the internet goes down. A panel that can picture the install without further questions is far more likely to say yes, because someone on that panel is responsible for making it work.
For budgets, be realistic and itemised. Include your own labour. An artificially low budget doesn’t read as modest; it reads as inexperienced, and it makes the project look under-planned.
5. Fees
Some calls charge. Judge each on what it returns:
- Free calls with real funding (public arts bodies, EU programmes, institutional residencies) are the best value and the most competitive.
- Modest fees, €10–20, for a prize or show with a real audience and a credible jury, can be worth it.
- Large fees for vague exposure — €50+ for an online exhibition, a group show you also pay to hang in, a “prize” with no named jury — usually aren’t.
Check who’s judging. A named jury with people who know your field is the strongest signal that a call is serious.
6. Keep a system
One spreadsheet: call, deadline, fee, what’s required, submitted date, result. One folder of reusable material — bio in three lengths, CV, statement, image sets with captions, technical rider — updated after each project, not scrambled together each time.
Then apply steadily and expect to be rejected often. Rejection rates at good calls are brutal, and outcomes depend on the mix a panel is assembling as much as on merit. Ask for feedback when it’s offered, reuse the work you did on a failed application, and send it out again.