Open calls: where UK public art opportunities are actually published
Open calls for UK public art are published in five kinds of place, not one: local authority procurement portals, the opportunity listings run by arts bodies and development trusts, the noticeboards of artist membership organisations, mailing lists kept by developers and by the consultants who run commissions for them, and the commissioning organisation’s own website. An open call is an invitation, published rather than sent, asking any eligible artist to put themselves forward for a named commission by a stated deadline. It is not a competition to make the work. In most UK public art procurement it is a competition to be one of the three to five artists who are then paid to design it.
The five kinds of place a UK open call appears
Each of the five publishes for a different reason, and that reason tells an artist what the call will look like before opening it.
- Procurement portals carry the calls a public body is obliged to advertise, written in tender language, with a deadline that will not move and a portal account you have to create first.
- Arts body and development trust listings carry calls a commissioner wants artists to see, written in artist-facing language, often for smaller or temporary work.
- Artist membership organisations carry aggregated opportunities for their members, including many that never reach a portal.
- Developer and consultant mailing lists carry the calls attached to a private scheme discharging a planning obligation, and these are frequently the least visible of the five.
- Commissioner websites carry the full documents even when the summary was published elsewhere, so the site of the council, hospital, university or transport body is usually where the actual brief lives.
The practical consequence is that no single source is complete. An artist who checks one listing sees a fraction of what is out there, and the fraction is biased towards whichever kind of commissioner uses that listing. Getting onto the mailing lists of the bodies that commission in your region, before there is anything to apply for, reaches more of the market than refreshing any one page.
What a public art open call asks for at stage one
A stage one submission asks for evidence of capability, not for a design, and it usually asks for six components: a short expression of interest addressing the brief, an artist statement, a biography or curriculum vitae, six to twelve images of completed work with captions, evidence of insurance, and two references. Some calls add a one page approach to the site. A few, wrongly, ask for a developed proposal at this stage and pay nothing for it.
Word limits are tight and enforced. Panels reading a hundred submissions use the limit as a first filter, and a submission that ignores the requested format is often removed before it is read. Where the call names selection criteria and weightings, those criteria are what the scoring sheet will say, and answering them in the order given costs nothing and helps the reader who has to score you.
How the two stage structure works, and where the money starts
Stage one is unpaid and stage two is paid, and the boundary between them is the single most important thing to establish before spending a day on any call.
| Stage | What is submitted | Typical field | Paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expression of interest | Statement, biography, images, references | 40 to 200 artists | No |
| Shortlist and concept | A site visit, a developed concept, drawings, an outline budget, a presentation | 3 to 5 artists | Yes, a concept fee |
| Appointment | A signed commission agreement and a programme | 1 artist | Yes, the commission fee |
The concept fee at stage two is meant to cover the shortlisted artist’s design time, the site visit and the travel. It rarely covers all of it, and it is not a deposit against the commission fee unless the documents say so. Ask which it is. A commissioner who is running the process properly will have set the concept fee as a separate line in the budget and will be able to answer in one sentence.
What to check in the call before spending a day on it
Check seven things, in this order, and abandon the call without guilt if the answers are bad.
- Confirm the total budget and whether it is inclusive of fabrication, installation, insurance and VAT.
- Confirm what stage two pays and how many artists are shortlisted.
- Confirm the eligibility, since some calls are restricted by region, career stage or membership of a framework.
- Confirm who owns the copyright and the intellectual property in unsuccessful concepts, which should remain with the artist.
- Confirm the programme, because a commission tied to a construction completion date can move by a year.
- Confirm who carries the fabrication contract, since that decides whether the artist is a designer or a main supplier.
- Confirm the consent position, because a work needing planning permission adds months the brief may not have allowed for.
Two patterns deserve particular suspicion. The first is a call whose ambition and budget cannot both be true, where the brief asks for a landmark and the figure would barely cover a well made bench. The second is a call that asks for a full design, unpaid, from an open field, which is a request for many artists to work free so that one can be selected.
Calls that are not commissions
Residencies, biennial invitations, exhibition submissions and commission opportunities all appear on the same listings and all use the phrase open call, but only one of them ends with a work installed in a public place. A residency buys the artist’s presence and time, often with a bursary, accommodation and a public outcome that may be an event rather than an object. A participation residency in a gallery or studio organisation buys the artist’s practice as a way of working with a group of people. An exhibition open call buys nothing at all and sometimes charges a submission fee.
Reading which one a listing actually is takes ten seconds and saves a week. Look for the words commission, brief, site and budget together. If a listing names a place, a brief and a fabrication budget, it is a commission. If it names a duration, a bursary and a host organisation, it is a residency. If it names a submission fee and a private view, it is an exhibition.