Abstract

In autumn 2022, ‘Full Stack Feminism in Digital Humanities’ circulated an open call for two artist residencies, one from the UK and one from Ireland (viewed from an all-Ireland perspective). This call resulted in 70 high-quality applications from artists, 95% of whom self-identified as Queer, POC, disabled or neurodiverse, and often as intersections of more than one. We shortlisted ten artists for interview and ultimately selected the two for the residencies, Jamila Prowse (UK) and Roibí O Rua (Ireland). As a curator, I’ve been running open calls for artists for many years, so I can safely say the response to this call was atypical. This paper, therefore, will look at the call and the process to model best, or at least better, practice.

Open Calls and the Need to Remove Perceived Barriers

 The primary goal in writing open calls, in any context, should be to ensure that the text gives people the opportunity to “opt in” – that this they should not feel that ‘it’s not for me, I can’t do that’. The goal should always be to drop the step, to remove barriers.

The first consideration in crafting this open call was to consider the nature of the project, Full Stack Feminism in Digital Humanities is an academic project, coming from a collaboration between HE institutions in the UK and Ireland. The nature of the project meant that there was language used in describing it that was academic and academic language can be a barrier to entry, and for feeling welcomed in.

To convey the project properly it was necessary to use terms such as intersectionality, intersectional feminism, full stack, and so on. As such, we included a glossary of terms at the end of the document and made sure that we flagged this to readers before the terms were used. Including the glossary ensured no-one was disadvantaged or felt excluded because of the use of certain terms. However, in general we ensured that text did not included any convoluted academic prose (see file below for details of the call and the glossary of terms provided).

It was important to give information on the project, including its central research questions, but to balance this with talking about the expectations of the artists in residence, and what their opportunities for engagement entailed. We encouraged applicants to raise any access issues, or requirements, they had either with the application process itself, or any with engaging with the project if selected. The written application had a word limit but we made it clear that any inclusions on access needs would be considered additional to that word limit. As the curator for the call, I also made myself available, welcoming any questions from applicants. Indeed, I met with some artists, informally, prior to the deadline to offer additional support.  

In writing this piece, I reached out to Alli Beddoes from Lighthouse, a Brighton based arts organisation for their reflections on artists open calls. They reflected that ‘open calls require labour and energy’, on both sides of the interview table, and that often, if not crafted carefully, ‘can quickly become the opposite of an Open Call’, as some artists experience ‘the door…firmly closed’ to them. Alli affirmed the importance of ‘horizontal and non-transactional environment[s] which enables artists to build ongoing relationships and trust with an organisation that can lead to continuous collaborations as the individuals grow and develop their practise’. Alli also reflected on the importance of connecting artists who apply to open calls, and suggested informal, facilitated, sessions with artists.

These additional supports consider collaborations with artists from a holistic perspective, and is part of my curatorial practice which is centred around curatorial care.

The process

I thinking about the process we followed, or indeed developed along the way, the following elements are crucial to crafting an inclusive call for artists:

• Be as open and transparent as possible about the selection, interview, etc., process.

• Give clear guidance on who to contact with questions, and ensure that you have resource and capacity to respond and to interact with questions.

• Provide a clear list of dates and timeline for the call.

• Give as much notice for submission. A deadline for applications six weeks after the call was sent out. If you want to encourage applications from neurodivergent and/or disabled artists, then longer turnaround times are important. In my experience, three-week turnaround times seem to be a sector standard

• If you have an interview process, make it clear interview questions will be sent ahead of time - this is important as it reduces the gap between people that are just good at being interviewed and everyone else.

  • List members of the interview panel, who they were and how they related to the project. This ensures applications are fully aware, ahead of time, of the nature of the interview process.

• After the interview process, offer feedback to un-successful candidates to not only give constructive feedback but also to demonstrate your appreciation for their contributions.

Conclusion

Was this a perfect open call? Probably not but it yielded interesting, positive, and high-quality results. Indeed, beyond the immediate proposal for two artists in residence, the process and call identified a cohort of great artists, many of whom have since engaged with the project in other ways, and who will remain on our radar going forward.

It’s important to reiterate that around 95% of applicants identified as queer, poc, disabled and neurodiverse this is not usual, and this is without a paragraph spelling out that we welcomed applications from these groups.

Some of this is undoubtedly down to the nature of the project itself with its wide reaching and open stance but I hope and believe that some of it was due to the way in which the call was crafted.

We want to thank every applicant that took the time to engage with our artist call, we are especially thankful to the artists who engaged with the project’s final exhibition, which you can see documented in the FSF-Archive.