Here's to 2020

As a nation we may not agree with choices that were made in 2019 – but a new decade is upon us and there has been no better time to learn from the past and focus on building a future in a society we wish to live in. That’s exactly what we’re working on, and we can’t wait to share it with you.

Before we start

Worms, Christine Cooper

Thank you to each one of you for being part of our journey last year (and that includes my wonderful team). You made it all worth it.

In 2019

180,000 of you visited Zealous.
We doubled the amount of opportunities on Zealous from 2018.
You made more submissions this year than in the past 3 years put together!
Our newsletter has doubled in size, and the number of people subscribed to our recommendations have tripled
We’ve put cash directly into your accounts and featured 13 of your incredible stories.
Our development team made 416 changes to the site. Here are the most notable ones.
You now have access to a live demo when you first register.

In 2020

Brand New Profiles

Our front facing pages are the oldest on the site, so instead of just giving them a lick of paint, we’ve decided to take the wall down and completely rebuild it. Expect big changes. This means major improvements to the designs and loading speeds for your opportunities, portfolios, profiles, projects and more! We’ll even be dropping our black backgrounds (we know some of you will be very happy about that).

As a small sneak preview, here’s a mockup of what our new opportunity page will look like.

3 X More Opportunities

Suddenly Last Summer, GOMUNRO

Since our entire purpose is to give you access to opportunities. We’re aiming to triple the amount of opportunities this year. We’ll also try our very best to balance out those taking fees, with those that don’t.

To help us do so we’ve brought in some great new talent to reach out to organisations who manage opportunities for the creative sector.

Relaunched Stories

Amass I detail, Steven Edwards

It’s been an absolute pleasure to discover your journeys and help tell your story. For that reason, we’re excited to be running Zealous Stories for another year!

We’ve carved cash prizes for the next 12 and relaunched the page to include a calendar of which mediums we’ll be covering in 2020. Judges and additional perks (like portfolio reviews, magazines…) will be announced as we go.

Be sure to sign up for reminders!

Explore

Having thousands of users and hundreds of opportunities on the site isn’t great without an efficient way of discovering opportunities based on your skills.

As part of our front facing update, we’ll be reviewing how we recommend opportunities to you; allowing you to follow each other for updates on new opportunities and projects. This includes rebuilding the way we present results.

Bringing the Community together

Zealous Meetup

It’s been a while since we’ve had the pleasure of meeting you at our events. And although we’ve been hearing whispers about a potential next Emerge in the office, (don’t tell anyone I mentioned it), we suspect that will take a little while longer.

In the meantime, we’re looking at bringing back some initiatives where we get to meet you in person, so expect an announcement soon!

Conferences

Remix Conference

I’m thrilled to be speaking at this years Remix Summit about new ways of supporting talent directly (speaking just before Grayson Perry – no pressure there)! This year I will continue to get out there and make a case for all of you starting, or growing, your creative careers.

But that’s not it, our fantastic community manager, Ellie, will continue to answer your most pressing questions on our creative insights page. So, if you have any specific challenges you are facing you want us to talk about, we’d love to hear from you.

Finally

Suddenly Last Summer, GOMUNRO

There’s no time like the present to start new creative projects, create new initiatives and do our bit to change our society to be the place we want to live in. So, get out there and make your mark.

We can’t wait to see what you’ll create next.

Simplify your submissions in minutes

Experience our submission management platform with a customised online tour.

Take the Tour

About the author

Guy Armitage founded Zealous to simplify access to opportunities in the creative sector. He was voted Guardian’s Creative Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013, has discussed the world-changing potential of creativity at TED and in Forbes; and is a proud trustee of Firstsite (Colchester) and Arebyte (London). Prior to Zealous, Guy kept the London Stock Exchange open during the 7/7 bombings and founded a creative startup in Cairo. Contact Guy