Turning Disruption into Growth: A Zealous Roadmap for 2025

Finding Opportunity in Disruption

At the start of each year, I look back on the previous one reflecting on our progress – and often end up celebrating the same things – a bigger network, more features, and most importantly featuring some fantastic artists from our community. This year I’m looking at progress differently – focusing on the world today, sharing the challenges we all face and understanding our role in all of this.

For those of you who are curious I will also share company progress at the very end.

Navigating A.I.

There is no doubt the creative industries (and humanity as a whole) is at an inflection point with the emergence of increasingly powerful generative AI tools. Some will see these tools as an opportunity to create more efficiently – bringing ideas to life quicker with lower budgets, others will identify their intellectual property being hoovered up by large companies to be repackaged and sold without consent, nor payment.

The argument that these algorithms are just mimicking humans and using patterns to produce something completely new is true for some scenarios, but not others. “Draw me a cat”, or “Draw me a cat like Hayao Miyazaki” are completely different premises – where one is generic, the other is heavily dependent on the AI model having been trained on Hayao Miyazaki’s work, likely without permission.

“The Last Chance to Celebrate the Creator” by The Clockwork Collective (Zealous Amplify Longlist 2025)

This extends beyond IP, with these tools allowing us to quickly prototype, think more deeply and research topics immediately and support us best where we struggle – putting across an idea no longer depends on you being able to write well. This is balanced with the mass creation of fake information, phishing and the impact subservient “AI girl/boyfriends” will have on future relationships.

There are so many unanswered questions which will deeply impact our society:

So, what can Zealous do to help?

With so many companies integrating AI within their platforms to satisfy a trend and pressure from external funders – we want to take a human centric approach to how AI is used to support you. Zealous has always been about allowing hosts to support and celebrate people’s work by helping them manage submissions for their awards, competitions, grants…we should never get in the way of that. AI is fantastic in allowing for a more accessible experience (e.g. alt information on images being created automatically) and can help organisations create simpler guidelines and question if they are inclusive. This year we will explore creating tools for you – but our promise to you is that we will never use AI to replace the human process – only to empower all of us to do better. We will also seek to create transparency on how and where machine learning is used.

Although hiding under a rock might feel like the best solution to this, it won’t help. It’s best to educate ourselves to understand how this new world will impact us. We’re in a great position to act as Sherpas through all this noise. I studied AI in university way before it became cool. We’ll be sharing more content on how to make the most of it, and if possible – host conversations around the topic to allow you to make your own decision on how to best use these new tools.

Political and economic uncertainty

Sitting on the boards of two arts organisations in the UK and serving many more through Zealous it’s obvious the last 5 years have taken their toll. A series of black swan events have left reserves depleted, funding has been frozen in a time of inflation and teams exhausted. Organisations supporting creators are starved for resources.

To add to that, this year the World seems to be spinning that little bit faster. The political change in US policies is creating friction with globalisation – a system which has underpinned development across the globe since the 1950s. The worries of the US electorate which pushed for change can be felt everywhere and is likely to spread across other nations once we are required to once again go to the polls.  

“Metropolis-Metaverse” by Oskar OK Krajewski (Zealous Amplify Longlist 2025)

This is exacerbated by the fact that “Social media” is no longer “social”. Instead, these platforms have evolved to get our attention and maintain it for as long as possible. These algorithms focussed on engagement have created destructive patterns that increase rifts between communities and radicalise ideas (MIT discovered fake information is 70% more likely to be shared than real stories, Ragebait is 6x more likely to spread, 27% of Americans report Doomscrolling…and we’re scratching the surface with new terms being added all the time Sadfishing, Grief exploitation, Trauma dumping, Moral grandstanding….). These systems have their uses, but we must also be mindful of their impact on our future.

The most efficient tool against any type of extremism is empathy – it’s harder to hate someone when you feel you know them. Telling rich human stories and creating empathy with one another is essential to support a healthy society and build a better future together.

It’s now more important than ever to support creators from all sectors to be able to tell these rich stories and celebrate them, no matter what their initial beliefs are.

There is no right or wrong in the decisions people make when voting, everyone has their own hopes and dreams and hear what they want to hear within speeches. It’s no different from there being nothing right or wrong about being a “Boomer”, “Millennial”, “Gen Z”… or being from different countries, different social backgrounds, having different beliefs… What is most important is that we are all people, we share far more in common than we care to admit to.

What we do as individuals matters far more than the groups we inhabit (you are of course welcome to widely dislike someone, just don’t let that extend beyond them based on one of their traits). A little kindness goes a long way.

If you’re toying with ideas on how to celebrate creators and their stories through any type of open calls, we’re there for you (my email is in the footer if you want to contact me directly) – you can also refer to our absolute guide for running awards which contains a decade of insights on how to run more effective programs.

Community, community, community

In a world filled with tech and increasingly extreme ideology we’re doubling down on bringing people together this year. We want to allow for the sector to thrive, for creatives to find opportunities which match their skills.

“Brotes de Jilotes” by Ben Stephenson (Zealous Amplify Longlist 2025)

I won’t lie, Zealous moved towards facilitating calls from other industries in the past couple of years to ensure we raise enough money to continue on our quest to bring the creative sector together. We have no investors other than ourselves, and this has been vital in our development. This has in some way put focus on creating features for other sectors to allow them to use us.

This year we’re going back to our roots, we will focus on ensuring our community is recommended the opportunities that best match their skills, build more tools for managing awards, competitions and grants to save creative organisations vital resources to continue the work they are doing on reduced budgets. We will continue to serve other industries so we can reinvest this income into our creative sector, but our creative community will be at the core of our decisions going forward.

We remain open to any ideas you might have; these have informed our roadmap in the last couple of years, and this year will be no different.

Conclusion

So, what next?

Throughout history, periods of uncertainty have sparked our greatest cultural revolutions. The Renaissance emerged from plague, jazz found its voice during profound social upheaval, and countless artistic movements were born in times of economic challenge. This isn’t coincidence – disruption forces us to question, adapt, and reimagine.

For those of you who see the glass half-full, what we’re experiencing now isn’t just a series of challenges – it’s the fertile ground from which the next creative renaissance will grow. The collision of AI advancement with political realignment and social fragmentation creates precisely the conditions that precede cultural transformation. Those who navigate this transition thoughtfully won’t just survive; they will define what comes next.

That’s where I believe Zealous fits into this story. Enabling human connection through creativity isn’t just nice – it’s essential. When algorithms drive us apart, creative expression brings us together. When AI threatens to homogenize, human creativity provides the antidote of authentic diversity. When political forces fracture communities, shared creative experiences rebuild bridges of understanding.

“Lubugo- This earth we walk” by Hannah Allchurch (Zealous Amplify Longlist 2025)

Our commitment to supporting the creative sector and helping unleash opportunities remains unchanged after 14 years. If anything, it’s strengthened by the recognition that what we’re doing matters more now than ever before. By working together – hosts, creators, judges, and platforms like ours – we can ensure creative voices lead us forward through these transformative times.

My inbox remains open, as always, for your thoughts, concerns, and ideas. After all, our best innovations have come from conversations with you, and navigating this new world will require all our collective wisdom.

If you are curious about how the above will be translated into tangible action – read on.