Zealous Blog
All of our news, insights and inspirations in one place.
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Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Organising Awards
Behind the glitz and glamour of an awards ceremony lies a meticulous planning process which, if not executed with precision, can lead to disappointment for all involved.
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Marketing Your Opportunity (Interview)
Looking back at Zealous Amplify: Mental Health and Wellbeing, community manager Bethan and marketing coordinator Carmela talk about all things marketing.
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The Black Experience
Zealous Amplify: Mental Health and Wellbeing 3rd place winner Charmaine Chanakira is a Zimbabwean-born, London-raised Afro Expressionist. As a self-taught artist, her collections are inspired by her experience as a Zimbabwean woman living in the UK.
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Writing An Artist Biography
As a creative, having an artist biography is something which becomes increasingly important. Viewers of your work want to know more about you and your journey.
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New Logo, Same Us
You might notice we’ve changed our logo. We thought it was important to share the reasons we made that change, and the process we went through before doing it.
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Creative Resources for Women’s Empowerment
Creative women have been breaking barriers for centuries.
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Hear My Cry
Zealous Amplify: Mental Health and Wellbeing 2nd place winner Jennifer Louise Martin is a visual multi-disciplinary artist from London.
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Founder Update 2023
Our mission to reduce the barriers to entry for creating opportunities for the creative sector has never felt so important. In 2023 we promise to do our part in building the creative world we wish to see tomorrow.
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Just Do It
Zealous Amplify: Mental Health and Wellbeing 1st Place Winner Adri São Bento is a Portuguese deaf interdisciplinary artist working with a variety of media including video, performance and sculpture.
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Winners Announcement – Zealous Amplify: Mental Health and Wellbeing
With the closing of the first iteration of Zealous Amplify, which touched upon Mental Health and Wellbeing, we are so happy to announce the winners!
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Grants For The Arts: A Funding Toolkit
You’re a creative, you have a vision for a great piece of art, but you can’t do it alone. You need funding for equipment and space.
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Migrating Zealous
Zealous is undergoing a complete migration of its data to a series of real-time databases hosted across Europe.
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Marketing your Award Effectively (even on shoestring budgets)
Without good marketing, no one will submit to your award/competition. Here are a few tips to increase exposure to your programme
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5 Creativity and Wellbeing tips
Let’s face it, we could all do better at taking care of ourselves. The pursuit of creativity is a journey which can be as thrilling as it is perilous…
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War Notes
Zealous Stories: Photography 2022 winner Mouneb Taim is a photojournalist who has covered life under siege in Douma, Eastern Ghouta, Idlib and Aleppo.
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Augmented Reality Murals
Zealous Stories: Design 2022 winner Luke Gray is a nomadic surrealist painter specialising in large scale paintings on walls and canvas.
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Choosing the best tools for managing submissions
Taking submissions can be a breeze or a nightmare; the deciding factor is your tools. Here are our top tips in picking the right ones for your needs.
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The Cut of Your Gib
Zealous Stories: Painting 2022 winner Amy Dury is an artist based in Hove, specialising in oil painting.
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Founder Update 2022
This year, everything changes for the better. In 2021 we strengthened our foundations. 2022 will be all about building.
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Supporting Growth Within Creative Communities
Now is such an important time to support one another. We’ve put together a list of organisations, individuals and collectives that pay an extraordinary amount of attention to fostering growth, equality and strength within the creative community.
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Maximising Engagement using Competitions
How to maximise engagement for your open call, create exposure for your brand, show support for your community & begin a meaningful dialogue.
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Imperfection I
Zealous Stories: Craft Winner, Carmen M. Castañeda is an artistic researcher and practitioner specialising in hand-embroidery techniques.
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Major Entries Upgrade
We have some exciting news! Based on all your feedback, we are rebuilding how you and your judges will experience processing entries from the ground up. Here is a quick preview of what you can expect very soon.
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Writing the perfect guidelines for your competition
Writing good guidelines can make or break your competition. This article covers best practices to guarantee candidates apply with the right content for your needs.
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Tippler and The Crow
Mason Matak is an illustrator based in Iran. His works have appeared on the pages of children’s books, beside Old Iranian folktales, as tattoos on people’s skin, and also exist online as NFTs.
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Burial Rites
Zealous Stories: Short Story winner, Yvette Naden, is an obsessive writer of poetry and prose.
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How to approach judges for competitions
Getting partners involved and securing high-level individuals to help you select winners is no easy task. But having someone recognisable on your panel is a big perk for candidates who want their work seen. Here are our top tips to…
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Voice Like an Insect
Zealous Stories: Print winner, Angelica Trimble-Yanu, was born and raised in Oakland, California and is an enrolled member of the Oglála Lakȟóta Nation.
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Drawing up your schedule
Timing is everything – opening your submissions at the wrong time or for too long could negatively impact the number of candidates who apply. Find out more on what to watch out for when crafting the schedule of your programme.
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Terminal B
Zealous Stories: Digital Art winner, Nigel Goldsmith, is a visual artist focusing on environmental issues and the Anthropocene.
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Planning the selection process for your competition
Seeing submissions reach into the hundreds then into thousands is a real buzz. But that euphoria can quickly turn to dread if your process to select successful candidates isn’t built to cope.
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Performative Drawing
Zealous Stories: Performance winner, M. Lohrum, is an artist based in London and currently working across video, drawing and performance.
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10 Questions with Guy Armitage
This year, Zealous celebrates its 10th Anniversary. In recognition of this momentous occasion, we’ve interviewed founder and CEO, Guy Armitage, to find out more about the company’s past, present and future.
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Sharing Four Lessons from Running a Business
Ten years have gone by quickly, and we are still learning. After a decade of building Zealous, we thought we should share some of our top lessons.
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We Are Not Ourselves
Zealous Stories, Sculpture winner, Svetlana Ochkovskay lives and works in Portsmouth, UK. Her practice explores ideas of identity, belonging and otherness: encouraging new perceptions of the world by taking the audience to a visual other.
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Celebrating our 10th Anniversary!
It is humbling to see an idea I had ten years ago develop into a network of over 45,000 artists and arts organisations. And although we should use our anniversary to celebrate what we achieved, this feels only like the…
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Establishing the perks for your competition
The only reason applicants will take the time to submit is that there’s something in it for them. Defining what’s in it for those selected, and understanding what you have available to you, could allow you to run a competition…
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Perfecting Your Artist Statement for Awards & Submissions
Having a clear and compelling artist statement is essential for grant applications, exhibitions, open calls and residency submissions. To ensure you communicate what matters, we’ve compiled a quick and easy guide to help you tackle the daunting task of putting…
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Wee Muckers – Youth of Belfast
Zealous Stories: Photography winner, Toby binder, has been documenting the daily life of teenagers in British working-class communities for more than a decade. His winning series is a compelling exploration of young people in Northern Ireland, who often suffer the…
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Streamlining what you ask for from candidates
Asking candidates for the correct information when they submit is a fine art.
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Creative Resources: Where to Get Your Grant
Every discipline comes with its own set of requirements and costs. It can be hard to filter through the plethora of opportunities to find the perfect one suited to your project and its needs. We’ve put together a selection of…
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From Lenses to Lighting
Zealous Stories: Design winner, Yair Neuman, is a London-based designer and entrepreneur, exploring sustainable design opportunities. Neuman’s Lens Light collection is a positive action to repurpose waste lenses from the eyewear sector into striking, sculptural lights.
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Defining the purpose of your programme
Purpose is powerful. It allows you to inspire people to take part and measure your goals effectively once your program ends. Without a clearly articulated purpose, marketing your offering and getting candidates to submit will be an uphill struggle.
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Shadow Passage
Zealous Stories: Animation winner, Ali Aschman, is a visual artist working primarily in stop motion animation. Aschman’s tactile work is rooted in storytelling, but takes a non-linear and surreal approach, finding its own organic structure through an intuitive and often…
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Mastering Online Networking
Networking is a skill that is critically important, but often nerve-wracking and tricky to navigate. Now more than ever, individuals have had to exercise their networking efforts online – but this doesn’t have to impact you negatively!
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7 Awards Platforms for the Creative Industries
Choosing the right process whilst taking entries could save you hundreds of hours of admin. To save you a little time we’ve compiled a list of the best submission platforms serving the creative eco-system at this time.
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Houses of Kadıköy
Zealous Stories: Painting winner, Edinburgh-based artist Emily Moore, creates arresting landscape paintings using an amalgamation of personal source images and experiences. Moore’s creative process allows her to recall each place and combine them to create new, anonymous landscapes.
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Continuing to support you during COVID
Supporting the creative community? You might be eligible for a deep discount to use our submissions and selection platform.
