Exhibiting at a City Takeover & 20 Micro Residencies
As part of their Leicester City takeover, UKNA listed two calls on Zealous. The first for artists wishing to showcase their work across the city, and the second offering 20 micro-residencies around the themes of sustainability, placemaking and common interest.
In brief
Saved weeks of work
Increased submissions by 22%
UKNA increased submissions and saved time on their open call by:
- Viewing all submitted files in one place
- Delighting judges with a streamlined scoring process
- Allowing candidates to save entries as draft
Taking over a City
UKNA (UK New Artists) exists to support collaboration and intercultural dialogue, ensuring a vibrant and diverse creative future for the UK.
They develop artists’ practice through cross art form opportunities. One such opportunity is through their City Takeovers. Providing artists with unique experiences. Allowing artists from across the UK to gather inspiration from one another, upskilling through professional development masterclasses and providing them with a great platform to show and test work with new audiences.
As part of their Leicester City takeover, UKNA listed two calls on Zealous. The first for artists wishing to showcase their work across the city, and the second offering 20 micro-residencies around the themes of sustainability, placemaking and common interest.
Saving weeks of admin
UKNA simplify their applications and selection process by:
- Removing the need to manage attachments on shared drives and navigating to external sites to view videos (e.g. YouTube). Having the files directly embedded in the candidates’ submissions online was a “HUGE improvement, both for us and for the artists who are applying.”.
- Judging on Zealous allowed UKNA to make scoring fun for their judges, with an emphasis on how easy it was to read, watch and score. “We had lots of great feedback from judges about how easy Zealous was to use.”
- Tracking submissions allowed UKNA to monitor and predict the number of submissions. This also allowed them to give their candidates a better experience by letting them save their applications to return to later. “this was great for us and them!”
Zealous has been a dream. It has all the features we need (and some we didn’t know we needed!). It’s easy to set up and monitor and the interface for judging and shortlisting is great. We received our highest number of submissions too, an increase of 22%!
Laura Evans
UK New Artists (Communications & Audience Development Manager)
A spotlight on Leicesters creativity
At the end of Februray 2021 – New and emerging artists from across the UK will takeover the city of Leicester for a long weekend. The overall programme will put a spotlight on Leicester’s geographic creative clusters; taking audiences on an immersive journey across spaces and art forms, and encouraging conversation through Q&As and tours.
Exhibitions, performance, music, writing and film and much more will animate cultural spaces and unusual places, presenting the work of over 50 practitioners at the leading edge of contemporary arts. In parallel, 20 artists will take up residence in Leicester.
All events are free.
