The Truth about Application Fees in the Arts

Damien Davis wrote a sharp piece for Hyperallergic recently: Why Are We Paying for the Privilege of Rejection? It’s well worth reading. His argument that application fees are “one of the least examined but most pervasive forms of class stratification in the arts” resonated with us.

I’ve spent 15 years building a submissions platform used by 500+ organisations and 180,000+ creators, and the tension between sustainability and access has always been the basis of what I do (how do we generate opportunity for as many people as possible).

Davis’s article makes a strong case against fees. I agree with much of it. But I also think the conversation needs a second half: what does the solution actually look like? Not in theory, but in practice, for the organisations running these programmes and the artists navigating them.

The Problem Is Real (But Not Universal)

Fees create barriers. That part isn’t debatable.

An artist on a low income applying to ten opportunities a year at £20-40 each is spending £200-400 before a single person has looked at their work. For someone earning £18,000 from a part-time job while maintaining a studio practice, that’s a significant chunk of disposable income redirected toward what is, statistically, likely rejection. Most open calls accept between 2-8% of applicants.

This hits certain communities harder than others. Artists from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, those with caring responsibilities, disabled artists who already face higher living costs. The harsh reality is that money buys access. It always has, and not just in the arts. Fighting that fact head-on is a battle nobody wins. What we can do is grow the number of opportunities available, broaden who they reach, and reduce the cost of running them so that fees, where they exist, stay as low as possible. That’s a more productive fight. It’s also why Zealous exists.

UK arts programmes typically charge between £5-50 per submission, with the median sitting around £20. Commercial sectors (design, architecture) often charge three figures. Student and emerging talent programmes usually sit at £10 or below, or offer fee waivers. But even small amounts compound when you’re applying consistently, which is exactly what artists are told they need to do to build a career.

Why Fees Exist in the First Place

Dismissing all fees as exploitation misses something important: running an open call costs real money.

It also helps to be clear about what a fee actually pays for. It pays for your work to be considered. Not to win. Not even to be shortlisted. Considered. That might sound like a raw deal, but consider what’s behind it. Someone has to build the application form, market the opportunity, handle queries from applicants (and there are always queries), coordinate a judging panel, manage the review process, and communicate results. For a programme receiving 500 submissions, that’s easily 200+ hours of administrative work spread across several months.

And many of the people involved in that process give their time for free. Judges, in particular, are often remarkably generous. They’re reviewing work alongside their own careers, usually unpaid or for a token fee, because they believe in supporting the next generation of artists. That generosity deserves respect, and it has practical implications: if judges are volunteering limited hours, programmes need to keep scoring manageable. Smaller judging loads mean fairer, more considered reviews. That’s better for applicants, even if it means programmes can’t offer individual feedback to every submission (which would require significantly more time and, inevitably, higher fees to fund it).

Smaller organisations, charities, and independent galleries often don’t have the budget to absorb these costs entirely. A £15 application fee on 300 submissions generates £4,500, which might cover a freelance coordinator for the project. Remove that revenue entirely and some programmes simply wouldn’t exist. The opportunity disappears along with the fee.

There’s also the volume question. Zero-fee open calls can attract enormous numbers of submissions, and when judges are giving their time voluntarily, that volume matters. A panel reviewing 800 entries in the same timeframe they’d planned for 300 can’t give each submission the attention it deserves. The quality of consideration drops for everyone, including the strongest applicants. A modest fee doesn’t filter out “the wrong people” and yes, it creates a social barrier. But it does help ensure that the people reviewing your work have the capacity to do so properly.

None of this makes predatory fees acceptable. But pretending that all fees serve the same purpose makes it harder to fix the actual problem.

Spotting Predatory vs Legitimate Fee Structures

Not all fees are equal. Some fund genuine programme costs. Others are revenue streams disguised as opportunities.

It helps to think of paid opportunities in three categories. Some feel like the lottery: no skill required, just pay and hope for luck. The selection criteria are vague, the odds are unclear, and your £30 buys you little more than a ticket into a draw. Others are closer to hidden sales pitches: everyone “wins,” everyone pays for everything, and the only guaranteed beneficiary is the organisation collecting the fees. But most legitimate programmes are more like buying a train ticket. You’re paying for the infrastructure that gets you from A to B. The judging, the administration, the exhibition space, the coordination. Without that payment, the train stops running and the opportunity disappears entirely.

Learning to tell these apart quickly saves both money and morale.

The worst offenders follow a recognisable pattern. Davis describes one in his article: a gallery charges an application fee, promises refunds for rejected applicants, then accepts everyone. Artists are required to cover shipping and installation at their own expense. Anyone who can’t afford delivery forfeits the fee. If work sells, the gallery takes 50% commission on top. The artist has paid at every stage and the gallery profits regardless of outcome. This isn’t an exhibition model. It’s an extraction model.

Red flags worth watching for: the organisation takes sales commission on top of application fees. You pay to apply and also pay to ship, install, or deliver work. The opportunity promises “exposure” rather than any tangible support. There’s no transparency about how fees are used. The fee appears to be the organisation’s primary income.

The biggest red flag? Guaranteed acceptance dressed up as selection. Some programmes accept everyone who applies, and that’s not automatically a problem. If they’re upfront about it, the pricing is reasonable for what you get, and the costs are clear from the start, then what you’re buying is a service: exhibition space, inclusion in a publication, a platform for your work. That’s a legitimate transaction. It becomes predatory when the service is disguised as a competitive opportunity, when costs are hidden or stacked (application fees, then shipping, then hanging fees, then commission), or when tactics like promised refunds are used to draw you in before the real charges appear. The question isn’t whether everyone gets accepted. It’s whether you knew what you were paying for before you paid.

Stronger signals include: the programme has a verifiable track record. Past participants align with your practice and ambitions. Selection leads to real support (stipends, housing, travel, publication, exhibition funding). The organisation publishes how fees are allocated. Fee waivers exist and are accessible without stigma.

New programmes are trickier because there’s no track record to check. But you can still do your homework. Look at who’s judging and who the partners are. Credible judges and established partner organisations lend legitimacy, and they wouldn’t attach their names to something exploitative. If the judges aren’t named, or the partners are vague, that tells you something too.

That last point matters more than people realise. The presence of a fee waiver, even if you don’t use it, signals that an organisation has thought about access rather than just revenue.

What Organisations Can Do Better

If you’re running an open call and charging fees, the simplest thing you can do is explain why.

Publish a breakdown. “Your £20 fee covers: £8 toward juror fees, £7 toward platform and admin costs, £5 toward marketing to reach underrepresented communities.” It doesn’t need to be precise to the penny. But some transparency immediately separates you from the programmes that treat fees as profit.

Beyond transparency, there are structural alternatives worth considering.

Donation-based models let applicants contribute what they can afford, including nothing. This sounds idealistic, but it works surprisingly well in practice. Artists who can afford to support programmes they value often choose to, while those who can’t still have full access. Everyone submits on equal terms. Your submission platform should support this kind of flexible pricing without requiring workarounds. If it doesn’t, that’s worth questioning.

Tiered pricing adjusts fees based on organisation size, career stage, or income. Small organisations pay less than large corporations. Students pay less than established professionals. You leave some revenue on the table per entry, but you broaden your pool and build the kind of reputation that compounds over years.

Volume discounts for multiple category submissions encourage broader participation while increasing overall revenue. Second entry at 20% off. Third entry at 30% off. The maths works for both sides.

Whatever pricing approach you choose, make the logic transparent in your guidelines. Candidates respond well to honesty. “We charge a submission fee to fund our exhibition programme, while offering 20% of places fee-free to ensure accessibility” builds more trust than silence ever will.

Practical Strategies for Artists

While institutions sort out their approach, artists still need to navigate the current landscape.

Davis offers some solid practical advice in his piece (building an administrative toolbox, mapping opportunities across the year) and we’d echo much of it. But the starting point matters more than the tactics.

Start with what you’re trying to achieve. Before you apply to anything, get clear on what success looks like for your practice right now. Is it exhibition experience? Studio time? Financial support? Peer connection? Mentorship? Write it down. Keep it somewhere visible. Every opportunity you consider should be measured against that purpose. If a residency offers prestige but you actually need income, that’s not the right opportunity this year, regardless of the fee. If an open call leads to exhibition in a context that advances your work, a reasonable fee might be a sound investment. The clearer your goals, the less money you waste on applications that don’t serve them.

Ask about discounts or waivers. If a fee is a genuine barrier, it’s perfectly reasonable to contact the organisation and politely ask whether a reduced rate or fee waiver is available. Many organisations offer these but don’t advertise them prominently. A short, professional email explaining your circumstances is usually enough. Some will say yes. Some won’t. Either way, remain gracious. The person reading your email is often working within tight constraints themselves, and how you handle that exchange reflects on you professionally. Burning a bridge over a £20 fee is never worth it.

Peer groups make a difference. A shared thread for deadlines, reflections, and informal critique turns what often feels like private competition into mutual support. When one person spots a predatory call, everyone benefits from that knowledge. When someone finds a brilliant fee-free residency, that gets shared too.

Ultimately, being selective beats being exhaustive. Five well-chosen applications aligned with your goals will serve you better than twenty scattershot ones driven by FOMO.

Where This Goes Next

Application fees aren’t disappearing tomorrow. The economics of the art world lean on institutional underfunding, stretched resources, and a culture that has normalised asking artists to pay for the chance to be seen.

But something often gets lost in this conversation: almost nobody in the arts is flush with cash. The artist spending £20 on an application fee is stretched. The small gallery charging it is also stretched. The freelance coordinator being paid from that revenue is stretched too. We’re all operating under constraints, and the temptation is to frame this as artists versus institutions. It rarely is. Most of the people running open calls care deeply about access. Most of the artists applying understand that programmes cost money to run.

What’s needed, more than anything, is empathy in both directions. Organisations empathising with what it costs (financially and emotionally) to apply repeatedly and be rejected. Artists empathising with what it takes to run a fair, well-managed programme on a limited budget. That mutual understanding is where better models come from. Not from outrage, and not from resignation, but from people on both sides of the table recognising that they’re working toward the same thing.

Oscar Wilde wrote that we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. That feels about right for the arts in 2026. The conditions are tough. The funding is tight. The systems are imperfect. But the shared ambition, to find and support extraordinary creative work, is genuine on both sides.

The goal isn’t to eliminate all fees. It’s to build a system where fees, when they exist, are proportionate, transparent, and accompanied by genuine efforts to ensure they don’t determine who gets to participate. Where access is designed in from the start rather than bolted on as an afterthought. Where we extend each other a bit more grace.

I built Zealous from the start to support exactly this kind of approach. Flexible pricing, donation models, fee waivers, transparent processes. Because making opportunities accessible isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also how you find the best work.

Guy Armitage is the founder of Zealous and author of “Everyone is Creative“. He is on a mission to amplify the world’s creative potential.