Open Call for Art Submissions

‘The best way to predict the future is to invent it’
Alan Kay

The call is now open for submissions to the art programme of the FutureEverything 2011 festival in Manchester, England, on 11-14 May 2011.

The art programme will explore the themes listed below, and we are seeking proposals for art works or projects that relate to and expand these concepts.

For this call we are looking for pre-existing work, or work that is pre-funded with no extra commissioning support required. If selected for exhibition we can offer an honorarium of £150 per artwork selected in addition to exhibition staging costs.

The deadline for submissions is 24th October 2010.

Art Themes 2011

This years themes are as follows:

FutureMobilities
Beyond the transport of everything – inviting smart transport prototypes to be tested in Manchester, state-of-the-art design on new mobilities, long term sustainable transport projects for the city, transport hacking and modding, artworks on the social codes of travel, new approaches to the mobility of people, media and things, anything to do with cycling.

Global & Connected
Remote collaboration, telepresence, networked performance, local/global connections, and group-to-group connectivity are a focus again, following the success of the inaugural GloNet event at FutureEverything 2010.

OpenEverything
Seeking artworks and social innovations that use real time data and illustrate the potential of open, freely available, accessible data. FutureEverything is helping Manchester make the transition to an Open Data City.

FutureEverybody
The future must be for everybody – this was the call to arms from the last festival. Lets make it a reality with mass participation art/design projects that engage citizens, connect communities, change society, and take over the city to build a better world.

Handmade
Contemporary craft, digital hacking, interactivities and diy culture. A new maker community is emerging, connecting the culture of traditional skills and materials with modern-day digital production, distribution and interaction techniques. FutureEverything invites makers to create objects, installations and performances that explore the cross-fertilisation of new and traditional media and materials.

See also:

Festival as Lab (ECAS)
To launch a new ECAS European festivals network, a Euro 10,000 commission is available for projects which take the form of an experiment, a prototype or a trial in a new type of art object, technology or form of participation. Inspired by the way FutureEverything acts as a ‘living lab’ for participatory experiments that rewire the networked city.

Submission Notes

  • Applicants must hold the copyright of the submitted work.
  • If the work contains components requiring copyrights such as music or film, the applicant must have permission to use the artworks from the copyright owner before entry. In the event that an assertion of infringement of copyright holders or claim for compensation is made by a third party, the applicant will be required to respond on his or her own responsibility. FutureEverything accept no responsibility whatsoever for the contents of the entered work.
  • In order to announce and publicise the selected works within the art programme, we reserve the right to publicly screen, present, broadcast, reproduce, print, exhibit or otherwise distribute the work, and upload the work to our website at no charge. The content for this will be agreed between FutureEverything and the applicant.

How to Submit

In order to submit you must first register with us. To do this click the Register button at the top of this page. You will be asked to create a username and password, which can then be used to login and upload your submissions. Please keep these details safe as you will need them each time you login to our site. If you have already registered with us, click the Login button to upload your submission. At this stage it is also possible to login through Facebook if you have an existing account.

Once you have registered or logged in, you will be able to follow the submission links to the upload form. Please use the online application for all entries, filling out all the required fields. Please ensure you submit the correct information and associated files, as once you have uploaded these you will not be able to edit anything. A confirmation email will be automatically sent out in response to your submission.

Submissions are accepted from individuals, groups, or collectives as well as recognised organisations or individuals acting on behalf of entrants. Submissions may be in any medium, and more than one work may submitted by the same artist/applicant using a separate application for each work. Please check the Format Requirements before you submit to ensure you are submitting the correct file types and sizes.

Additional supporting material may be sent by post only if essential for preview purposes, and not in lieu of the online application. Accepted hardcopy media for preview are DVD, CD-ROM or print publications. If submitting additional material, please include a print-out of your online application confirmation. Please send materials to the main address on the organisations homepage. Mailing costs will be borne by the entrant and supporting materials will not be returned.

Incomplete or late entries will not be considered.


You need to be a registered and logged-in user to make a submission. You can register a new account here or log in with an existing account in the top right.

Information Required

You will be asked to submit the following:

  • Name of Artist or Group
  • Title of project
  • Project Details – Media, Date created, etc
  • Dimensions or duration (as appropriate)
  • Existing or new work
  • URL
  • Project outline: a 500 words statement detailing the work including information on previous presentation and any supporting visual materials. Please indicate if it is a new work how it is to be funded, as FutureEverything cannot support such costs.
  • Short biography on artist/group (max. 150 words)
  • Indication of any costs for staging
  • One item of supporting material e.g. video documentation, text, image or other media. Please check the Format Requirements before you submit.

Format Requirements

The evaluation by the jury requires excellent documentation of submitted works.

We would prefer it if you could archive your files into one of the following formats:

zip, rar, tar

Supporting documentation may be uploaded to a maximum of 10 MB per submission.

Preview material can also be made available online, either within the artist’s own site or embedded elsewhere. Please check both the work and links are fully functional.

Other acceptable submission formats include the following:

Images: tiff, eps, bmp, jpg, gif (jpg and eps only at maximum quality)
Video: mov, avi, mp4
Sound: mp3, wav, aiff
Other: html, txt, pdf, doc, docx

If necessary an explanation should be given in your statement as to which aspects of the work the jury should consider in particular.

Selection Process

The Art Programme Open Submission selection is made via the following process:

  • All submissions are first reviewed by the FutureEverything curatorial staff and a longlist created.
  • The longlist is peer reviewed by the Advisory Council.
  • The FutureEverything staff consider the comments of the Advisory Council in their selection and curation of the final exhibition.

Submissions are assessed against the following criteria:

  • Excellence
  • Originality
  • Significance
  • Relevance
  • Coherence and Rigour