The Application Tax: What Brighton's Open Calls Really Cost Before Anyone Says Yes
Photo by Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash on Unsplash
Open call: £500 commission, three works, Brighton seafront. Application fee £15. Deadline midnight Sunday. That's the sort of advert that lands in your inbox most weeks if you're an artist in Brighton & Hove. It looks small. It isn't.
The invoice before the invoice
Take a composite 2026 commission, the kind that pops up on council noticeboards and arts newsletters between February and March. The advert is cheerful: a public art opportunity, a modest budget, a seafront location, a panel of judges. The fee to apply is £20. The artist spends eight hours writing the proposal, another two hours reading the brief and checking eligibility, £12 on travel to the site, and £8 on printing because the portal still wants a PDF under 10MB. Total cash outlay: £40. Total unpaid time: ten hours. At a living wage, that's roughly £120 of labour. So the true cost of applying is about £160. Then, eleven weeks later, a rejection email arrives. No feedback. No explanation. Just a polite no.
Now multiply that by twelve open calls a year. That's nearly £2,000 in fees, travel and materials, plus 120 hours of unpaid work. For an early-career artist in Brighton, that's a studio month. For someone on universal credit, it's the difference between applying and quietly opting out.
Who quietly opts out
The people who opt out are not less talented. They are the ones with caring responsibilities, disabled artists who need access support, low-income artists who can't risk £20 on a maybe, and people who have been burned before by opaque selection processes. The fee is a filter. It might not be an intentional filter, but it works like one. Brighton & Hove has a huge creative population. Open calls should widen that pool, not narrow it to the people who can afford to lose.
Paid vs unpaid: not the same as good vs bad
It's tempting to say all application fees are bad. They're not. Some paid calls are excellent: the fee covers admin, there's a free bursary route, shortlisted artists get paid for proposal time, and everyone gets feedback. Some free calls are worse: they demand a full proposal, a scale model and a video walkthrough, with no fee and no feedback. A fee isn't inherently evil. But it has to buy something — admin, access, feedback, a fair process. If it's just a barrier, it's a tax.
A typical 2026 paper trail
Here's a composite that should worry funders. A public art call with a £1,500 commission budget charges £15 to apply. Three hundred people apply. That's £4,500 in fees — three times the commission itself. Where does the money go? Admin? Panel fees? Artist fee? If the fee income exceeds the award, the call is a fundraiser, not a commission. That's a red flag. Applicants deserve to know.
Practical tests for funders
- Does the fee cover a named cost? Publish a simple breakdown: admin, panel, venue, access support.
- Is there a free entry route? A no-cost option, not a hidden hardship form.
- Are applicants paid for proposal time? At least shortlisted artists should be.
- Is feedback guaranteed? Yes or no, before the deadline.
- Are the panel and selection criteria published in advance? Names, roles, scoring.
- Is there a hardship fund? No questions asked, no proof of poverty.
- Does the call ask for free labour disproportionate to the fee? Check the ask against the budget.
- Is the timeline realistic? Six weeks to write a full proposal is not.
What good looks like in Brighton & Hove
A seafront commission could charge £10, offer a free route, pay shortlisted artists £100 for proposal time, and publish feedback for everyone. Or it could charge nothing and pay for proposals. Both are possible. The council can set a standard. Arts commissioners can advocate. Funders can ask these questions before they advertise.
The rejection email is part of the commission
If you're spending public money, the process is the programme. Be honest about fees. Publish the numbers. Pay people for their time. Don't charge people to be ignored. Make open calls genuinely open — not just open to those who can afford the application tax.
