Creating Your First Call for Artists

A call is an open opportunity for artists to submit work to your organization. This guide takes you from an empty form to a call the public can find. It covers the five-step create wizard and publishing, and what it costs.

Start at Admin → Calls and press Create Call.

The five steps

The wizard moves through Basics, Dates, Entry, Fee, and Review. You can go back to any step you have already completed.

Basics

Call Title is required. Description is not: artists read it first on the call page, so it is worth writing, but you can publish without one and add it later.

Call Type is a dropdown. Most of the choices, such as Juried Exhibition, Residency, Commission, or Group Show, simply label the call so artists can find it. A few of them also pre-fill the rest of the form for you: Application, Membership, Scholarship, and Fellowship each set up the entry fee and the questions that kind of intake needs. Those four are explained in Application Calls.

Controlled rollout: Artist Market. The Artist Market call type appears in the dropdown only for organizations enrolled in the pilot, and only when creating a new call. Access varies by organization.

Also on this step: a tagline, a poster image, and a Private Call toggle that keeps the call off the public browse pages.

Dates

Two dates are required, Submissions Open and Submission Deadline. Everything else on the timeline is optional and publishes to the call page as you fill it in: early bird and withdrawal deadlines, jury dates, artist notifications, drop-off and pickup windows, and exhibition dates. All times are in your organization's timezone.

Entry

Max Entries per Artist and Max Images per Entry set the shape of a submission. A submission is one piece; the images are photographs of it. You also choose which fields artists must complete, whether images are required at all, and who is eligible. Full detail is in Configuring Call Requirements and Fees.

Fee

Choose Free or Paid. Most calls are free. If you choose Paid, you pick a fee model and an amount, and decide whether artists pay when they submit or only if they are accepted. See Charging the Entry Fee on Acceptance.

A paid call cannot go live until your organization's Stripe account can actually receive the money. Connect it first: Connecting Stripe for Payments.

Review

A summary of the call, the entry limits, the fee, and what your gallery pays for each completed application, followed by two buttons: Save as Draft and Publish Call. The Fee step says the same thing earlier, so nothing about the cost waits until you are ready to publish.

When Next will not move

If something required is missing, pressing Next does not advance. A red block appears under the step reading Before continuing, please fix the following: and lists each field by name. Fix the named fields and press Next again.

If you press Publish Call and the call is not ready, it is still saved. The Review step then shows Saved as a draft. Fix these to publish: with a Fix link beside each item that takes you straight to the setting.

Publishing

Publishing a call costs nothing on any plan. On the call's page a card headed Publish this call asks two things: who pays the platform charge for each completed application (your organization, on a monthly invoice, or each artist at checkout), and when the call should go public. If your organization pays and has no card on file yet, you can still publish: artists pay the platform charge at checkout until you add a card, and the card says so. Add a card to cover it for artists takes you to a secure page to save one; nothing is charged at that point, and new entries after that are billed to your organization. Anything that would stop the call going live is listed above the button. See Pricing and Plans for the charge on your plan.

Publish Call makes the call visible right away. Schedule publishing keeps the call private until a moment you choose. A scheduled call can be rescheduled or cancelled from the same place.

The readiness checklist

Above the publish card is a checklist of everything standing between the call and going live. Required items block publishing. Recommended items do not, but they are the ones artists notice: a poster image, a short description for listing cards, submission requirements, and eligibility criteria. Each row has a Fix link.

Two of the required rows are about money rather than content. Card on file for monthly usage appears when your gallery will pay the platform charge and artists cannot be asked to cover it instead (a call priced outside US dollars, or an organization in Australia or New Zealand); nothing is charged when you save it. A call whose entry fee is due at acceptance asks for the card whichever payer you pick, because there is no entry payment at application time for the charge to ride. Platform usage paid up appears only when a monthly invoice has gone unpaid for more than seven days, which pauses publishing new calls, creating or duplicating exhibitions and bulk submission exports until it is settled.

One more thing that hides a live call

Publishing a call does not publish your organization page, and the call's own page lives on your organization page. If your organization page is still unpublished, artists can find the call on the browse page but cannot open it, and get a placeholder instead. Your own team sees the page normally, which is why this is easy to miss.

When that is the case, a notice appears on the call reading This call is listed publicly, but visitors cannot open it, with a Publish organization page button. Owners and admins can press it directly. See Setting Up Your Organization.

Editing after it is live

Open Admin → Calls → your call → Edit at any time. Saving with Update Call never republishes or changes the call's status; it just saves. A call that has closed can still be edited. Once the first submission arrives, the fee configuration and the currency lock, so get those right before you open.

If a colleague saves the same call while you have it open, your save is stopped rather than overwriting theirs, and you are shown a comparison of both versions. Nothing you typed is lost.