About OpenCall

What OpenCall is

OpenCall is a free online directory and matching agent for artists. It gathers art opportunities, meaning calls for artists, artist residencies, art grants, and art fairs and markets, into one continuously refreshed, searchable place, so that finding the next thing to apply to does not mean checking a dozen websites every week.

Browsing and searching are free and need no account. Every listing shows the entry fee, the sales commission, the submission deadline, and the location up front, so you can rule a call in or out before you click.

Why we built it

OpenCall started as a tool for one artist. She is a painter, she is married to an engineer, and she kept losing opportunities to the same small failures: the call she heard about a week after it closed, the residency she meant to apply for and forgot, the grant whose deadline went by while she was in the studio with her phone in another room.

None of that is a failure of talent. It is a failure of admin, and admin is a solvable problem. So the first version of this was a private list, built for one person, to make sure she stopped missing things. It worked, and it turned out the problem was not hers alone. Every artist we showed it to was losing work the same way, to the same paperwork.

We think the business side of an art practice should take up as little of an artist's life as possible. Finding the right show, the right grant, or the right residency, and getting the application in before it closes, should be the easy part. The art is the hard part, and it is the part that deserves the hours.

What it does for you

Tell OpenCall your medium and where you are based, and the directory narrows to your area and your kind of work instead of everyone else's. Each opportunity is then scored from 0 to 100 against your profile, with the reasoning shown, so you can see why something is worth your time rather than taking our word for it.

It also keeps track of what you have entered and flags exhibition-window conflicts, so the same physical piece is never promised to two overlapping shows, and it reminds you before a deadline passes. Grounded drafting, researched opportunity checks, and Artist Kit preparation are also part of the free artist product.

What OpenCall is not

OpenCall is not a venue, a gallery, or an event organizer. It does not host exhibitions, it does not run juries, and it does not host applications or take entries of any kind.

Every listing links out to the organizer's own application page, and the application happens there, on the organizer's terms and to the organizer's deadline. OpenCall never sits between an artist and the organization they are applying to, and it never handles entry fees. It is an index that points at other people's open calls, which is why we ask artists to confirm every deadline, fee, and rule on the organizer's own page before applying.

What it costs

The artist product is free. That includes browsing and fit scores, saving and tracking calls, reminders, the Artist Kit, researched opportunity checks, and grounded drafting from your own materials. There is no trial and no artist subscription.

Compute-heavy automated work has generous fair-use safeguards, but those are operational limits rather than an upgrade path. OpenCall is testing organization services and separate one-time artist decision services instead of putting core artist tools behind a plan. See pricing for the current model.