I wrote about the work we've been doing to cut down on the amount of unpaid labour in arts application processes. There's a little calculator and everything, so you can work out just how much of everyone's time you're taking up with preparing proposals.

We did the maths on our Winter Residency programme: in a typical year we get about a hundred applicants, who each spend ~4 hours on preparing an application. That's four hundred hours of unpaid work - more than twice what we return to artists in paid time through the residencies.

If every artist was trying to support themselves through programmes like this, they'd spend two thirds of their time working unpaid writing proposals. From the perspective of supporting artists to make art, that's not how it should work.

This year we tried something new - artists fill in a short form, and we pick twelve at random for a shortlist. Those twelve all get paid to write a proposal, and all get an interview. We tripled our usual number of applicants, but we still cut the unpaid time by a factor of ten.

It also drastically reduced the number of applications submitted the day before the deadline (from 74% to 17%), and nearly halved the number that submit in the middle of the night. Hopefully this means fewer artists are losing sleep or messing up their lives to submit proposals

Anyway, it might be that random selection isn't the best solution to these problems - it definitely has its own issues! But the arts can't go on ignoring the unpaid labour that artists put in to get funded. We need to try new approaches, learn from them, and do better next time.

Our Studio Community Lead, Martin O'Leary, wrote about the vast amount of unpaid labour that goes into applying for arts funding, and how we've used random selection to cut down on the time, effort, and emotional energy that unsuccessful applicants have to invest. watershed.co.uk/studio/news/20…

❣️ Today marks the end of Heart Unions week! It's your last chance to get get your first three months of Bectu membership free ➡️ bectu.org.uk/join/. ❣️ A big thanks to the Trades Union Congress for organising #HeartUnionsWeek and highlighting the work of trade unions 🙌.

There's a lot I'm proud of in the new approaches to arts funding that we've been trialing, but my favourite stat might be that we've almost halved the number of people working past 10pm to submit application forms. watershed.co.uk/studio/news/20…

Artists who apply for opportunities like our Winter Residencies spend two thirds of their time unpaid, working on proposals and application forms. This year we decided to do something about that. Our Studio Community Lead Martin O'Leary explains what we learned: watershed.co.uk/studio/news/20…

Really appreciating all the comments and feedback on this work, even if I'm dismayed by how bad the problems are.

I look up from writing about the exploitative unpaid labour of unsuccessful funding proposals, only to read about magazine editors getting overwhelmed by low-quality AI-generated submissions. There's an arms race here that needs to be stopped (the arms race is called capitalism)

ICYMI: Studio Community Lead Martin O'Leary reflects on the process of experimenting with random selection for our Winter Residencies last year, aiming to reduce bias and cut down on the amount of unpaid labour that artists have to contribute. watershed.co.uk/studio/news/20…

Hey I'm giving a talk on Friday! Going to explore some of the fundamental injustices of how the arts is funded in this country, and also show off our shiny gold tombola. Will be livestreamed if you can't make it in person

I gave a talk yesterday Pervasive Media Studio about using random selection processes to reduce the amount of unpaid labour involved in arts funding! With guest appearances by David Graeber, Eugène Delacroix, and the civil service of classical Athens: youtube.com/live/dMJ0VXnOm…

Dropping back in here to say hey look, we wrote a thing! Victoria Tillotson and I have put together all of our thoughts about using random selection in application processes. I think it's good! If you run any kind of application scheme for funding or similar, you should check it out.

I'm hiring! Come work as a producer on my team: looking for someone interested in testing early stage creative tech work, as well as keeping on top of partnerships with academia and industry. Fun inclusive work environment, lots of varied projects, beautiful harbourside location