Exploring Without Walls’ Open Calls

What is Without Walls?

Without Walls is a network of 36 outdoor arts festivals across England. Our central purpose is to support the creation of exciting, entertaining and thought-provoking new work for the outdoor festival touring circuit.

Our mission is to help develop the best and most innovative new work being created in the UK, and to support it to tour widely across the UK and further afield.

How do you do that?

Every year we run an Open Call inviting artists to submit projects for the following year’s programme. This normally runs for 6 to 8 weeks over the course of Summer, with final programming decisions being taken in the Autumn.

The projects that we select receive financial support to help create the work. They also receive commissioning support from one or more of our festival partners, along with an offer of guaranteed performance dates.

That offer is also backed up with other development opportunities including; advice and guidance, access to training opportunities, and potential support with touring the work in subsequent years.

‘Outdoor work can be big, bold and daring.’

What sort of work are you looking for?

Without Walls supports all forms of work that can be presented in an outdoor festival context.

The festivals that we work with programme a wide variety of artforms including; street theatre, music and sound based work, contemporary dance, circus and aerial dance, and visual art and installation-based work.

As things have evolved over the years the sector has come to refer to our activity as ‘outdoor arts’– reflecting the range of work that festivals now present.

What do you think are the most important things to consider before submitting a project proposal?

It’s important to understand that our partners present work in a touring festival context. That means projects need to be easy to tour, and presentable in a variety of environments.

Some festivals take place in town squares in city centres, with artists performing on the street. Other festivals present work in public parks or green field sites. Normally work will have to be suitable for presenting in all these different types of location.

In terms of budgets most of the projects that we support will request anything up to around £35,000. The highest level of support that we provide is around £60,000, which would normally be for larger-scale projects. It’s unlikely that we’d support more than one or two of these projects each year.

If your project requires more than around £60,000 then you’ll have to look at securing additional funding from other sources.

‘Without Walls exists to champion the strongest new work being made in the UK.’

Are there any types of work that you don’t support?

Without Walls exists to support the work of UK based artists, so your project needs to be led by artists based in the UK to be eligible.

The Without Walls programme is extremely broad, so one of the best ways to understand what we’re looking for is to check out the back catalogue of shows that we’ve supported in the past.

At the same time though when we talk about ‘outdoor arts’ we’re not necessarily referring to every form of work that might appear in a public space. Without Walls doesn’t support permanent public sculpture commissions, or any type of work that’s intended for a single one-off presentation. Everything must fit into the programmes of our partner festivals.

That means that ideas which are very site-specific can be difficult for us to support. If your idea must take place in a specific environment then it’s best to be clear about what range of locations would be suitable, and how you intend to make the work easily adaptable for different spaces.

It’s also worth noting that Without Walls exists to champion the strongest new work being made in the UK. As such we don’t have specific targets around support for emerging artists, even though we often support people that are new to creating work for the outdoors.

If you’re new to creating outdoor work it’s a really good idea to visit some of our upcoming festivals to understand how the format works.

You may also wish to check out our Discover programme, which is intended to support people who are new to the sector.

If you’re at an early stage of your career it would be great to know as much as possible about your current work. Even if your first few proposals are not successful Without Walls can still be a great way to get your work noticed and picked up in future years.

How do you go about selecting the programme?

Once all the proposals have been received, we divide them up according to the primary artform that the artist has listed for their project. It’s therefore good to be as clear as possible about this when submitting your proposal. If you’re unsure how to describe your project you can speak to the Without Walls team for advice.

Each artform list is allocated to different sub-groups of the Artistic Directorate for review. The sub-group will then meet to discuss all the proposals that have been assigned to them. 

Each sub-group is asked to identify between 5 and 10 projects that they would recommend for shortlisting. This helps establish a good balance of artforms going into the shortlisting process.

The Artistic Directorate then comes together to review the shortlisted projects in detail. These conversations focus on why a particular project would make a good addition to the programme, rather than reasons for not selecting the work. 

Partners then indicate which projects they wish to programme for their own events and the projects with the most support go forward to the final budget planning stage.

It is likely that this final shortlist of projects will still be over budget, and some projects will drop out at this stage to arrive at a programme which meets everyone’s programming needs and that can be delivered within budget.

How many projects get selected?

We normally receive 100 or more proposals every round, from which we might be able to support 10 to 15 projects. That means that the success rate is often around 10 – 15%.

One of the reasons why Without Walls is so competitive is because it’s a commissioning scheme, rather than a funding scheme.

Whilst other funding opportunities exist to support a wide range of work, Without Walls aims to showcase and support the best new work being produced in the UK. And that’s difficult – because there is a lot of good work out there.

Another important difference is that in a commissioning scheme it’s the people who are going to be presenting the work that are responsible for deciding the programme. All the shows that we programme therefore need to have booking interest from several partners.

In Without Walls the festivals are programming an entire season of work – not simply deciding on the merits of each stand-alone project. That means we need to consider how all the projects combine to meet our programming criteria and how they work together to build a strong and balanced programme of work.

Do you provide feedback on projects that don’t get selected?

We’re committed to providing constructive feedback wherever we can. However the reality is that for maybe 80% of proposals the only feedback that we can give is that it was a really good and interesting idea – we just didn’t have the capacity to support it.

Artists often want to be given clear and specific reasons why their idea hasn’t been selected. However that’s not usually how our selection discussions work. It’s more common for us to spend time discussing why a given show should be in the programme, rather than coming up with reasons why it shouldn’t. 

In cases where we can provide specific feedback that is often because some feature of the proposal that didn’t sit quite right with our programme requirements. That might be to do with the budget, or it might be because the idea didn’t fit with the touring format of the network.

In such cases we’ll always provide a clear explanation and provide constructive guidance around how you might frame proposals in future to improve the chances of success.

Do you have any other tips on how to put together a proposal?

Outdoor work can be big, bold and daring. When reading your proposal programmers want to understand what their audience is going to experience. What is the work going to look and sound like and what is it going to make an audience think or feel? Don’t be afraid to be descriptive. If you have any images or sound or video that you can share then it’s great to see how the work is developing.

It’s also important to understand how budgeting fees works in outdoor touring. Festivals will normally ask you to quote an artist fee which doesn’t include costs for travel, transport, accommodation or subsistence payments. All these costs will be covered separately to your performance fees. 

When calculating your fees it’s important that the amount you’re charging covers all the costs that you’re likely to incur for the performance. That way, if you find that you’re receiving lots of offers for gigs then you can say ‘yes’ to all of them, without having to rely on extra subsidy. Shows that do this successfully can tour for many years.

It’s also worth being conscious of the current financial climate. If your show requires a lot of people on the road then please be aware that hotel rooms in many parts of the country are now costing around £150 per person per night. That’s a major cost for festivals and it may limit the touring potential of your work.

Absolutely no-one wants to put a limit on ambition or creativity, and there will always be a market for good work on a variety of scales. However it pays to always be thinking ‘Is there any way we could do this more efficiently?’. That may also improve your environmental sustainability as well – which is something that’s increasingly important to programmers.

Lastly we’d just like to thank everyone for their interest and for the time that they invest in submitting ideas – we really look forward to receiving your proposals.