Help! I Hate My... Application

Every week, The Art Journal’s resident artworld Agony Aunt Charlotte Jansen answers your questions about access, gatekeeping and sticky social problems.

Have a burning question for her? Get in touch anonymously here.

I’ve applied for five international residencies this year, and I’ve been rejected every time. I feel a residency would provide me with the time and space I really need at this point in my career, but applications are so time-consuming, and it always takes me a while to recover following yet another rejection. Also, the people who often get the residency make such boring work. How do I improve my applications? Where am I going wrong? Can they just smell my desperation?

Five rejections in quick succession is tough. Anyone would find it difficult to recover from that and keep going with further applications. Especially when, on top of that, you feel the work that ‘wins’ isn’t very good, or just looks like kids doodling on cardboard (there’s a lot of that about lately). Everyone has at some point looked at a prize, grant or residency winner and thought: ‘Seriously – that?’

The truth about most selection processes is that panels rarely spend days discussing the work. Being rejected doesn't necessarily mean nobody championed your application. It may simply mean that another candidate fits the shape of that particular residency more immediately. Residencies are also often promotional for a foundation, venue or institution – they have criteria to meet. That's maddening because it isn't a satisfying explanation, I know – but it's more accurate than ‘my work isn't good enough.’

I had an interesting conversation with an artist earlier this week about failure. We both agreed that in our respective creative lives, failure and rejection were an absolute given. He told me that when younger people ask him how he’s managed to achieve what he’s done, he really wants to say: ‘Try twenty-five years of relentless hard work with little reward and no recognition first.’ Even after you’ve done that, what you’re aiming for may have shifted by the time you get there, and you won’t necessarily feel the same satisfaction. I say this not to be pessimistic, but to be realistic about what a creative life is like. There is no sense of resolution or completion. But without questions and uncertainty, it is hard to create anything.

Anyway, forgive my existential tangent. What I want to tell you is: don’t give up. Residencies are certainly peculiar, particular beasts. They can be fantastic and productive and rewarding, so I hear. Practically speaking, if you want to improve your applications, remember that – unlike prizes – residencies don’t always go for the ‘best’ artist. A residency is about creating a temporary support network and ecosystem around a practice, with artists selected partly on potential. They might, for example, be keen on a specific material or medium or a response to a place or environment. Make sure you read and research the brief as thoroughly as you can. This will save you investing more precious time applying for something you were never really suitable for in the first place.

Applications demand different things, too – as you’ll be aware. Make sure your CV is up to date and relevant – strip it back to two pages and tailor it to the demands of each thing you’re applying to. Make sure you also structure your written application or cover note to highlight achievements and parts of your practice that are most relevant to that residency. Don’t be afraid to be honest and vulnerable about your needs. Tell them why you want to do this and how it will benefit you.

Artists often spend years refining their practice and a single torturous afternoon writing about it. Your portfolio might be excellent but your application may be generic. Your proposal might be trying to solve every problem at once. You might be describing what you've already made rather than what you want to explore during the residency. If you have been sending the same application to five different opportunities, the problem may not be your art at all, but how you’re presenting it.

As for whether they can smell your desperation: not exactly. But they can often sense when an application is asking: ‘Please validate me.’ It should be saying: ‘Here is the conversation I want to have with your programme.’ Read your statement aloud. Does it sound like a person speaking or like a grant application? Panels read hundreds of phrases about ‘interrogating liminal spaces’ and ‘challenging dominant narratives’. They are desperate to see something different and unusual. Lean into that. Tell them what genuinely moves and interests you, why this residency is the right place to pursue it and what risks you can’t take anywhere else. Don’t be afraid to personalise it or use a very conversational form of language. So many people now use AI to write applications that reviewers will already have read countless covering letters in the same tone, using the same language and syntax.

Before your next application, ask someone blunt but invested in your success to read it. Not another artist who already knows your work inside out, but someone who can tell you when and where they become confused, bored or unconvinced. Remove every sentence that could be pasted into an application for a completely different opportunity.

You might also keep a spreadsheet of every application you make – not just whether you got in, but what changed each time. Which images led the portfolio? Which proposal did you submit? Who read the draft? Treat applications as part of your practice and development, rather than as an administrative chore that happens after the ‘real’ work is done.

The only thing five rejections prove is that you have applied five times. In the arts, that's really only the beginning.