So we’re publishing the numbers this sector almost never publishes
Over the past year I have heard the same sentence from too many people. Not always in the same words, but close enough to recognise the pattern.
Artists who once had a plan for the next five years now say they simply cannot face it. That they are tired of application forms. That it is easier not to apply than to receive another letter beginning “thank you for your interest”. Some said it outright: I am thinking of stopping. Others said nothing at all, but stopped making new bodies of work.
Administration in this line of work is not a side task. It does not happen alongside studio time, it happens instead of it. A week that goes into one application is a week that did not go into the work. And when the application fails, that registers somewhere too. A few of those letters in a row and the appetite for making goes quiet. At that point it is no longer a question of time management but of motivation, and motivation, unlike a schedule, cannot be fixed with a calendar.
Mid-September is when the forms arrive. Europa Nostra opened the 2027 call for nominations to its Creative Europe–supported 7 Most Endangered programme on 10 September, closing 23 October, open to heritage organisations across Europe. Our own ministry opened its 2027 public call on 9 September, closing 9 October. One day apart at one end, two weeks at the other, and nobody planned it that way.
Every country has its own version of this month, and in every one of them a great many people will sit down in front of a form that eats a week — most of whom, statistically, will not get through.
I cannot fix the sector. I can put the numbers on the table.
Success rates in the cultural sector are almost never published, and I think there has been quite enough taboo around this.
Our numbers
Pants down, then.
Between July 2025 and July 2026 we prepared 43 applications. Of the 20 that have been decided, 14 were accepted. At least €27,500 was secured for our clients.
So: 14 of 20. The rest of this piece explains how we arrived at that figure, because a ratio without a methodology teaches nobody anything.
Five decisions we had to make
Why a ratio, and not only a percentage.
A percentage implies a precision this sample does not have. “70%” sounds abstract. A ratio invites arithmetic: 14 of 20 is checkable, and you can see at once that the sample is small and that a single application moves the figure by five percentage points. That is more honest towards you than a rounded number nobody can take apart. So the ratio always travels with the percentage, and with the period it covers.
Twenty-three applications are still pending.
Counted as losses, the rate is 33%. Counted as wins, 86%. Both figures can be calculated and both are indefensible, so they are excluded from the calculation. A pending application is not data, it is a postponement.
One application succeeded and the money went unused.
The results were published late, owing to administrative complications on the side of the body that issued the call. By the time the funds arrived the project was no longer current. The application succeeded regardless, and that is how it is counted. We applied to the same call in the following round with a related project, and that result is still pending.
One institution accepted a proposal and then cancelled its entire exhibition programme after a change of staff.
That counts as a success too. Our document did what it was meant to do: it passed assessment and secured a slot. Everything that happened afterwards was beyond the reach of any text.
Five successful applications have no confirmed figure.
Which is why €27,500 is a floor and not a ceiling. The real sum is higher, but we cannot document it, so we do not write it.
Why set all this out? So that you know some things are outside your control while others are not, and that telling the two apart is most of the skill. Sometimes you will write an excellent project, meet every criterion, prepare a reasonable budget, assemble excellent partners, and then something nobody could have foreseen arrives and the application falls. That is part of this work and it has to be carried, and learned from (every application of ours that failed taught us something).
What you can do is design a good project and learn to present it just as well to the bodies — and the people — who decide on funding.
Why the sector stays quiet about failure
The reason is not modesty but discomfort. Publishing a success rate means admitting rejections, and nobody likes to say that out loud. Not artists, not institutions. An artist does not announce that an application failed. An institution does not announce how many applications it submitted before one succeeded. So we all look more successful to one another than we are, and everyone quietly suspects they are the only one struggling.
When the rejection arrives, the first reflex is the panel. Bias, connections, someone had it arranged in advance. In one of our cases that was, as far as I was able to establish, exactly what happened. In the rest it almost certainly was not.
What the review of our own rejected applications showed was far less dramatic. We were not the best fit for that call. The project was good, but not for that competition. The budget was not realistic enough, or we were not objective enough about it. That is harder to admit than possible bias on a panel, or the terms of the call, or any of the other factors outside our control, and it is also the only one of them that can be corrected next time.
I wrote above that some things are outside your control. They are. But “outside my control” is also a very comfortable place and a convenient excuse. It is easy to settle in there and stay convinced that there was nothing we could have done or improved.
The second reason for the silence is technical. Publishing a success rate means defining in advance what counts, and most would rather not.
The questions are awkward. If you read the call and sent your client a message about the deadline, did you take part in the application? If you sat on an assessment panel three years ago and therefore know how these texts are read?
We defined it narrowly. An application counts only where we produced written material that went into the submitted application (concept, project description, biography, artist portfolio, budget) and consulted actively throughout the writing and submission. The definition is deliberately strict, because every broader definition moves the figure upward, and we would rather the figure be accurate.
To the artists, associations, galleries and cultural institutions thinking about stopping: the problem is almost never the work. The problem is the document, and the document is the one part of this job that can be delegated.
Here is what we do, how we do it, and what it costs.
This piece is part of a series on the blog and on social media about how applications are actually written, where they most often go wrong, and what the process looks like from the inside. The series leads to a webinar whose date we announce shortly. Subscribers hear first. You can subscribe to our newsletter here.