Ever had an idea for a project you thought could never be made?
The Artangel Open is back. Over two decades, through a number of open calls, Artangel has invited UK-based artists to share ambitious, unstoppable ideas for art about, in or for an unusual place.
This year, the invitation was extended to artists working anywhere and in any medium to propose their boldest idea that can be realised in the UK, internationally or online.
Submissions closed at midnight on 31 March 2025.
A timeline with next steps and more information about the panel can be found here.
Read more about past open call commissions below.
Previous Years
Artangel Everywhere
Our first international open call, Artangel Everywhere, launched 1 March 2017. For the first time, we invited people to submit their most ambitious idea for a project that could be experienced all over the world.
Selected Artist
Evan Roth was awarded the commission for his project Red Lines (2018), a network of video landscapes streamed free to homes and workplaces around the globe.
Judging Panel
The panel included artist and writer James Bridle, journalist Jemima Kiss, Artangel's Co-Directors James Lingwood and Michael Morris and Artangel's Head of Digital Charmian Griffin.
Submissions
Closing 30 April 2017, this open call received 530 submissions.
Selected Artists
Adrian Jackson and Andrea Luka Zimmerman, in collaboration, and Maria Fusco were awarded the 2014 round of commissions.
Here for Life is a feature film marking the culmination of a long collaboration between film-maker Andrea Luka Zimmerman and theatre-maker Adrian Jackson, a group of Londoners, and a dog. It was previewed outdoors in June 2019 at Nomadic Community Gardens where much of the footage was shot, before its UK and Ireland general release, on 22 November 2019.
Edinburgh-based writer Maria Fusco’s work Master Rock was a performance deep inside a mountain in Scotland, recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2015.
Judging Panel
The panel included previously-commissioned artists Clio Barnard and Roger Hiorns, Radio 4 Arts Commissioning Editor Tony Phillips, and Artangel Co-Directors James Lingwood and Michael Morris.
Submissions
Closing 28 February 2014, this open call received over 700 ideas. The 2014 longlist is a selection of the best of these submissions.
Partners
This was the second year of a partnership between Artangel and BBC Radio 4. Diversity Art Forum also continued to support the mentoring programme.
Selected Artists
The artists Katrina Palmer and Ben Rivers were awarded the 2013 commissions.
The resultant projects were Palmer's End Matter (2015), an excavation of the Isle of Portland off the south coast of England, a place shaped and hollowed out over centuries by convicts and quarrymen to provide stone for some of London’s best-known buildings, and Rivers’s installation The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers at what used to be the BBC's studios in White City, and his feature-length film THE SKY TREMBLES AND THE EARTH IS AFRAID AND THE TWO EYES ARE NOT BROTHERS.
Judging Panel
The panel included previously-commissioned artists Clio Barnard and Roger Hiorns, Radio 4 Arts Commissioning Editor Tony Phillips, and Artangel Co-Directors James Lingwood and Michael Morris.
Submissions
Closing 29 April 2013, this open call received over 1500 ideas. The 2013 longlist is a selection of the best of these submissions.
Partners
In 2013, Open was relaunched as a new £1 million initiative from Artangel and BBC Radio 4. To mark this alliance, five artists – Christian Marclay, Ruth Ewan, Peter Strickland, Susan Hiller and Mark Wallinger – created a series of Open Air broadcasts, short pieces aired immediately after the Today programme from 25 – 29 March 2013. Diversity Art Forum also enabled all short-listed artists to select and meet with mentors to develop their ideas.
Selected Artists
Clio Barnard, Ruth Ewan, Roger Hiorns and Alan Kane were selected in Artangel's second open call for ideas in 2006.
Clio Barnard’s The Arbor is a multi-award-winning documentary film telling the story of the Bradford-born playwright Andrea Dunbar. Over one hundred buskers in London slipped Ballad of Accounting by Ewan MacColl into their performance repertoire during Ruth Ewan's Did You Kiss the Foot That Kicked You?. Roger Hiorns’s Seizure occupied a council flat in Elephant & Castle, London with a crystal growth, the result of 75,000 litres of copper sulphate. The nation learned to draw through televised life-drawing classes led by famous artists as part of Alan Kane's project Life Class: Today’s Nude.
Judging Panel
The panel included previously-commissioned artists Jeremy Deller and Shirin Neshat, theatre director Emma Rice, and Artangel Co-Directors James Lingwood and Michael Morris.
Submissions
This call, closing 6 October 2006, drew over 800 proposals for public art projects due for completion between 2008 and 2010.
Partners
2006 saw the launch of a £1-million initiative between Artangel and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, in association with Channel 4 and Arts Council England. The inclusion of Channel 4 broadened the potential reach and impact of the commissioned projects through specific programmes for broadcast television.
Selected Artists
The original open call was made in 1999 and the selected artists were Jeremy Deller and Michael Landy.
Both projects were realised in 2001. The Battle of Orgreave was Jeremy Deller’s re-enactment of a pivotal battle from the 1980s miners strikes in Yorkshire and Break Down was Michael Landy’s systematic, public destruction of every single thing he owned on Oxford Street, London.
Judging Panel
The panel included previously-commissioned artists Brian Eno and Rachel Whiteread, art historian Richard Cork and Artangel Co-Directors James Lingwood and Michael Morris.
