Call for Artist Submissions: Visual Art
Supercrawl is pleased to release its Call for Artists for 2025. Supercrawl is a free annual outdoor art and music festival in downtown Hamilton, showcasing a diverse and dynamic lineup of music, art, fashion, performance, talks, crafts, food and fun. In 2023, Supercrawl covered 22 city blocks and attracted more than 285,000 visitors over the course of the weekend. Supercrawl 2025 will take place on James Street North from Sept 12–14, 2025.
What Are We Looking For?
Every year, Supercrawl issues a call for visual art proposals that create creative, compelling and unique environments and experiences for festival-goers. Projects by local, regional, national and international artists are selected based on artistic merit, originality, and ability to integrate within the festival’s scale, spirit and energy.
The goal of the festival organizers is to select contemporary visual art pieces that will enhance the overall Supercrawl experience. Festival organizers invite artists working in a wide range of creative disciplines to propose works for installation as part of this year’s event.
We welcome submissions from artists of all backgrounds, including but not limited to Indigenous, Black, people of colour, 2SLGBTQIA+, women, people with disabilities, and members of equity-seeking communities and those who have not had public art opportunities.
Areas of Interest
The Committee is interested in seeking proposals in the following areas:
– Installation art
– Sculpture
– Public interventions
In addition, the Committee welcomes proposals that can be installed within the following contexts:
– Mural frame (approx. 21′ wide x 25′ high) on south facade of 118 James St. N.
– Mural frame (approx. 20′ wide x 18′ high) on south facade of 91 James St. N.
Criteria
Proposals must consider public safety and visibility, and works must be able to be safely performed or executed outdoors with large crowds present at all hours and weather conditions, and should remain impactful during both the daytime and night-time hours of the festival. Audiences are estimated at approximately 90,000 people per day.
• Artists working collaboratively is permitted. (Collaborative implies that more than one artist has worked on the piece being submitted.) Please choose ONE artist’s contact information for communication purposes.
• Work must be original, current and completed within the past ten (10) years.
• Content wholly created by artificial intelligence and machine learning applications/software will not be considered. This includes the use of tools such as Artbreeder, CrAIyon, Dall-E, Imagen, Midjourney, NightCafe, Parti, Stable Diffusion, Wombo and so on, fractal generators, and image manipulation websites that leverage machine learning derived from training on vast datasets containing copyrighted artworks, scraping image databases at global scale and imitating the work of other creators. Artists must be prepared to document process and provenance if requested to do so.
• Artists are responsible for ensuring that there are no copyright issues or other legal issues attached to images used or the subjects of their commission.
Fees & Resources
Each project selected will be allocated an artist’s fee in line with CARFAC fee schedules (typically $500-$1,000 range), in addition to the project proposal’s material and production budget. Costs such as travel and accommodation, where necessary, may be covered and will be addressed on an individual basis. Production assistance may also be available.
Supercrawl will also be assigning significant resources to promotion of the event and selected artists leading up to the festival, and during the event. The festival will provide schedule signage, produce posters and handbills, and include programming details both in printed materials and on the Supercrawl website.
Dates & Location
Works will be featured throughout the festival weekend (Sept 12–14, 2025) in Supercrawl’s festival corridor, located along James Street North between King Street and Murray Street. (Art installations will principally be sited between Cannon and Robert.)
CLICK HERE FOR SUBMISSION FORM
Submission Package Elements
• Contact Information (email & phone number)
• Artist’s Location (city, province/state, country)
• Brief Biography
• Brief Description of Artistic Practice
• Notable Exhibitions
• Artist Website
• Artist’s Social Media Accounts (if applicable)
Supercrawl is open to creatively diverse work that has large-scale visual impact and responds to the streetscape of the event. Artists and their work will be identified and publicized during the event, on the Supercrawl website and in select media releases. Artists will be required to sign a contract with Supercrawl Productions Inc.
CLICK HERE FOR SUBMISSION FORM
Deadline for submissions: Friday, February 28, 2025 at 11:59pm ET. Late submissions will not be considered.
We thank all applicants, but due to a high number of applications, only those selected by the committee will be contacted. Successful applicants will be contacted in March 2025.
Artists are encouraged to contact festival staff to receive clarification and/or additional information as needed to develop proposals.
Top: Dean Drever, Bear Hunt, at Supercrawl 2014. Bottom: José Luis Torres, Overflows, at Supercrawl 2016
