If you run a residency, you already know the quiet anxiety of the application season: Will the right artists find us? Is our open call reaching beyond our existing network? Are we spending money on submission software that treats us — and our applicants — like a transaction? Rate My Artist Residency was built to answer all three, and the entry point costs nothing.
Here's the honest pitch.
Artists are already here, searching for exactly what you offer
RMAR exists because artists needed a single place to discover residencies, compare them honestly, and track deadlines. That means the people browsing this platform are not a general audience — they're artists in active application mode, filtering by discipline, location, cost, funding, application mode, and fit. Listing your program puts it directly in that search, alongside the most respected residencies in the world, at the moment an artist is deciding where to apply.
Posting an open call is free. For small and emerging programs, this matters enormously: the established submission platforms price out exactly the programs that most need visibility. We built the free tier as a deliberate wedge — because a field where only the well-funded can afford to be found is a poorer field for everyone.
You get real tools, not just a listing
A listing is the beginning. Programs on RMAR can:
- Post open calls with deadlines, sessions, fees, and spots — surfaced in a feed sorted by urgency so artists don't miss them.
- Receive applications through a portal designed around the artist's portable, artist-owned profile — which means better-prepared applicants and less repetitive data entry for everyone.
- Run committee review with reviewer invites, per-application scoring and comments, and a status pipeline from submitted through accepted, waitlisted, or rejected.
- Manage the listing lifecycle — duplicate a past call, extend a deadline, close or reopen a cycle — without engineering or expense.
These are the capabilities programs typically pay per-applicant for. On RMAR they're part of the platform.
Reviews are not a threat. They're your best marketing.
Some program directors hear "ratings and reviews" and tense up. Understandable — but consider what reviews actually do. Artists already talk to each other about which residencies are generous and which are disappointing; that conversation has always existed, in studios and group chats and whispered warnings. RMAR just makes it visible and accountable.
For a program that gets the fundamentals right — honest open calls, kept timelines, real hospitality, no hidden fees — reviews are the most credible marketing imaginable, because they can't be bought or faked. The transparency score on your listing (verified status, year founded, artists hosted, last updated, review count) is a chance to demonstrate trustworthiness rather than just assert it. The programs with something to fear from transparency are the ones artists were already warning each other about. Everyone else gains.
Your applicants get a better experience too
This cuts both ways, which is the point. When an artist applies through RMAR, their statement, CV, and portfolio travel with them — artist-owned and portable, never locked inside one program's silo. That philosophy (the opposite of the platforms that hoard applicant data) tends to attract artists who are organized, serious, and respectful of the process. Better applicant experience produces better applicants.
The bigger idea
We think the residency world deserves shared infrastructure that's built for artists first and programs second — but genuinely good for both. No one has owned this honestly: directories without accountability, submission tools without discovery, wikis without community. RMAR is the attempt to do all of it in one place, artist-first, with programs as full partners rather than just customers.
You don't have to take the whole vision on faith. You can start with the free thing: list your residency, post an open call, and see who finds you. If it works — and we've built it so it should — you'll wonder why discovery, applications, and reputation were ever three separate, expensive problems.
Listing and open calls are free for programs. Add your residency to RMAR today, or explore the program dashboard to see the tools.