Creative West Launches Unified Platform Expanding Access to Opportunities Across the Creative Sector

Today, U.S. Regional Arts Organization Creative West reveals a new tool for discovering, managing, and applying to opportunities, incorporating significant enhancements to its full suite of technology tools. Creative West’s new opportunities portal is a single platform that connects artists, arts organizations, and opportunity providers. It reduces the effort of finding opportunities across multiple platforms by consolidating art fairs and festivals, exhibitions, competitions, grants, public art calls and more into a single experience.

The portal creates a more efficient, transparent, and connected arts ecosystem by simplifying how artists find and apply for opportunities and by expanding organizations’ audience reach. The portal makes Creative West’s existing tools (CaFÉ™, ZAPP®, and GO Smart™) accessible on a single platform and also includes a significant enhancement to Creative West’s CaFÉ system, used by more than 800 arts organizations and nearly 200,000 artists across the country.

“For decades, Creative West has built technology as another way to serve the creative sector,” said Christian Gaines, President & CEO of Creative West. “By bringing together resources, networks, and tools into a single, streamlined experience, we are helping to strengthen the infrastructure that supports artists’ careers, stimulates organizational growth, and deepens community impact.” Paul Nguyen, Creative West Director of Technology added: “spending less time finding opportunities means more time making art and amplifying the voices of our communities.”

Creative West has dedicated more than 50 years to uplifting and strengthening the cultural infrastructure and artistic practices of the West, ensuring that every community can meaningfully participate in the vast creativity of the region. One way it fulfills its mission is by developing and refining innovative technology tools that support creatives’ livelihoods and build artists’ and arts organizations’ capacity to impact communities nationwide—advancing their creative practice and amplifying their impact. With nearly 30 years of experience in technology solutions for the arts, Creative West continues to innovate its suite of tools to support the crucial work of creatives nationwide and is eager to share the new Opportunities Portal with the field.