Arts Council guidance is unambiguous on this point: if your CV does not satisfy assessors that you are at an appropriate stage of a professional career, your endorsement application will be unsuccessful, even if your letters and evidence meet the criteria. The CV can sink a strong application on its own. Yet it is the document people spend the least time on, because it feels like something they already have.
Your existing professional CV is almost certainly not the right document. The artistic CV for a Global Talent endorsement application has a specific purpose and a specific reader. This guide explains what that reader is looking for and how to give it to them.
The one question assessors open your CV to answer
When an assessor opens your CV, the first thing they are trying to establish is simple: how many years of professional artistic experience do you have? For Exceptional Talent, they need to see at least five years. For Exceptional Promise, at least three years.
If your CV does not answer that question immediately and clearly, everything else becomes harder. Assessors are not going to piece together your career trajectory from a list of exhibitions with no context. They need to be able to see, at a glance, that you have been a professional practising artist for the required period.
This is why the most important thing you can add to your CV is something most artistic CVs do not have: a dedicated professional experience section that comes before your exhibition list.
The section most artistic CVs are missing
The standard artistic CV is a list of exhibitions, publications, commissions and education, usually in reverse chronological order. That format works for gallery applications and artist statements. It does not work for a Global Talent endorsement application, because it makes assessors do the work of calculating your experience from scattered entries.
Add a section at the top of your CV called something like "Artistic practice" or "Professional artistic experience." In this section, give yourself a professional title (Visual artist, Painter, Sculptor, Dancer, and so on), the dates you have been working professionally (from month and year to present), and three to five bullet points describing your practice: how it developed, what you work on, key milestones in your career, how you work professionally. Think of it the way you would write a job description for a role you have held for several years.
This section does one critical thing: it tells assessors how long you have been a professional artist before they look at a single credit. The exhibition list below then functions as evidence of that career, not as the sole definition of it.
They count your credits themselves, stating years is not enough
This is the part most people do not realise until they see a rejection proforma. Adding a professional experience section that says "practising visual artist since 2022" is important, but assessors do not take that statement at face value. They go through your credits independently and count only the ones they can verify as eligible professional artistic engagements.
A real rejection proforma from Arts Council read as follows: "the CV does not demonstrate substantial experience over three years. Only verified exhibition, performance and professional artistic credits have been considered. Credits relating to graduation, career start statements, development work, and non-artistic activities such as teaching, community development and similar have not been considered as they do not constitute eligible professional artistic credits."
What this means in practice: if you have credits across three years but a significant portion of those credits are development work, teaching, community projects or anything adjacent to your professional artistic practice rather than the practice itself, the assessors will strip those out. The remaining eligible credits might only span one or two years, and you will be rejected on track record even though your CV appeared to cover the full period.
The implication is important: you need genuine, verifiable professional artistic engagements distributed across the required period, not just a claim of years. Check your own CV with this filter in mind before you submit. Count only the credits that are unambiguously professional, independent artistic engagements. If those credits cluster in one year and thin out in the others, that is what assessors will see.
Dates: why months matter, not just years
The Arts Council guidance specifically requires "specific dates, including the year, for each engagement." In practice, this means month and year for every entry, not just the year.
This matters because assessors calculate timelines. If you list "2023" for an exhibition and "2025" for another, they cannot tell whether those are months apart or nearly two years apart. Assessors reviewing proformas have been observed counting eligible credits year by year, noting exactly how many credits appear in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and "2023" with no month gives them nothing to work with if the dates cluster close together.
Every entry in your CV should have a month and year. No exceptions. If you genuinely do not remember the month for something from ten years ago, use the season or quarter. But for anything in the last five years, which is the period assessors are most focused on, month and year is essential.
Professional work and student work: keep them completely separate
Arts Council assessors only count verified professional credits. Work created as part of a degree, masters or PhD, including graduate showcases, end-of-year shows and student projects, does not count toward your professional track record. The same applies to amateur practice, community work and unpaid participation that is not part of a professional engagement.
The most common mistake is mixing student and professional credits in the same list, often because they are both exhibitions and they happen chronologically close together. Assessors will separate them, and if the professional credits alone do not cover the required period, you will not meet the track record requirement even if the total list looks substantial.
Keep a clear separation in the CV itself. If you finished a degree or postgraduate course recently, add a note in your professional experience section explicitly distinguishing when your professional practice began from when your studies ended. The Arts Council guidance note on this is clear: professional practice started in, say, 2018 excludes the one-year MA you completed in 2021. State that explicitly in the CV so assessors do not have to calculate it themselves.
Teaching and other roles: these go at the bottom
Many artists also teach, lecture, run workshops or hold arts administration roles. These activities are not ineligible, but they are not what the assessment is about. Assessors are trying to establish you as a professional practising artist, not as an arts educator or administrator.
If you include teaching or administrative work in your CV, keep it in a clearly separate section at the end, labelled "Teaching experience" or "Other roles." Never mix it into your artistic practice section or your exhibition list. If your artistic career section shows strong professional practice, adding teaching at the end is fine and gives a rounded picture. If teaching appears alongside or before your artistic credits, it muddies the picture and can make assessors question what your primary practice actually is.
Work in adjacent roles, even for arts organisations, should be treated the same way. If you work in an arts organisation in an administrative or collections role while also maintaining an artistic practice, the administrative work goes in a separate section at the end and your artistic practice sits at the top.
What to include beyond exhibitions
Your CV for a Global Talent endorsement application should include everything you are presenting as evidence, cross-referenced clearly. If you are submitting a piece of media recognition as an evidence document, include that outlet and that review in your CV's media recognition section, with the full URL. If you have an award you are presenting as evidence, include it in an awards section of the CV.
This matters for two reasons. First, it gives assessors a complete picture of your career in one document. Second, it allows them to cross-check quickly between your CV and your evidence without having to hunt for references.
Do not use hyperlinks. Include the full URL written out in full. Assessors need to be able to see the link directly, not click through a hyperlink that may or may not work in a PDF review context.
Also include links to your website and any public-facing profiles where your work can be seen. The guidance specifically asks for this, it gives assessors a way to verify your practice beyond the documents you have submitted.
What assessors flag and discount
From rejection proformas and portfolio reviews, these are the consistent patterns that get discounted or flagged:
- Bullet points without context: entries that say "Exhibition, London, 2024" with no venue, no context and no indication of what the work was or how you were selected. If there is no footprint online and no context in the CV, an assessor cannot verify it and is unlikely to count it.
- Healthcare, public development or community work listed as professional credits: work created for a healthcare setting, a community programme or a public development project is often not counted as a professional artistic credit, even when it is paid commissioned work. If you have done this kind of work, it needs careful framing, describing your role as a commissioned artist and separating it from any administrative or therapeutic dimension.
- Open calls and competitions framed as professional engagements: listing an open-call exhibition without context about how you were selected or what your role was can raise questions. This is more of an issue in the evidence documents, but if every entry in your exhibitions list is an open-call submission, it creates a pattern.
- Too many bullet points per entry: long lists of activities within a single role can include things that do not count (research, development, preparation work) alongside things that do. Keep the bullet points to verifiable professional outputs and engagements, not process.
- Social media and online-only exhibitions listed as appearances: these belong in the evidence documents only if they are being used as proof of appearances, and even then they are the weakest category. Do not let them take up prominent space in the CV.
Format and length
The Arts Council guidance says the CV has no size limit but asks you to condense it as much as possible. In practice, two to three pages is the right length for most applicants. A longer CV is not a stronger CV, and assessors reviewing large volumes of applications will skim anything that is not clearly structured.
A link or screenshot of an online CV, bio or LinkedIn profile is explicitly not acceptable. The CV must be a document you submit, not a link to one.
Use a clean, readable format. Chronological order within each section, most recent first. Consistent date formatting. Clear section headings. The CV needs to be immediately readable by someone who does not know your career.
CV checklist before you submit
- You have a dedicated professional artistic experience section that appears before your exhibition list
- That section clearly states when your professional practice began and gives a picture of your career in bullet points
- Every entry has a month and year, not just a year
- Student work and professional work are clearly separated throughout
- Teaching, lecturing or administrative roles are in a separate section at the end
- Media recognition and awards that you are presenting as evidence are also listed in the CV with full URLs
- Your website link and any public profile links are included
- All URLs are written out in full, not as hyperlinks
- The CV is a submitted document, not a link to an online profile or LinkedIn
Official guidance
The Arts Council's CV requirements are published in full at: Arts Council: Applicant CVs and Resumés. Read it alongside this guide, as requirements can be updated.