The driving force behind Music Patron is ‘democratising philanthropy’.
Historically, supporting the arts through patronage has been a privilege that only the very wealthy could afford; a high net worth individual privately sponsoring a composer or artist in order to support their work.
We came across Gertrude, a subscription based website that allows you to ‘rent’ artworks for a small fee, fairly early on in my time at Music Patron. The parallels between them and us were strikingly similar; put simply, exploring a new model that allows anyone and everyone to support artists and create new work.
We were lucky enough to sit down with Will Jarvis, the founder of Gertrude, this week to talk about where they are in their journey and what we could learn from their experiences in order to help us with the launch of Music Patron.
One of the biggest obstacles that Gertrude have had to overcome is introducing a disruptive new model in an industry that has long-standing traditions and expectations of how artists work. The concept of renting an artwork instead of purchasing is a radically new one and convincing potential patrons & artists to get onboard with the platform has been no mean feat. I was particularly interested to learn that through this model, Gertrude have been able to sell multiple artworks to renters who presumably loved the work so much they didn’t wish to part with it; this idea of reaching patrons who stand outside of the usual demographic and them loving the work so much that they take their support to the next level really suggests to me that there many people out there ready to support art, but they just don’t know it yet.
I’m hoping Music Patron can reach people in a similar way to Gertrude. Supporting a composer with a monthly donation of £15 for example, seems like a radically new model in an industry where early career composers are often only supported via commissions. However, disruptive concepts such as Gertrude & Music Patron, I believe, have a huge potential to reach an audience outside of the usual support network and encourage more and more people to support the creation of new work.
If you’d like to learn more about Gertrude, head to their website!