Our philosophy with Music Patron is one of continuous learning, iteration and refinement. Rather than plunging straight in and launching the full platform, we believe we stand a much better chance of success if we start small, experiment and learn from observing real behaviour. With that in mind our first milestone is to launch a beta site in Spring 2022. This will involve real composers and real patrons, but is very definitely not the final version of Music Patron.
With that in mind, and because we need composers who can go with us on this development journey, we decided that we needed to select the composers for the first cohort, rather than open it up to application. We, along with a few key industry partners, curated a list of composers whom we invited to take part. We based our selection on criteria such as evidence of successful digital engagement, interest in new ways of engagement, flexibility and willingness to invest time and effort. You can read the full set of criteria we used for recruiting the first cohort below; for future cohorts these criteria may change depending on what we learn through the beta phase.
Music Patron Composer Criteria
It was also vital to us that the first cohort represent a diverse range of backgrounds, music styles, and career stages. The core issue that Music Patron aims to address is that composers at all stages of their career face challenges in being able to spend time actually creating new work. We are hugely excited to be working with the 10 composers we chose to join our first cohort, who can each bring different ideas to help us test and develop the platform. We want the future Music Patron site to be a platform which showcases the breadth of diverse talent in the UK, for composers to connect to patrons wishing to support their lives and work.
We wish to stress that in future, we want to recruit composers via an open call and application process that will adhere to Sound and Music’s Fair Access Principles. Once Music Patron is fully developed, our plan is to have regular composer recruitment, e.g. adding a new cohort of 10 composers every 6 months.
If you’d like to register your interest to be a composer in future cohorts, please fill out this form to be notified of when we’ll be accepting applications.