For organisations
Patronage is a public art consultant and commissioning service for organisations across Aotearoa.
We start with something you already have, like a hoarding, a utility box, an empty shopfront or a new neighbourhood, and work out what art can do there. Then we find the New Zealand artist who best fits the brief, the place and your team, and commission them to do it.
For arts organisations, art societies, councils and community groups running open calls, residencies and commissions, our open call tools manage the application process from brief to delivery.
Work with us
A creative audit of your project, consent and design documents. We map what's funded, what's required and where art can create value across a masterplan or programme.
Learn more →02Commission a New Zealand artist to design artwork for your hoarding. Softens site impact, reduces graffiti, and gives the street something worth seeing while you build.
Learn more →03Commissioned artwork with an anti-graffiti coating turns a maintenance problem into a streetscape asset. We run programmes from ten boxes to hundreds.
Learn more →04Artist-designed window vinyl with a QR code to the live listing. Makes empty tenancies easier to lease and better for the street.
Learn more →05Open, fair commissioning for bus shelters, laneways, utility boxes and town centre surfaces. Clear briefs, visible budgets, complete artist records.
Learn more →06Commission New Zealand artists for lobbies, restaurants and arrival spaces, or bring an artist inside your organisation for a six-month residency.
Learn more →Why Patronage
Art shouldn’t be decoration added at the end. Done well, it adds to what a project is trying to be: its values, its amenity, how it’s positioned, and how it feels to the people who live in it, work in it or walk past it every day.
Before anyone talks about murals or sculpture, we ask what the place needs: who uses it, what it should say and how it should feel. The brief comes from your project's goals, so the art serves them.
Every brief goes out as an open call. You shortlist from complete career records, portfolios, exhibition history and past commissions, not just who a consultant happens to know.
Our fees are structured so most of the budget reaches the artist. Every commission records what was paid and to whom.
Every project is documented through the platform, from the brief and selection rationale to the finished work, ready for ESG, community and board reporting.
Recent work
Commissioning · Bridge Housing Charitable Trust
An open call for artists to paint an 11m² utility box at Peake Mews in Cambridge, Waikato, for the residents and children who live around it. A $3,000 all-inclusive artist fee, a box template and a brief, with applications run through Patronage and the artist selected by the trust.
Art strategy · An electricity distribution business
A programme aimed at the highest-traffic corners of its street-level assets: artist fees set by panel size, an anti-graffiti coating treated as asset management, QR plates for condition reporting, and optional artist print sales. Proposal under review.
Open calls · For arts organisations, art societies, councils and community groups
An open call is how you run an opportunity on Patronage. Manage applications, artists and project information in one place, instead of forms, spreadsheets and email chains.
Artists apply with their profile, CV and work attached. Add your own questions.
Shortlist, score and select as a panel, on a board or in a table.
Staged messages to selected and unsuccessful applicants.
Collect production files from selected artists, with secure download links.
Six- and twelve-month follow-ups, exportable for your board.
List an opportunity
Free
Your opportunity in the listings, search and the weekly email to artists, with applications going wherever you already take them. Reviewed within two business days.
Open call: run applications through Patronage
Free first round
then $200 NZD per round, plus card fee
Everything in a listing, plus applications, panel review, notifications, file delivery and follow-up reporting.
Talk to Blake
A site, a programme, a budget, or just a question about whether art belongs there. Blake is an architectural designer, artist and public art consultant based in Aotearoa, and replies within two business days.
Blake’s profile