The past year has been a whirlwind; following my summer experiences as a member of the Glyndebourne Academy, I moved to a small German town where I’ve been doing more and more singing. When I came out as trans* and started testosterone I let go of my expectations of being a regularly working singer, but here we are! This season I’ve done a decent amount of chorus work, and also debuted as an astonishingly well-casted Wenzel in ‘Die verkaufte Braut’ with the Brandenburgisches Konzertorchester (a professional group performing in a gorgeous medieval ruin just outside Berlin). I’ve continued to do a range of auditions whilst refining my repertoire and developing my technical abilities. The more work I get, the more I want. I’m now sufficiently confident about my vocal abilities and can really go for the roles I want; I know that I have good things to offer to any new projects that come my way.
One thing that was missing though was doing the activism I wanted to be doing. Doing face-to-face activism is important to me. I continue to open conversations, answer questions, reply to personal emails and address the myriad of misunderstandings and fears about trans* life as a matter of course, no matter how exhausted I am, or how difficult the questions. But I’ve not been writing articles or making videos because these activities are just too time consuming to combine with my money earning jobs of opera singing and language teaching. Yet these are the things that friends, acquaintances, and the interweb generally keep asking me for. Just when I start to relax and think, “Ah, no one really watches those things anyway,” I’ll check my accounts and there will be more views, wider engagement, deeper questions, more specific requests, confused comments, etc. Basically, people looking to me for answers and support that I so desperately want to provide but just don’t currently have the capacity for.
This is why I am opening a Patreon profile. I have activism that I want to do, and I have followers and friends who want me to do it. So I am opening a channel for people to contribute money which will allow me to free up time to create this content and engage with people on these topics.
If you haven’t heard of it, let me explain how it works:
With Patreon, a person offers a product of some kind (for me this means articles, videos, and similar content) and people become patrons of this person directly. They pledge this person a set amount of money each month to support what this person creates. This can start at 1€, with the sky being the limit. The artist creates rewards, and the patron receives a choice of special privileges.
Historically, patronage has made a massive contribution (both literally and figuratively) to art and politics. I don’t believe this is any different nowadays. The platform for patronage has simply transformed into things like Patreon, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc.
What I want to create is more content relating to activism and singing, and to nurture a virtual space for questions, discussion, and communication about trans*ness and singing. To do this, and to grow and develop as an artist and an activist I want to give supporters a concrete platform for giving me financial support.
What will you get? My main priority is to be able to make the articles and videos freely available, so that everyone can benefit from this, the contributions are primarily to help make this possible. That said, patrons receive extra rewards as a thank you for their support. Some options are; patron-only content, access to community forums and events, name in the credits of my videos, monthly online topic centered discussions, and individual Skype sessions with yours truly. I think these are pretty rad rewards, but if you have other ideas about perks that you’d like, I’m all ears!
Interested in becoming a patron? SAVE THE DATE: on Tuesday, July 24th I’ll officially be launching my Patreon page, and I invite you to become my patron. You’ll receive exclusive content through the Patreon platform, your name in the credits of my videos, monthly group discussions on topics of my patrons choosing, and an individual Skype session, according to contribution.
Still have questions? Ask me! The point of my Patreon is to connect with you, answer your questions, and start discussions on topics we’re both interested in!
I’ll email this to family and friends.
It sounds more specific and geared toward what you really want to use your precious time for, which is an excellent idea.
oxo