The Knowledge Centre for Patronage Studies aims to spread scientific knowledge on patronage to researchers, students, the cultural sector and policymakers, contributing both to the development of patronage studies and to a more resilient cultural sector and well-considered cultural policy. The knowledge hub therefore provides the following:

• links to open access published research, in close consultation with scholars at Dutch and Flemish universities working on aspects of patronage studies;
• low-threshold scholarly communication in the form of short, accessible blogs on recent research on patronage;
• supporting researchers in their efforts to convert their non-open access publications into open-access publications;
• links to relevant master’s thesis research via thesis repositories of member universities, in consultation with the alumni who wrote the theses;
• more and more fruitful contact and exchange between science and the cultural sector;
• better connection between the knowledge needs of makers and cultural institutions on the one hand, and the design and research questions of scientific research on the other.

Open access sharing of knowledge on patronage in one place is in line with Utrecht University’s transition to Open Science. Utrecht University wants to be at the forefront of this transition. To read more about Utrecht University’s transition to Open Science, click here.