HOLDING: Supporters Programme

Metroland Cultures is a studio and arts organisation based in a former health centre behind Kilburn Market, North West London. We bring the legacy of care from that space into everything we do. Our mission is to build, share and support art and culture in our neighbourhood. 

We’re working to build a new model for supporting artists,one that starts in Kilburn but extends beyond it. Our aim is to create a blueprint for the wider sector: a model rooted not in extractive economies or commercial value, but in collaboration, trust, and accountability. We want to mobilise change across London, the UK, and internationally, taking seriously the question of how we support artists and commission outside the art market.

To do this, we need to build a community, not just of funders, but of thinkers, writers, organisers, and advocates. People who want to do more than financially support artists. People ready to work alongside them, and be led by them, to redefine what support and philanthropy could look like in a time of social and cultural transformation.

Why Support Us

Finding a new financial model for artist-led work isn’t easy. We don’t want to use our building to charge artists simply so the organisation can survive—that would undo the very change we’re working toward.

That’s why we’re building a different kind of support system. To truly reimagine what it means to back artists in community, we need people who are ready to stand with us, take risks with us, and help shape a future that offers more than survival.

Introducing Holding — our supporters scheme

Holding is an invitation: to be part of an arts organisation that centres community, care, and cultural equity. As a supporter, you help us hold space – for artists, for neighbours, for new ways of working that don’t extract from communities, but grow with them.

Your support enables us to:

• Provide free studios and resources to marginalised and working class artists and groups
• Support artist practices rooted in relationship building, not extraction or transaction.
• Create space for collaborative research, reflection, and community resistance
• Offer a year-round programme of public events, workshops and exhibitions
• Build and protect cultural infrastructure for the long term
• Develop new approaches to artist support that can influence the wider sector
• Together, we’re affirming what it means to support artists in their communities – and what it means to hold culture, with care.

Supporter Levels

As a small-scale organisation, your support, at any level, has a big impact on resourcing our work with others. Whether you can give a little or a lot, we warmly welcome you into our community of care.

We want to ensure that anybody who believes in our work can support us – we have a simple donate button on our website for one off donations and alongside this we have created 3 different levels to the scheme for those that want to align more closely with our work.

Standing – An annual donation of £200 per year or £16.66 by monthly direct debit

Take your first step with us. This level helps keep our doors open and our work visible, from community newsletters to artist open studios. It’s about standing with us as we reimagine what culture can be.

Benefits include:
– Invitations to events with artists and annual programme announcements
– Named acknowledgement on Metroland Cultures website.

Stewarding – An annual donation of £900 or £75 per month by monthly direct debit

Support our core programme, from free studio space and local commissions to workshops, artist bursaries, and free public events.

Benefits include:
– Invitations to events with artists and annual programme announcements
– Named acknowledgement on Metroland Cultures website
– Invitations to two studio lunches a year with artists in the community.
– Breakfast Preview of our annual open studios and meet and greet with the artists.

Holding – An annual donation of £2,500 and above

Invest in our long-term vision through a bespoke partnership. This could contribute to a permanent home, bold collaborations, and new models for cultural support. Supporters at this level are invited into deeper dialogue with us and our artists, joining gatherings and conversations that help shape the future of philanthropy, equity, and artist-led cultural work.

Benefits include:
– Access to an intimate group of key supporters and friends with close involvement in all of the organisation’s activities
– Named acknowledgement on Metroland Cultures website and all relevant communications.
– Invitations to Metroland events 
– Invitations to all our studio lunches with artists in the community.
– Breakfast Preview of our annual open studios and meet and greet with the artists.

Interested to talk more?

If you’d like to talk more about our work, we’d love to hear from you, meet you for a coffee, show you around Metroland, and hear more about what you do. Let’s explore how we might work together to support artists, communities, and cultural change.

Please get in touch with Lois Stonock, Founder & Director of Metroland Cultures.

Download our HOLDING: supporters scheme booklet

Our Commitment

Every year since our inception, we have committed to learning and becoming better for the community we serve. Now, as we face the most difficult financial period in our history, we do so at a moment when we have never been more connected to the people, groups, and neighbourhoods that shape our work.

We’ve built support systems, deepened relationships, and honed a model of stewardship that centres care, collaboration, and collective imagination. Now if we are ultimately unable to secure the income needed to continue, then our closure must reflect that same ethos. We will not chase survival for its own sake. Instead, we will act with clarity and care,prioritising the responsible handover of our legacy, our learning, and our resources to those who will carry this work forward in Brent.

Metroland Is

Metroland is a living, breathing space of community — artists, neighbours, organisers, and thinkers working side by side to build a more caring and equitable cultural landscape.

It’s a place of commitment, not performance. Of conversation, not spectacle. We support artists not just to make work, but to shape how and why it’s made — in relationship with the people and places around them.

This is slow, intentional work. It’s not always visible, but it is always rooted. From monthly lunches to collective decision-making, from studio support to local collaborations, we hold space for artists to build something lasting — with others, and for others.

If you’re curious, come and spend time with us. This is culture held differently — and we’d love to share it with you.

Artists we have commissioned or supported with a free studio include: Abbas Zahedi, Action Space, Adam Farah, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Amanda Colares Silva, Arwa Aburawa & Turab Shah, Arsalan Isa and Dita Hashi, Avant-Gardening, Bediah, Becky Lyon, Bill Daggs, Brian Griffiths, Carl Gabriel, Crisis, Daisy Jones, Dan Mitchell, Dawn Mellor, Eileen Perrier, Ed Webb-Ingall, ESEA unseen (Kim Chin + Sue Man), Francesca Telling, Harlesden High Street, Heiba Lamara, Imran Qureshi, James Jordan Johnson, Jaykoe, John Rogers, Jorell Bonnick, Jude Wacks, Kamile Ofoeme, Katarzyna Perlak, Krystyna & Sabina (Kasia Kuzka and Mateusz Piekarski), K2K Radio, Linett Kamala, Mahmoud Khaled, Mohammed Zaahidur Rahman, Ngo Chun Tse, Nilik Khimani, Ocean Baulcombe-Toppin, Other Cinemas, Paul Purgas, Pio Abad, Rasheed Araeen, Rebecca Bellantoni, Rehana Zaman, Rose Nordin, Ruth Beale, Sadia Pineda Hameed, Sarah Rose, Shenece Oretha, Theo White, Tom James, Yasmin Nicholas, Zinzi Minott, Zish.