Patrons of the Arts - Art Event that Keeps Cancelling Plans, Refuse to Refund Artists
Patrons of the Arts, or commonly penned as PotA due to its coy play to the word "puta" in Filipino meaning bitch (Spanish origin, yep), has set a groundbreaking mess for the art community when they cancelled event after event in just 1-5 days before the date, UN-cancelled an event a day after, and refuse to communicate effectively with the artists that paid for their table fees as far back as November 2025 — and other more insane scenarios.
It started when an artist saw a local government body advertise having the same venue and date for their upcoming event in Baguio City. The organizers, (fake names because this is Reddit; it's all over Threads anyway) Jack, Jessica, and Gia never informed the artists in their Discord channel if there would be changes in the venue or if the event was happening at all. Naturally, there's a lot of questions.
Organizers first offered 30% refund of the table fees to be paid after 30 days, but of course that was unfair, given it wasn't the fault of the artists that the Organizers had only "penciled in" the venue, and have not completely submitted the necessary documents to book the venue. Eventually they caved with 100% refund to be given after 30 days. They pushed with the event in another venue. Imagine, if the said artist had not seen the advertisement, artists would've shown up at the original venue only to be denied access.
PotA has monthly events with different themes, and different venues across regions, which a lot of the artists' supporters look forward to. There are regions in the country that usually do not have art events like this so it was a big deal.
Word got out that the Organizers has closed the Concerns channel in their Discord, and sneakily delete questions they didn't want to answer. Jake said that his health declined recently, yada yada, using it as a leverage for sympathy as to why they haven't been honest in a while.
On Threads, people already speculate that more events might be affected, and they weren't wrong. During midnight like an album launch, PotA's Jessica has posted that their main organizer, Jake, is stepping down due to a multitude of reasons, one of which is, of course, his health. And that the next two events like Clark will be cancelled. They said that their other themed events later in the year will be handled by a different, unnamed, no-one-trusts management. With two events already confirmed booted, artists who needed to travel to Clark cancelled their merchandise production, nonrefundable accommodations and other travel plans.
Only to have the Clark event be UN-cancelled 24 hours after, on another midnight post. There's no rest given to these people.
At this point, the fiasco got louder, reaching beyond Discord and friend channels. Supporters themselves demand refund for the artists on their public Instagram and Facebook posts. Still, not a single Organizer reached out to their paying artists. They even posted the list of attending artists from the Clark lineup without consulting if they wanted to proceed, some even having their names doxxed because the Organizers used legal names in lieu of their artist names. As of posting this, they've deleted that too.
With the Discord channel overlooked and ignored by the three musketeers, artists opted to publicly post and comment that they are not pushing through with any of their events moving forward.
The question remains: Where is the money?
Before completely "stepping back" and disappearing, Jake has announced that they aren't sure refunds will be possible, and definitely will not even happen within the year. This truly took a toll on the artists, all being small business owners that rely on their sales. They have paid within the range of ₱7,000.00 to ₱36,000.00 ($114 - $585), currently ₱1.5M+ (roughly $25,000) combined from all artists, with no assurance of receiving their money back due to mismanagement.
There were no legally binding contracts signed or provided, just point-blank Google Forms with Jessica's QR codes at the bottom for payment. But since those were fees, those who paid have the right to demand goods and services. Which the Organizers have said that (non-verbatim), since the artists paid, they expected that the team [of Organizers] have the right to keep the money. The statement in itself is open-ended, to what extent does "keep" for them mean?
Stories have surfaced about how the Organizers truly are. Previous issues faced before such as (but not limited to, they have unlimited audacity) difficulty for the staff reach them when it's due time for their payment, overpromising commissioned artists but do not deliver to their word, and manning the event was affected by personal relationship issues.
At this point, although refunding is still a vague concept, it is the loudest cry. No one wants to support the event anymore, and artists decided to pull out entirely.
TL;DR - We need to get this to who can help our artists. All eyes on PotA.