Your work deserves to be seen.
Through Bernard Gives, creatives, designers and makers get a year of Bernard, free. A website, hosting and everything you need to show your work, sell it and get your business moving.
A full year of Bernard, free.It started with our friends and family.
We kept seeing the same thing happen to people we love. Talented people, making brilliant things, getting tangled up in tech that was meant to help them.
Five different subscriptions before they’d sold anything. Marketplace fees creeping up every year. Website builders that need a developer the moment you want to change something. Big tech stacks that cost a fortune and are hard to get out of.
None of that is their fault. A lot of it is hard to navigate, even for people who work in tech. So we built Bernard to make it simpler: one place to look after your website and the tools around it, where you can just ask for what you need.
Technology should make our lives easier. That’s the whole idea.
Bernard Gives is how we share that further than our own circle.
One shell rehouses the whole queue.
A hermit crab can’t make a shell. It grows inside something it didn’t build, until the thing that was protecting it starts to squeeze. So it goes looking, and when it finds an empty shell that’s slightly too big, it doesn’t move in. It waits.
Others turn up and sort themselves into a queue by size, biggest at the front. When the biggest crab finally moves, the one behind takes the shell it left, and so on down the line until the smallest has moved too. Marine biologists call it a vacancy chain.
A Bernard grant is a shell for a year. Grow into it. If you’re a High Tide maker and you stay on, you hand the shell on: you nominate the next maker. A Rockpool shell goes back to your local partner’s pool for the next maker in your area, because the tide refills the rockpool. Either way, the whole chain moves up.
Creatives, designers and makers.
If you make things and you want more people to see them, this is for you. Whether you’re just getting started or ready for the next step.
Two kinds of grant.
Both give you a full year of Bernard, free. Pick the one that fits.
Chosen by your community.
We team up with town councils, local groups and community organisations. Each partner gets grants to give out in their area. They know who’s doing great work locally, so they choose.
- Your local partner picks who gets one
- A website, built and hosted on Bernard for a year
- The whole kit that comes with it
- Great for local makers, shops, studios and trades
- When you move on, your shell goes back to the pool for the next local maker
Run a council or community group? Ask us about becoming a partner.
Become a partnerFor makers ready to be seen.
You’ve got the work and the people who love it. Now you want a proper home for it online, one that helps you show it off and sell it.
- Open to independent creatives and makers
- Apply yourself, or put someone forward
- A website, built and hosted on Bernard for a year
- Everything you need to get your work in front of more people
- When you move on, you nominate who gets your shell next
Sound like you? Tell us about your work.
Apply for High TideThe whole kit. Everything you need.
A website is only the start. Bernard brings together the things you’d usually pay for separately, all in one place.
A proper website
Built with you, hosted for you, easy to change by just asking.
Email newsletters
Stay in touch with the people who love your work.
Your contacts
Everyone who gets in touch, kept in one tidy list.
Forms and sign-ups
Enquiries, commissions, bookings and waiting lists.
Social posts
Plan and schedule posts without living on your phone.
Getting found
The behind-the-scenes work that helps Google and AI find you.
No add-ons. No upgrades to unlock. Just the lot.
Meet the makers.
The makers we’re backing. More to come.
Marcia
Draw London Workshops
Next in the chain
Grants open
Four steps.
Tell us about your work
Who you are, what you make and where people find you. Or tell us about someone whose work you love.
We get to know you
We look at your work and what you want to do with it. For The Rockpool, your community partner makes the call.
We build it together
We set up your site and tools, show you round, and you get a year to grow with it.
Hand the shell on
High Tide: at the end of your year, if you stay, you nominate the next maker.
Rockpool: your shell goes back to your local partner for the next maker nearby.
What’s the catch?
Why are you doing this?
Because it’s why we built Bernard in the first place. We wanted the people around us to have good tools without the cost and the headaches. Bernard Gives lets us do that for more people.
How long does a grant last?
A full year. Website, hosting and the whole kit, free for twelve months.
What happens after the year?
Hopefully things have gone really well and you stay on as a paying customer. If not, that’s okay. You can download everything and take it with you. It’s all yours. Or you can reapply.
How do you choose?
For The Rockpool, our community partners choose. For High Tide, it’s our call, and we’ll be sensible about it. We look at your work and what a website could do for it.
Is there a limit on grants?
No set number. We give grants to makers and partner organisations whenever it’s the right fit, and we make sure everyone we take on is properly looked after.
Can I nominate someone else?
Please do. Some of the best makers would never put themselves forward.
Our council or group wants to give grants out. How?
Get in touch. We’ll set you up as a Rockpool partner with grants for your area, and you decide who gets them.
We’re a bigger business. Can we apply?
These grants are for independent creatives and makers. Big firms can pay. (Do come and pay, though.)
The small print
These grants are a gift from Bernard Moves Ltd. We’re not a charity. A grant is a year of Bernard (the site and the tools), not cash, and there’s no cash alternative. For The Rockpool, the partner decides who gets one. For High Tide, we do. Either way, there’s no appeal. We can withdraw a grant if the site is used for anything unlawful or hateful. And we may say publicly who has received one, because we’ll be proud of them.
Know a maker whose work deserves more eyes?
Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s someone you know. Either way, we’d love to hear about them.
From the Bernard team, with love.