Greg Beato at Reason magazine (the July edition) has this nice item, “The Internet vs the NEA”, about how innovative ways to fund creative projects in the arts have become such a hit that they are annoying the advocates for the publicly subsidised (ie, from taxes) sector. He is talking about a crowd-funding project in the US known as Kickstarter:
Current NEA funding amounts to about $1 per U.S. taxpayer each year. Yet the program is controversial and likely will remain so because those who contribute to it have no say in how their dollar is applied. Kickstarter, by contrast, gives people that control. It turns arts patronage from an abstract, opaque, disconnected, possibly involuntary act into one of dynamic engagement, where creators get to pitch supporters instead of faceless institutions and supporters feel as if they have a personal stake in helping creators realize their visions.
Kickstarter increases the pool and variety of funding sources for creators and allows people who are not wealthy to act as patrons. Artists can seek levels of financing that the NEA isn’t designed to accommodate on either end of the spectrum, from a few hundred dollars to a few million. And the chances of success are greater for Kickstarter applicants: In Fiscal Year 2011, 5,574 individuals and organizations applied for NEA grants across six program categories, and 2,350, or 42 percent, obtained them.
It is certainly too early to say that Kickstarter has made the NEA superfluous. At the same time, it may also turn out that Yancey Strickler’s reservations about rivaling the U.S. government are far too modest. Last year Kickstarter funded more than three times as many projects as the YEA did, in a wider range of disciplines. So far, at least, Kickstarter works just as well for hot dog cart entrepreneurs and 3D printer manufacturers as it does for documentary filmmakers and oddball literary magazines. Perhaps Strickler should start preparing himself for the burden of making, say, the Department of Agriculture’s Market Access Program (MAP) unnecessary too.
Such a business model for funding artists and so forth might also demonstrate how people can get certain creative ideas off the ground without the largesse of a single patron, be it a state or person. And because contributions to ventures such as Kickstarter are voluntary, it also means that the donors – many thousands of them – are far more likely to be engaged and interested in what gets created. By contrast, if you were to ask a person on the street about what they thought their tax pounds were used for in funding the arts, some might have a general idea, but many would not have a clue, and certainly not down the level of fine detail. For example, how many of any readers of this blog could quickly come up with ideas on what new sculptors got funding this year?
It is certainly too early to say that Kickstarter has made the NEA superfluous
It hasn’t – because the NEA was always superfluous.
As with many things, a useful metric to gauge if this is a good idea is imagining the anguished Kommentar Macht Frei article it will entail. Generally, if it makes Polly Toynbee or Zoe Williams or Gary Younge cry, it is a Good Thing.
How are people to be uplifted, if they are not made to pay for what is good for them, as selected by their betters?
How analogous is the National Lottery? It funds lots of projects.
Surely ‘crowd-funding’ is just a fancy term for ‘ticket sales’?
As one wag of my acquaintance has observed, the NEA exists to provide funds for ‘art’ that would otherwise be funded by Nobody Else At All.
The NEA/Arts Council/whatever are simply well-thought-out scams to get miners and waitresses to pay for things like opera and sculpture, performed and displayed in places they never go to, for the pleasure and benefit of a tiny minority, who want their preferred forms of ‘culture’ to be easily available to them without the dreary chore of having to pay for it themselves.
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If only. What they really want is to have these preferred forms of ‘culture’ to be available to the masses, whether the masses are interested or not. Of course, that is for the masses’ own good, so they should be forced to pay for it.
Personally I think Kickstarter is great and have used it myself to fund several projects.
Will Kickstarter fund the poignancy of a turd in a champagne glass? If not, there will always be a need for the NEA. Bourgeois art paid for by bourgeois money. The NEA will be the Art of the People. You can’t have proper art without the scent of gun oil…
Given the utterly vile death and rape threats by a bunch of American adolescent “bro-gamer” knuckle-draggers and nerds, to a woman setting up a Kickstarter account a few weeks back, I’d say that hostility to Kickstarter seems to come from sources other than people in the arts.
Besides, do you honestly think Yu Suzuki could fund Shenmue 3 via Kickstarter?
Kickstarter can fund small artistic projects, but certainly not any big creative endeavour like Shenmue.
So, its a bit limited in scope, isn’t it?
As for arts funding, well I will say that in the UK its not really arts funding, is it? British artists go out of there way to not be artistic, because “aesthetically pleasing” is the most offensive phrase you can say in the UK (its often used by British critics as a criticism). Hence the po-faced grim-dark gritty bollocks. Its philistinism masquerading as art, in the least visually creative nation on Earth.
I don’t think the hostility was towards kickstarter and the COD playing adolescent “bro-gamer” types probably aren’t the sort to even be aware of the existance of Kickstarter. The hostility was directed towards Anita Sarkeesian. The ridiculous feeding frenzy of vile rape and death threats simply being the inevitable result of the combination of the reach and anonymity of the internet. The more intelligent and valid criticism being that she was asking for funding for videos and criticism that she already does at here site.
As for nerds, I think you’ll find them to be big fans of the whole Kickstarter concept.
And in answer to your question yes I honestly believe Shenmue 3 could be funded via Kickstarter. The budget (bloated budget, I might add) for Shenmue 1 and 2 combined was 91 million dollars in today’s money. Let’s say a budget of 50 million which is roughly the figure for a modern AAA title. The largest amount raised on Kickstarter for a game project was the 3.3 million raised for Double Fine Adventure an XBLA/PSN type title. Considering that Kickstarter has only gained any significant levels of exposure within the last year or so, I’d say it is very far from its peak. There is no reason to believe that it can’t keep growing.
The 3.3 million was raised 87,000 backers for a completely new creative enterprise compared to Shenmue which has sold at least 2,000,000 copies. Considering the game making chops of Suzuki and the beloved nature of the Shenmue titles. I could quite plausibly see it being possible for such a game to be funded.
Sorry, but this is the attitude, that whilst it prevails, will always ensure the state being monsterous in scope and size. This is the constant refrain, private co-operation cannot possibly result in educational or medical excellence. It’s just too ‘big’ or too ‘complex’. If private co-operation can get all the foods of the world, to my gritty corner of Britain, fresh onto my plate in a timely, convenient and cheap manner and place cargo and men into orbit then it can successfully fund Shenmue, Don Giovanni or dog crap on a pedastal if it deserves the funding.
Actually, arts funding in the UK is arts funding. Anything can be art if someone perceives it to be art. The “aesthetically pleasing” need not be art and art does not need to be “aesthetically pleasing”. Arts funding in the UK funds plenty of art, its just mostly dreadful art. The problem is the lack of private co-operation: the dead hand of the state ensures that money is misallocated to artistic endeavours that not enough people would patronise in the private sphere to result in its creation. The people of Britain are as visually creative as any other people: the video game worlds of Fable II, GTA 4 or Wipeout and the architectural creations of Brits that have sprung up in London and across the world recently are just a couple of recent examples. The people of Britain are no different to the people of Britain past who created the greats works of art, architecture and design that litter our galleries and cities. The state is different, the incentives are different but people can create and appreciate beauty just as they always have been able to.