Arts Council Alternatives?

[Andrew Eglinton]

This is not an anti-Arts Council post. I respect ACE and the crucial role it plays in supporting and nurturing new performance practice across the country. 

Rather, this is a post inviting thoughts on alternative funding streams at the dawn of an era of substantial cuts across all sectors of life.

Times of upheaval form splits in the common fabric and allow new models to emerge, what funding alternatives are there to be had over the months and years ahead? 

Any suggestions for innovation in funding across all levels of practice would be great.

[Susan Jones]

Although I originally posted this on The Guardian - in response to Charlotte Higgens' blogpost on arts funding cuts, I thought it might also be pertinent to post it here, with a little reshaping.

I would posit that in the changed environment in which the arts now find themselves - irrespective of the recently-announced cuts to Arts Council England - the issue is how to create and foster infrastructures that enable the arts more cheaply and more meaningfully. The last decade in particular has created more and more arts buildings and institutional structures resulting in higher costs for upkeep, staffing, and marketing (as higher levels of income-generation are needed). The downside is less flexible money - and real problems in the lean years - those we are now facing

And whilst others have talked here about the value of the 'smaller organisations' we are still talking about organisations - in the traditional sense - as the enablers of art, organisations with buildings, offices, overheads, staffing. In the visual arts in 2009, less than 13% of openly-offered work and opportunities for artists (that with ££ attached) came from arts organisations and galleries and only about 6% from local authorities. So my question is, how in the face of these specific cuts can we ensure there are sufficient resources retained for practitioners to make the art/do R&D to ensure good art?

72% of visual artists are self-employed - note that there's no government aid to any kind of small businesses whose income has suffered from the economic recession., artists included

Without artists practising, there is no art, and without art there can be no audience development , and without that, there is no employment for those who promote and enable the arts. (I didn't say that, a government in an entirely different country did.. Would that the govenment here would think like that).

[Lucy Carolan]

How about viral funding?

http://www.kickstarter.com/
http://www.sponsume.com/

[Jack J Hutchinson]

Lucy,

Sponsume.com presents an interesting crowd-funding platform and great potential as a model for artists to generate viral funding for projects outside the usual public funding routes. I watched a presentation by Sponsume's founder Gregory Vincent at the RewireLondon conference last week and he was very passionate about the benefits his organisation gives to the most important people involved - the creator of the work. Sponsume do not offer any equity, or any ownership rights, in the projects listed. Project owners retain 100% ownership and control of their project at all times - a necessity for artists entering into this type of agreement. It is also free to sign up (for the time being).

[Lucy Carolan]

With both kickstarter and sponsume (are there any other, similar platforms?) I'm guessing that it helps to already have a following or be good at publicity to fund-raise successfully... But what's interesting about these options is perhaps that, by comparison to funding bodies, like ACE (in which case your 'audience' for any funding bid is very focused on a specific funder and its criteria), you instead broadly open your appeal for backing to any number of organisations/individuals, who might choose to support your project to varying degrees for a variety of reasons?

I admit I need to look into it more closely though.

[Avonline]

Yeah - I agree with you Jack.

Sponsume has a pretty neat concept - cause it doesnt take away my equity - but does allow us to get sponsors (And also people who validate and become the first few customers).

I am pretty impressed with Sponsume. And it seems they are constantly adding more users cause I keep running into the Twitter stream for it. Looks like Viral Funding is going Viral !

[Jack J Hutchinson]

Follow this link to an article I have written on the AIR: Artists' Interaction and Representation website regarding the viral funding model.

http://www.a-n.co.uk/air/article/643190/469392

[David Bolton]

The Kickstarter site is amazing – it may indeed be the way forward for helping small arts projects to go ahead.

Currently you can only get Kickstarter funding if you have a US bank account (as all payments are processed through Amazon.com – and, for some reason, Amazon only pays out in the US, and not through their operations in other countries). This may change soon, though, especially if Kickstart bring Paypal on board (which they’re considering).

The Sponsume site look like it might be a good UK alternative – although it’s so new that there aren’t any “real” projects on it yet. It will be interesting to see what happens once it has a few.

However, I’m a little concerned that Sponsume may be wrecking its chance of success by allowing traditional “good cause” projects into the mix. Crowd sourcing works by people recognising a neat creative idea, wishing to see it go ahead, and feeling good about offering a bit of cash to help it succeed. But if you are faced with making a choice between donating to an arts project and – on the same page – a request to fund (say) a project to stop children dieing from lack of clean water, then you are going to feel uneasy about choosing the arts project.

With small arts donations, the “smile factor” is the single most important thing that clinches the deal. Choosing is fun – and nobody dies.

Many charities, on the other hand, rely on creating guilt, through heart-rending stories, to get people’s donations. Nothing particularly wrong with that – but the two approaches don’t really mix.

The kickstarter site says:

"Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. We're a great way for artists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, writers, illustrators, explorers, curators, promoters, performers, and others to bring their projects and ambitions to life. Project creators inspire people to open their wallets by offering products, benefits, and fun experiences. "

It then goes on to say:

"Kickstarter is not a place for charity projects, raising funds for business expenses (rent, payroll, etc), soliciting donations to causes (medical bills, etc), or having people fund your life (travel, living expenses, etc)."

At least the Arts Council recognise rent and payroll as legitimate funding expenses....

[Patrick Hussey]

Hey there,

I'm Pat Hussey digital manager for Arts & Business.

Here's our wiki and our home page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_&_Business
http://www.artsandbusiness.org.uk/

I think someone had posted an Issuu link to this on the ning before but here's our draft document of 'A Private Sector Policy for the Arts'

http://www.artsandbusiness.org.uk/News/2010/private-sector-policy-f...

We outline five policy ideas. We don't see this at all as replacing direct public funding but as a way to increase private investment and through the legacy campaign to kickstart more long term philanthropy for arts orgs of all sizes. It went out to consultation, it isn't just our ideas, we'll put out a final version out in early July.

We're very keen to get feedback so please do fire questions on here or on twitter @arts_business

[Mark Robinson]

I think it's important to think what the funding is for - that will define what's appropriate for a particular person/organisation. To put it simply do you want investment to 'build' something - like a business - or do you want someone to 'buy' something - like arts project activity? It makes a difference, or should. Funders often not clear on what they are doing on this spectrum, of course. I've written about this on my blog here
http://thinkingpractice.blogspot.com/2010/06/funding-for-assets-or-...

[Lucy Carolan]

Hello again,

I'm going to try and revive this thread because I think it's important, especially as the budget has since come out and, as everyone expected, made the issue of funding even more fraught than before.

Although when I last chipped in I did only, and very lazily, post up a couple of relevant links - which others (thank you Jack J. Hutchinson and David Bolton!) have taken more time and effort to elaborate on, I'm a little surprised that no more suggestions have been forthcoming. OK, yes, there is Arts&Business but, if I've understood, 'The Big Arts Give' is only for organisations that are registered charities, which is not everybody's case.

I belong to a very small artist-led organisation (we have a constitution and a bank account, but no premises, employees etc) called Wideyed. In the two and a bit years since it was founded, funding for Wideyed's projects have never exceeded hundreds of pounds. While ACE has yet to be a source for funding for us (though we will persevere), we have received some support from Councils, Museums... and otherwise scraped funds together with a lot of hard graft. For example, to raise the minimum amount (meaning, to cover everything bar labour) of £1k for our most recent project in March-April of this year, 50% came from Newcastle City Council's 'Art in Empty Spaces' scheme, and the rest was made by us with profits from buying at auction (with pooled personal monies) photography equipment that we then resold on eBay. And while we're quite proud of our resourcefulness in this instance, it's not sustainable - the problem being, with this method of fundraising, that we have spent all the profit on the project.

The funding culture that we might now be coming out of is one which, in our experience as individual artists, has been increasingly geared towards paying artists to enable other people's creativity rather than our own. This has been very frustrating! And Wideyed is not interested in becoming a bigger organisation - in the sense of running a festival, or a gallery etc - but it does want to become bigger through punctual, creative collaborations with other artist-led groups or organisations. We like the freedom than not being tied to a specific venue, or even geographic location, can afford us, and so funding, for us, is about projects - it's all about new work, and working in new ways.

I first joined this forum, on behalf of Wideyed, specifically due to this thread, because we have been struggling ourselves from the get-go and I hoped to find here a discussion about how other people have coped (the new government is not necessarily going to have a significant impact on us when being resourceful began for us two years ago already), or are envisioning coping - what are other 'frontline' small organisations and individual artists doing to get the work they need to do out there?

We are practitioners, but we are also members of the general public, so we are just as broadly concerned by the general effects of the current financial climate on the arts as a whole as we are by our own circumstances. But even so, where are the practical suggestions? Where's the discussion?

Thanks, Lucy

[Nick Sherrard]

Lots of people had similar issues when we gathered people in London (we wrote up what we came up with here http://artsfunding.ning.com/profiles/blogs/ideas-from-our-arts-funding ) Think there is some useful stuff there.

I think this is a really important aspect to all of this. Firstly, in ensuring smaller companies are able to share ideas on how to get work moving in this climate. Second, to make sure that the advocacy ongoing in all of this includes the perspectives of smaller orgs and artists. So lets get this thread back going!

[Lucy Carolan]

Thanks Nick. I hesitated for days before commenting again... Right or wrong, there is the feeling that our little org is at the collecting-sea-coals end of the funding issue, and it's daunting.

Anyway, in Andrew Eglinton's original post here he says, "Times of upheaval form splits in the common fabric and allow new models to emerge, what funding alternatives are there to be had over the months and years ahead?" Obviously, everyone here is worried about the present and future, but I've heard the recent budget described more than once as 'Thatcherite', so is there anything to be learnt, that could be brought forward and adapted, from the ways people/organisations survived/thrived in the 80s?