Page 65 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014culture, from general interest where culturally themed projects of all kinds can be found, to the specific, such as the crowdfunding platforms focussed exclusively on books, music or audiovisual content.Various promoters of cultural projects are opting for crowdfunding to bring their projects to fruition. The decision to do so is the moment of truth. Will they raise enough funding to go ahead?The aim is to put creators in touch with patrons through these online platforms so that they can explain all the details of the kind of work they want to create, the ways and means of doing so, and the kind of collaboration they are seeking. In most cases this collaboration is financial, obviously, but there are other kinds of sponsorship such as the provision of technical equipment and the like.It is very important to state the kind of recompense the patron will obtain as a result of this microsupport. On one hand, it is tacitly understood that it will be the enjoyment of the work, be it a book, a documentary, an exhibition or whatever. But there are other benefits of greater value such as meetings with the artist, exclusive access to the opening, meetings with the authors, unpublished extra material or even exclusive editions, differentiated from the versions produced for the mainstream public.Financing a project of any kind through crowdfunding is a very intense task before, during and after the specific time during which financial assistance is being sought. At any given moment the viability of the project depends on a goal there is no certainty of achieving. But once that goal has been achieved it shows that the creative effort can be equated to the effort of searching for the means to make it a reality.Crowdfunding was, without doubt, the buzz word of 2013. It became known through attempts to raise support for what were basically technological projects with a grand vision of disruptive innovation. The idea has only been around in the cultural worldAC/Efor a few years. Many people call it a strategy for survival while others prefer to speak of it as the way in which new collaborative dynamics are appearing between agents and consumers who wish to have a greater involvement in the processes of cultural creation.This new way of raising sufficient funds to create and publish the proposed work makes it possible for people who are passionate about culture to fulfil one of their dreams, namely, to be able to participate and decide if a work, a literary creation, stage set and so forth, deserves to be brought into existence and be shared with the public, and more especially, with the people who made it possible.According to the Crowdfunding Industry Report drawn up by the Massolution agency which evaluates the use and evolution of crowdfunding, the figures for 2012 can only confirm this tendency. This kind ofWHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 5: CULTURAL SECTOR MARKETING AND CONSUMPTION THROUGH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGYThrough crowdfunding institutions can mobilise art and culture lovers so that they participate and become committedfunding movedno less thanUS$2,700millionthroughout theworld throughmore than amillioncampaigns. The as yet unconfirmed figure for 2013 is likely to have been in the region of US$5,100 million.In our country the most representative example of this was the full‐length feature film El cosmonauta, the making of which was an example of how it is possible to make high‐quality audiovisual content through this kind of collaboration.The project was conceived in 2008 as a short. By the beginning of 2009 it was decided to fund it collectively through crowdfunding at which point it became a project for a full‐length film.May 2011 was the project’s most difficult moment when the Russian producer who was committed to funding part of the investment decided to pull out. The people in charge of the project asked for extra CURRENT PAGE...65