Page 119 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

In turn, the new channels for displaying content (for example YouTube or Vimeo for audiovisual) have brought about a shift in the idea of mass culture towards not one or two mass audiences but very diverse audiences, or at least – and to be more precise – they have given it visibility. Today it is easier for people to choose what content to view, when, and how fast. We are a bit like curators at a basic level, at an everyday pace. As a result, what we used to think of as passive audiences – spectators who sit and watch passively – have gradually ceased to exist. Audiences are active, eager to take part and have a little more control over the content, or at least the capacity to decide and adapt.This gives rise to a debate on the role of cultural agents, among many other topics. Curatorship can explore new avenues, but that might well be the subject for another book (though we have already seen how curating and crowdsourcing can be combined in the case of Afropunk Fest). What is interesting is how a few festivals are gradually opening up to a variety of experiences in which the support and participation of an audience or community is essential or at least an interesting tool for allowing them to get involved and commit (the highly-prized engagement in marketing, which can aspire to be more than metrics).One of the most widely used methods is probably crowdfunding, which we exploredin connection with museums in last year’s Annual Report (2015). The di erence is thatin the eld of festivals there are a great many cases – especially festivals that are starting out, as it is seldom used by well-established festivals. Crowdfunding is a process of raising fundsby enlisting the support of a large number of people. Although it can be done ‘manually’ (by passing round a collection bucket), platforms such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Verkami and Goteo have streamlined and given impetus to this alternative for raising the necessary funds for a project.Today its use can be said to have become normalised, at least in the sense that when we speak of crowdfunding many people have a basic idea of what it means. For example, accordingto Verkami,11 the average number of projects funded this way in Spain is two for every 100,000 inhabitants, and in 2014 alone more than 120,000 backers registered for 967 crowdfunded projects (not including those that did not succeed). And this is just one platform with a chie y national (Spanish) focus.Therefore, we will examine an example in which crowdfunding has been used di erently, as fortunately the list of successfully funded festivals is almost endless, such as the rst edition of BccN Barcelona Creative Commons Festival,12 some editions of the Cine Migratorio Film Festival13 of Santander and XOXO: A Festival of Indie Art and Tech,14 for which more than 175,000 dollars were raised by 735 funders for the fourth edition.There is no secret to crowdfunding, yet it has many in that there is no single formula for guaranteeing the success of any project. It is very important to have a previously existing network of potential collaborators and followers and possible assistants to help give it momentum during the rst days of fundraising, especially the rst ten, which are the most critical.AC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 2016119