as posted on VisionIntoArt's blog: http://www.visionintoart.com/why-kickstarter-is-the-new-audience/
An article titled “Only Connect the Prose and the Passion- A
Manifesto” by Marian Godfrey was posted on the Grantmakers in the Arts website
last week (and later re-posted on Artsjournal.org). Godfrey has worked
for over 30 years in artistic administration, both as a grantmaker and
arts manager. As part of her manifesto she declared: “art
organizations have a direct and necessary part to play in building
connections among artists and the people and places and communities in
which they are grounded.” I think Kickstarter’s success is driving this point home.
Among
art administrators, it’s a common frustration to seek and hold dearly
onto “new audiences”. Grantmakers want us to share our strategies on how
we intend to do this, the dwindling audiences have our boards in a
tizzy… when quite simply-- the standard model is obsolete.
I like
to recall a statement I overheard from a frustrated art administrator:
“New audiences? I have been trying to find those for 30 years.” Although
we all share her pain, we also may be overlooking the obvious - the new
audience is the one we’ve had all along. What’s new is how we connect
with them so they keep coming back and, hopefully, support our
organizations beyond the ticket price.
Human nature dictates our
need to connect. In the past, to see a performance you’d go to the
concert hall, meet some friends, sit down and listen to the music and
maybe, if you were lucky, meet the artist afterwards. Nowadays, music is
in your pocket, art is on your phone, the newest movie or something
like it is on your computer, and if you are fan of someone, you can
connect with him or her on twitter or facebook. Some would think this
would cause competition, when in fact; it’s proof that audiences want a
more personal connection with performing arts. Moreover, what seems to
be so isolating –sitting at a computer all day- is actually facilitating
an easier and more efficient way to become more involved. What
Kickstarter invites fans to do is to take this step further and become
involved in projects from the beginning, allowing the fans to be,
rightly so, part of the artistic process. These intimate connections
provide artistic projects normally not funded in the standard old way-
grants and people with large sums of money- to be funded by the entire
audience.
On the flip side, beautifully described in Amanda Palmer’s TED talk,
is that we shouldn’t worry about making people buy music; we need to
let them. To this end, Kickstarter allows our audiences to know what is
happening and to be part of the process. For today’s audiences, it’s our
jobs as artistic managers and artists not to find these people and
present our ideas to them; it’s our job to invite them to the
conversation.
(And I invite you to our conversation by visiting VisionIntoArt's Kickstarter Campaign!! Please RSVP by clicking here! I also invite you to see VIA Artist, Jeffrey Zeigler’s, post on CELLOBELLO about our Kickstarter Campaign.)
