The New York Times ran an interesting article today about some of the internal workings of the micro-finance industry that got us thinking about some of the recent activity from entrepreneurial players in the funding world for non-independently wealthy artists, designers, musicians and creative types in general. The old school model of patronage still exists in some vestigial forms – think of the family foundations that help pioneer some of the less established museums dedicated to showcasing visual artists whose works are not hung in the Met, MoMA or Guggenheim. But in many ways, there is not a system in place today for those artists – emerging, independent, exploring – who aspire to make stuff and sell stuff that they want to get into the hands of people. It’s less about hanging on the walls of a museum and more about getting into the hands of buyers (Opening Ceremony, TopShop, or other retailing pipelines of discovery for the masses) as a way to eventually get into the hands of shoppers.
Kickstarter is an amazing concept that fuses the Medici patronage system of the past with the DIY culture of the present and leverages the better sides of vanity (everyone wants to be a part of something big, interesting and cool) and the scale of crowdsourcing to make it all happen. They’re our neighbors in Brooklyn and support a lot of cool, local artists in our community like Amanda Browder via NBPaC. What’s to stop some members of the Brooklyn DIY artists and flea market scene from jumping onto Kickstarter and seeing if you can raise some of those initial dollars needed to get materials to make samples for a big wholesale account opportunity? (That’s a rhetorical question, of course) In many ways, it’s a lot of the same thinking behind why we started Artists & Fleas and why we are constantly seeing new people come and try the market: it’s a low risk way to try things out. We couldn’t think of a better reason to go for it.
