By AltFi on Friday 13 June 2014
Crowdfunding in the UK has now raised over £250,000 for theatre and dance projects in 2014 alone.
The news comes courtesy of the Crowd Data Center – which monitors roughly 90% of all crowdfunding activity in the UK – and which produced a groundbreaking report on the state of the sector earlier this year. Between January and the end of April – theatre campaigns have raised close to £239,500, while dance projects attracted £17,500 of investment. The total sum of money was raised by 137 theatre campaigns and 10 dance projects from a host of sites including – as you might expect – Crowdcube, Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
Barry James, Founder of the Crowdfunding Centre, described an “absolute explosion” in the number of theatre backers from February to March. His explanation of the gulf in popularity between theatre and dance projects with backers revolves around the longevity of theatre productions:
“If you’re putting an event on, selling tickets is kind of an established form of crowdfunding. However, the mindset of buying a ticket for a crowdfund seems to be weak. Creating a venture or helping to support something new and exciting is much more appealing. People see events – which dance projects will often be – as ephemeral whereas a production that will have an impact and last for longer is viewed differently.”
Today’s news from the Crowd Data Center aptly reflects the value of the service it is providing. We all hear about the rapid ascent of the crowdfunding industry and scale of the impact it is having – the Crowd Data Center is tracking that impact in real terms. As Dr. Richard Swart, Global Crowdfunding & Alternative Finance Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, commented in May:
“With such a fast moving market, growing exponentially, it is extremely important that policy makers, educators and professionals have a resource to track funding patterns. The Crowd Data Center has laid the foundation for a data set that can change the industry.”
The other key findings from the theatre and dance-based research are listed below:
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