Reshaping the crowd’s engagement in culture - Study

The impact of digitisation - lowering communication costs and outreach - as well as the cultural shift of people wanting to connect more meaningfully with things they do, has made crowdfunding an increasingly popular method of fundraising and community building. Crowdfunding has witnessed a significant increase in Europe in recent years. This study examines to what extent crowdfunding is being used in the cultural and creative sectors (CCS) in Europe. Based on a dataset with information from nearly 75,000 CCS crowdfunding campaigns, the study provides a unique insight into the uptake of crowdfunding since 2013 across different CCS subsectors and EU Member States, as well as into the use of different crowdfunding models, average amounts being raised and success rates. The study shows that running a CCS crowdfunding campaign very often serves other purposes beyond finance, such as audience development, community engagement, skills development, promotion and market research, making it an interesting tool for multiple types of CCS actors, including publicly-owned cultural institutions. The study also touches upon the development of partnerships between crowdfunding platforms and public and/or private funders, matchfunding schemes and other types of services. Based on the analysis, the study puts forward recommendations to policy makers on what is needed for crowdfunding to further develop as a multi-purpose tool for CCS practices.

The study “Crowdfunding: reshaping the crowd’s engagement in culture” maps and analyses how crowdfunding is currently being used for the benefit of cultural and creative activities, and evaluates to what extent barriers hamper the further integration of crowdfunding in the financing mix and broader practice of CCS actors.  As the topic of crowdfunding for CCS touches upon the interest and activities of several stakeholder groups (CCS actors, intermediary organisations supporting CCS actors, crowdfunding platforms, backers and policy makers), the research combined the perspectives of each of these stakeholder groups to come to a 360° analysis. The research involved literature review, stakeholder interviews, data and case study analysis, surveys, expert workshops and crowdsourcing on barriers and options for policy action. The study is accompanied by a website – www.crowdfunding4culture.eu – that has been developed as a European information hub on everything related to crowdfunding for culture. The website contains among others:

• a map of all crowdfunding platforms across Europe (including comparative information on the crowdfunding models being used, costs of use, etc.) that have a specific focus on the Cultural and Creative Sectors;
• a repository of case studies that have been developed in the context of this study; and
• an inventory of interesting events, news, tools and studies that relate to crowdfunding for the CCS. 

Click "Go to resource" to access the full report.