Art As Money Part II

The Art as Money conference in Amsterdam, organized by the acclaimed Dutch artist Dadara and Total in Support took place earlier this year. The main question of the conference addressed the issue how artists can earn money in times of economic crisis and cultural cuts (which are heavy in the Netherlands right now).

 

Crowd-Funding

These days seem to be all about crowd-funding. Also at this festival crowd-funding was roughly mentioned as a new way to finance art and culture. With a couple of successful crowd-funded projects on stage, several tips and tricks were shared. First: live your project! People like to support real enthusiasm and devotion. They should like you and your passion. Initiators should also engage people around the project. Second: the people that participate want to become stakeholder of the project. Giving them a specific role is very important. A third advise is to not wait for people to find your initiative and fund it. One should be really active and use the crowd-funding method to create all kinds of promotion and action around the project. Nevertheless, as crowd-funding might be popular right now it is definitely not the only way to finance art and culture.

 

Halbe Bier

Another interesting contribution came from Amsterdam-based artist Teun Castelein, whose oeuvre is about the relation between art and marketing. He already transformed his art school into a hugebillboard and sold pieces of polar ice as souvenirs. Both projects combined making art with earning money. At the Art as Money festival, Castelein announced his new initiative Halbe Beer. Halbe is the first name of the Secretary of State Halbe Zijlstra, the man responsible for the funding cuts in the Dutch cultural world. The idea of Halbe Beer is to introduce a new beer brand that should be available at every cultural venue in the Netherlands. This would guarantee a good share in the Dutch beer market. The profit should be completely re-invested in culture and art, making the complete Dutch cultural sector independent from any form of governmental funding.

 

Members Only

Another model to remain independent from governmental funding and advertising is to rehabilitate thegood old membership. The member structure has largely disappeared at most cultural institutions, but when done well, it can assure a steady financial fundament. How to become a members club is interestingly explained by new media institute Mediamatic. Most important is to offer exclusive goods or services to your members and to be so cool that people want to be identified with you and your activities.

 

Exchanghibition Bank

Lots of possibilities were presented that might change the cultural scene over the coming years... so many that we tend to forget that one of the best ways to get rich with art is to make work that is so exciting that people want to buy it. Dadara himself gives a good example with his project Exchanghibition Bank, which produces its own colorful banknotes that should work as currency for the Dutch cultural scene. Due to the fact that the banknotes are little pieces of art themselves, many people feel the need to buy them. Here you'll find a report from the The Art as Money festival.