What is BeCrowdy?
Culture, art and money have always had a complicated and controversial relationship. Culture is invaluable, however, not enough money and resources are being invested in it.
But things are changing: here comes BeCrowdy, the reward-based crowdfunding platform for cultural and artistic projects.
BeCrowdy is based on the interchange of ideas and a network between artists, cultural promoters and the community, operating in the following areas: visual arts, publishing, events, music and performing arts.
Crowd-what?!
"Crowdfunding can be defined as a collective effort of many individuals who network and pool their resources to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. This is usually done via or with the help of the Internet. Individual projects and businesses are financed with small contributions from a large number of individuals, allowing innovators, entrepreneurs and business owners to utilise their social networks to raise capital."
In other words, crowdfunding is the crowd’s financial support. Through the mobilization of individuals, the community financially supports projects and ideas of different kinds, exploiting the potential of the web.
In the reward-based model, the community actively participates in the creation process of the presented projects, funding them in exchange of "rewards" created ad hoc: tangible or symbolic acknowledgements closely related to the campaign. These rewards prompt the backer to financially support the project, and have a very strong symbolic, experiential and emotional value, often higher than the economic one.
Crowdfunding in itself is a virtuous circle, which directly connects the project creator and the community, leveraging on the emotional involvement and participation of the individual user. This mechanism can really help produce a value of social and collective cohesion and cooperation.
According to the estimates published in the latest Analysis of Italian Crowdfunding Platforms (by Castrataro and Pais, October 2013) at the end of 2013, crowdfunding produced in Italy a total value of more than 22 million euros. Crowdfunding is becoming increasingly important, representing an alternative to traditional ways of financing and funding culture.