rapport on the first call - crowdculture.se

Fabel Kommunikation AB

Sveavägen 31 | 111 34 Stockholm |08-41 02 24 30 [email protected] | www.fabel.se

Crowdculture ”The beta call” Evaluation of the first test of Crowdculture.se, 2010-10-23 to 2011-01-31. The test includes a public call for projects and a funding opportunity for these projects. The test was handled by Innovativ Kultur (a cultural fund owned by the City of Stockholm) and was managed by SICS (Swedish Institute of Computer Science) in collaboration with Fabel Communications (concept owners) and the active participants on the site. The citizens of the City of Stockholm were invited to participate the thereby influencing the distribution of funding as well as contributing to the projects on the site with economical means. Citizens could access three different levels of membership. They could become a registered member, a paying member or a project owner member. The registered members had the opportunity to comment and spread information about the projects. The paying members had the opportunity to influence governmental decisions on public investment. The project owner members could contribute with one project which they published on the site. This document presents different illustrations of the ways in which the members acted on the site, as well as it visualizes information on how the traffic of the site has changed over time.

Summary

"I'm really intrigued by the idea that people control culture funding, and that even relatively obscure projects can fit there. What other board or cultural investigation could just as accurately reflect what they are interested in culture? Narrow culture could also be widely appreciated, in the midst of mainstreaming odd culture could be more commercial. " - Interview with Håkan Lidbo, electronic music artist and project owner. A summary of the evaluation of the beta test indicates a potential annual contribution of 840 000 SEK to Stockholm's cultural life from 1400 members. This contribution is counter financed in a 200%, which allows the realization of approximately 100 project of an average budget of 30.000 SEK. The funded projects are those which the paying members have prioritized on the criteria that the projects have the potential of being “good for society”.

The project-owning members

All paying members have if they wanted to, been able to contribute with a project on the site, and try to convince others that their project is one of the most relevant to invest in. In total 29 projects were announced on the site. Two (2) of them where fully realized during the test, and four (4) received their total budget after closing the test, since they where the ones closest to 100% funding. Innovativ Kultur, owners of the call, made decision regarding funding for projects after closing the test. Total amount requested from Crowdculture: 814 000 SEK Budget of the 29 projects in total: 5,130,156 SEK

A computer game created in co-operation with Palestinian girls in a refugee camp in Damascus

Concert event for infants

Participatory written live animated puppetry and film for adults.



Xoiiox is an animated, strategic board game that is also a clever musical instruments for iPad

A dance performance which serves as a referent for a forum about new forms of colonialism within art

A trilogy, two dance performances and a documentary.

The membership economy

"I think there is great potential for development of projects if you could share your vision with potential fans and financiers in the entire country. Make Crowdculture national and open it up for investment from all others regions." Beta-tester, quote from the evaluation survey In order to be able to interact on the site, a user has to register. The registration is free. In order to be able to affect the economical flow of the system, the paying member has to make a monthly investment of SEK 50 -€5, which amounts to 600 SEK per year. The paying members will experience the leverage of their investment thanks to the public co-investment. The money from the user is directly invested in the cultural life of Stockholm without any cut. Registered members: 465, Paying members: 168 In addition to the hybrid investment model that combines public and private capital, one of Crowdculture’s key characteristics is that the paying members can move the economic flow of which they are in control. For this reason, it is interesting to observe the average time during which a person directs their flow to a specific project. Every minute counts. Average voting time on one specific project: 2.46 weeks There have been three members of a passive kind in this test: Fonden för Innovativ Kultur (The fund for Innovative Culture, owned by the city of Stockholm), Fabel Kommunikation AB (concept developers) and Innovation Impact AB (private company). These three members have invested different amounts of money, which together reach a total of 43.330 SEK per month. Such an investment constituted the leverage of the contributions of individual paying members (168 persons).

The charts below show how the dynamics of counter financing changed as more members joined the system.

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Medlemmar Fonden för Innovativ Kultur Fabel Kommunikation Innovation Impact



The graph to the left shows the number of members during the beta test. The graph to the right shows the influx rate during the same period. There is a trend curve tucked in the right chart, which indicates a growth rate of about 30 members per week by the end of the test. An extrapolation shows a potential for about 1400 members a year, representing an annual contribution of 840 000 SEK (€ 90 000) to the cultural life of Stockholm. It should be added that due to very a limited budget, this test was done without any marketing. A report by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce published in February 2011 notes that 37% of the people living in the county of Stockholm are willing to sponsor or co-finance culture. According to this, there is a potential for 740 000 members. The ambition of Crowdculture is to attract 0.2% of those people who are willing to invest in free cultural life but lack a market that handles the relevant information. Crowdculture aims to fulfil the need for such a market.

The chart above shows the number of paying members week by week during the project implementation.

The graph shows the registration rate on the site. In this diagram, the first three and last three weeks are cut out, since registration during these for obvious reasons has been extreme versus almost none.

"The Crowdculture principles could be used also in the more established parts of the cultural world. Why could not people be involved in deciding who are given national grants, and who are to perform at the Royal Dramatic Theatre and the Royal Opera House...?", Beta tester, quote from the survey.

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Members and their preferences

The data in this section come from the surveys we conducted in conjunction with the closure of the beta test. The survey was open to registered members from the 1st of February to the 13th of February and was answered by 59 unique individuals. Survey data can be put into question when one can imagine that the more motivated members answered the questionnaire.

The average age of participants was 42 years. The youngest participant was 24 years old and the oldest 65. Below are six diagrams that multiply illustrate different participant characteristics.

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The largest group (nearly 40%) are working as freelancers. We do not consider this to be a surprise, since this group is usually looking for new social contexts and capital flows. On the contrary, we were surprised that so few full-time employees within the civil sector participated in the test. The reason for this might well be the lack of marketing.

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The system seems to appeal to a quite broad group in terms of economical income.



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With one exception, the networks of the participants tend to be very scattered. 40% of the participants have their largest networks within the sector of art and culture.

The categories above were not used to classify the participant's comments concerning the allocation of resources for culture. The number of respondents per category would have been too little to validate the data. However, it is obvious that the members have quite clear criteria to make their judgements about which projects should receive private and public funding. 13% of the participants paid their membership to support an acquaintance, which is less than we expected. 39% had less specific reasons like "supporting good projects" or contributing with "a general support". We believe that this group has the potential for long-term memberships, as well as the group of people who are "curious about the system". Curiosity is a good driver of engagement: even when one feels the cost of being a long-term paying member, one is ready to assume that cost in order to give targeted donations.

Prio Prioritized criteria How shall democracy be maintained? 1 The idea is good Election every 4th year 2 Credible project owner Referendums 3 Project plan is reliable Direct democracy 4 That I can influence the project Self organisation 5 Non commercial Shall not be maintained

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The graph below shows what the participants believe should determine public investments in cultural projects. When asked about their motivation to click "finance", 62.5% of the participants answered that the main idea of the project was crucial, while 14% answered that the person standing behind the project was the most important aspect. Interestingly, all project owners considered their projects to be part of their professional work. Our interpretation of this is that projects that benefit society at large and which have a professional profile will tend to be rewarded.

One beta tester said in the survey: "All different criteria might work in some context. The purpose of providing this kind of fund structure is that you do not have to go through today's cumbersome and difficult fund systems that prevent a democratic allocation of money for arts and culture”.

On-site behaviour

This section deals with data related to the way in which participants have used and interacted in the site.

Conversion rate: 9.0% (this concerns only the visitors who registered)

Average time on site during the test is 3:07 min

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The diagram above shows preferred criteria for public investments in arts and culture



The chart above illustrates the frequency of visits from each IP address. We can of course see that many visitors entered the site only once, but we can also see that a large group of users visited the site very often.

The chart above shows the number of pages opened by the visitors. The largest group, which consists of 2664 people, used a direct link or looked only at the front page. Thus, most visitors seem to know what they are looking for. The second largest group, which consists in 1393 visitors, viewed from 2 to 4 pages. We also see that there is a fairly large group of 359 people who opened more than 10 pages.

Wiich ways does the traffic take?

Direct traffic 35,66 %

Facebook.com 26,91 %

Google search 13,74 %

As the statistics reflect, Facebook was one of our main strategies to reach out. We made this choice because the test did not count with any budget for marketing. As a result, most of the users we had belongs to a group that is active in this social medium.

At the moment, Google accounts for 13.7% of the traffic. The keywords “Crowd culture", "Crowd Culture" and "Crowdculture.se" account for 46% of the matches directed through Google. The other 54% is spread through 184 keywords linked to the different projects. This indicates that the engagement and branding of the members (both individuals and organizations) play a significant role in the dissemination strategy. A 9% of the participants went from being visitors to being members, which indicates a potential for organic growth over time.

Which countries does the traffic come from?

During the test period, we have had dialogue with a number of potential partners and contacts, which explains a lot of visits from Spain and Great Britain. We have talked to people in Brussels and were attending a conference in Germany.

Country Visits Sweden 4620 Spain 67 United States 67 Belgium 53 United Kingdom 48 Germany 29

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Said about Crowdculture

The beta test has earned a relatively good coverage in the media and Crowdculture has been presented within different contexts. The response has been mixed. Some people are extremely curious, other are very enthusiastic and other very sceptic.

Presentations of Crowdculture at conferences o SKL's annual culture conference October 11-12 2010. o Media industry conference Generator Piteå November 23-24 2010. o Free Culture in Berlin, Germany October 7-9 2010. o World Usability Days 11th November 2010.

Articles about Crowdculture in newspapers and cultural press o Daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (2010-10-23, 2010-10-24, 2011-02-02) o Daily newspaper Aftonbladet (2010-10-27) o Daily newspaper DN (2011-02-18) o Nummer.se (2010-10-27, 2011-02-08) o Dance Magazine # 5 2010 o Swedish national exhibitions - intelligence (2010-11-04) o Speaking of Stockholm (2011-01-24)

Academic publications about Crowdculture On "Crowd funding Culture" - Sara Bannerman

Others o Crowdculture is mentioned in SOU Kulturbryggan 101 215 (Publication from the national parliament of Sweden) as one of tomorrow's key concepts of Swedish culture funding. o The European Parliaments Internet Core Group has shown great interest in Crowdculture and has actively been following the progress of the project. o The project Crowd Culture c/o Filmbasen is being developed in collaboration with the Swedish film making network Filmbasen.se -funded by the County Council.

Funct ion Organisa t ion Web Contac t s

Concept Fabel www.fabel.se Max Valentin

Tecnical development SICS www.sics.se Pär Hansson

The call The city of Stockholm www.stockholm.se/kultur Torvald Olsson-

Sundelin

Manageing the call

The fund for innovative culture www.innovativkultur.se Bernt Ericson

rapport on the first call - crowdculture.se

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