Funding Your Art

0 CommentsFriday • March 11, 2011 • by Imei

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Several years ago, I asked a colleague in the folkloric dance community why dance promoters of a certain genre did not seek sponsorship (translation: financial backing) from individuals and local businesses. A few times I had been hired by promoters to dance in a 300+ show, only to be told after a show that there wasn’t enough money to pay the performers hired at the promised rate (this was before I started having promoters/agents pay by Paypal before the performance). The colleague looked at me like I was an alien with three heads. Ever since then, I’ve kept my eyes and heart open to a variety of ways people can fund their art. Finding funding can be frustrating, but it can also be the way that helps you network and score friends and influencers who will remember and promote your work.

Art by Sloane Tanen, “Bitter With Baggage Seeks Same”.

Funding your art from an outside source makes sense to me. What I am privy to in my community involves charged arguments over price fixing, consequences of undercutting, and a lot of broken relationships over the years. However, I watch film makers put their films on the Internet for free, collect donations before and after the making of the film, and get entire communities of people involved. Two recent examples:

Browncoats Redemption (Michael Dougherty and Steven Fischer, producer and co-producer). Watch the movie, and donations are given to charity.

Shine (Dan McComb & Ben Medina, producers). Free screenings of the 26-minute documentary available to the public, donations and signed copies of the film support the making of the film. The producers discussed how they went about raising support for the making of the film.

On a much smaller level, even Hips For Hire has teamed up with local businesses to produce shows and split revenue and advertisement costs. Some venues waive the cost of the rental or agree to use their regular advertising space on multiple digital platforms. Link for link exchanges that assist in increasing traffic to websites also alleviate costs. All this extra work serves another purpose: by getting people involved in supporting your art, you widen your network of friends and influencers. When you encounter something one of your supporters would be perfect for, you remember them and make the connection. And they do this for you too.

While there is no guarantee of the outcome, the trend appears to be clear: you must give something for free in order to show people what is of value (and what they should pay for). As artists, we need to treat people as the smart and savvy people they are. Even those out there cutting corners know when something is good enough to pay for. The point of giving something away for free is to show them that the artists behind the work are the “thing” of value, i.e. “there’s more where this came from.”

Don’t get me wrong: I like getting paid for what I do!. Yet some of the performances that stand out the most for me over the last 11 years are the ones I did for little or no pay. What would make these a bit easier to do (and no worries about paying for costumes, props, and coaching) would be to encourage more show producers to seek innovative funding “machinery” via their websites that are not dependent on the individual shows themselves. The most likely candidates for funding would be small businesses and individuals gathered through art networks. Additionally, individual artists should not be discouraged for obtaining grants or local business sponsors who support their work on a regular basis.

Thanks to Dina Lydia and husband, I’ll leave you with a recent video of a performance I did for a small local show.

Posted in: Art, money, movie

Tagged with: dance, Film, funding, money, movie, music, raising money, visual art