CrFundingOurFcExcerpt
From UoWiki
Two problems with cultural funding.
Funding requires projected outcomes
Most funding requires a statement of the projected outcomes of a project before the project is underway. This forces receivers of funds who want to work collaboratively, and allow their projects to be peer reviewed and altered through the process of collaboration to take up a management role in the project, steering it towards aims and objectives that may no longer make sense,
- ften undermining any genuine attempt at collaboration. At the end of a process
- f collaboration it may become apparent that the best thing to do bears very
little relation to the initial aims of the project - funding requires that those initial aims are met.
Cultural funding can undermine more subtle and productive economies
Collaborative processes, especially those developed in recent years with a growing awareness of the cultural centrality of intellectual property, operate in a mixed economy of utility, reputation and symbiosis with established monetary economies. In the world of Free Software, from which cultural producers have taken inspiration, the symbiosis is with a commercial economy of proprietary software production. This exchange is clear. Programmers want to improve their skills, gain reputation and increase their employability, so they participate in Free Software projects and are remunerated in the commercial software world. In cultural production the exchange is far less clear. The remuneration offered by cultural funding is bound up with all kinds of politically instrumental agendas, and has its own reputation economy based on antiquated notions of artistic authorship. This last point is the most difficult as the two reputation economies have a negative correlation. In the art reputation economy, if one collaborator is funded, and another is not, all the reputation value goes to the funded party - the unpaid party is then seen as a 'participant' or a 'technician', not an artist.
