Cultural Funding and Financing: A Guide to New and Traditional Models in the Arts and Culture

This edited open access volume offers a comprehensive analysis of new and traditional funding models for the arts and culture. In the economic and political contexts of reduced art funding, the book takes an objective, pragmatic and heterodox approach to demonstrate how financial sustainability in the arts can be achieved via a range of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms which are valued either in terms of institutional or crowd-based legitimacy.

The book aims to offer both a scholarly interpretation of established and emerging funding and financing practices within the cultural and creative sector, as well as guidance for artists, creators, and cultural programmers through various case studies and multiple examples of current practices. Contributions are divided into three sections. Section one outlines the most important traditional tools and models, while the second part covers the key contemporary practices premised on the use of digital platforms, and the final part introduces several case studies. The objective of this volume is to demonstrate that while traditional models show no signs of being supplanted, digitalisation has facilitated the emergence of new forms. Such an evolution has consequences for creators of works as well as those willing to support them. The contributions address these issues by investigating and analysing the individual or combined adoption of traditional and new funding and financing models in a post-digital context.

Carolina Dalla Chiesa is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Economics and Organizations at the Department of Arts and Culture, Erasmus University, Netherlands. Her research focus lies on the transformations of cultural markets post-digitalization and new forms of funding for the arts.

Anders Rykkja is a Lecturer in Arts and Cultural Industries Management at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. His research interests include entrepreneurial finance and economics, managerial and organisational aspects of the cultural and creative industries, valuation of cultural goods and services, and music business studies.