Kickstarter, the creative project crowd-funding site, announced this week that in 2012, “2,241,475 people pledged a total of $319,786,629 and successfully funded 18,109 projects.” The numbers represent impressive growth for the 3-year-old company. “The money total blew away 2011 by 221 percent,” reported Wired, “and the number of backers grew a corresponding 238 percent.”
Almost half the total cash pledged fell into the categories of gaming and “film and video.” The emphasis on creativity has led some observers to call Kickstarter “the People’s NEA (National Endowment for the Arts)” or, more jargonistically, “an arts organization for the post-gatekeeper era.” Meaning: We, the people, decide whose movie or game or funky art installation gets the green light, and not some bean counter in Hollywood or New York, or government bureaucrat constrained by shifting political winds.
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