- The Professional ‘Ecosystem’
This mobilization of the community and these forms of networking are also pursued by the managers of platforms themselves, as they promote an image of (hyper)active ‘start-uppers’ constantly in search of new modes of financing and value creation. To this end, they actually make use of ‘their’ own platforms with the aim of developing extended and versatile social and professional networks. Marine Jouan describes this intense labour of networking:
As it appeared on the media agenda, more and more players outside the world of crowdfunding asked themselves whether or not they should be using this funding method. [...] The objective of crowdfunding professionals is to get these players to forge partnerships with their platforms, so that players interested in crowdfunding do not start up their own platforms, increasing competition for the capture of projects and funds. (Jouan 2017: 337)
Jouan’s research also insists on the importance of consolidating and extending existing networks, particularly by producing and disseminating supposed ‘crowdfunding studies’ and ‘barometers’. In their ‘desire to communicate’, these discursive elements ‘are conceived above all to create ‘buzz’ in the media, but also around events organized by the association [Crowdfunding France]’ (Jouan 2017: 343). She lists two forms of partnership such activities aim at, both of which are undeniably reminiscent of professional community management. In the first case, the partner ‘will direct toward the partner platform certain project leaders who are in its network and who are seeking funding’, while ‘the second type of partnership involves the transfer of the partner’s funds to the campaigns on the platform’ (Jouan 2017: 355). It is useful to compare these two ways of optimizing social networks, one of which is deployed by project creators, the other by platform managers, but both of which depend on constantly increasing and renewing trafic in order to avoid failure and maintain the momentum of their respective projects.
Train, Educate, Agitate
We have emphasized that one of the characteristics of cultural crowdfunding is that, if it does not entirely overthrow all the classical codes and references of the ‘worlds of art’, it certainly erodes them—or, as we have written elsewhere, it gives a ‘common language’ to the diferent players connected by the platforms and, in doing so, contributes to shaping them as predominantly economic players (Matthews, Rouzé and Vachet 2014: 30). Most platform directors and managers insist on the ‘pedagogical’ work they have to do for project creators and certain ‘communities’ of backers. The objective here is to counteract the ‘old’ mentalities of cultural workers who are too dependent on systems of public grants (or ‘assistance’), wary of going beyond their target audience, lacking in communication skills and unable to ‘sell themselves’. We have observed how, beyond setting up the technical means to enhance the initiatives of project creators, platforms employ a discourse of the rationalization and commodification of the cultural sphere, and do their best to transform cultural workers into entrepreneurs. This discourse is disseminated on websites and social networks—but also through online and print publications, heavy coverage in traditional media, organizing and participating in public conferences, university education, and initiatives where certain project creators are recognized and given appearances at public events. Barely concealed in the invitation to ‘become a part of an artistic, creative and innovative family’ is a condemnation of those losers who don’t know how to take advantage of these (necessarily ‘neutral’) new technologies.
Participatory Cultural Platforms and Labour
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