The art of giving

How will the arts world plug the funding gap? Igor Toronyi-Lalic investigates

It’s an idea so simple in concept, so elegant in execution, so bursting with potential, that you kick yourself for not thinking of it yourself. ‘You put your project here,’ explains 28-year-old solicitor and budding internet entrepreneur Michael Troughton, scrolling down the front page of his flash new website. ‘And you put your money there.’ Even his cat comes to investigate.

What Troughton is describing is WeFund.co.uk, the first British attempt to apply crowdfunding to arts financing. Barack Obama used crowdfunding for his 2008 presidential bid — that is, asking a lot of people to give a small amount of money. Now Troughton is applying the same principles to help fill the British arts-funding gap. Creative people from across the arts, who are seeking cash for a new project, post their ideas online and then potential givers decide whether or not to chuck money at them.

‘It’s about the democratisation of philanthropy,’ explains Troughton. With a couple of clicks of a button, you can become a serial philanthropist. ‘By pooling projects with a network of donors, you get a virtuous cycle of giving,’ he says, drawing what looks like a great big virtuous Ponzi-type scheme on a piece of paper. So you donate your ten pounds (or millions) to as many projects as you like. Once enough money is raised, the project goes ahead; if sufficient funds are not forthcoming, punters have their money returned.

Despite launching only last month, big hitters such as Northern Ballet are expressing interest. But it’s early days. And he knows that he will have to overcome a stubborn English reserve to make a success of it, whereas in America ‘crowdfunding sites have people joining up in droves’. One of the requirements of WeFund.co.uk is to film and post a video of yourself explaining your project. Will people jump that hurdle? ‘Arts funding is in such crisis,’ he says, ‘that artists know they have to start learning to do things in different ways. And they’re probably better at making videos than they are at filling in Arts Council forms.’

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