Marissa Cooke

Another win for creative democracy…Hell yes! Cut out the middle-man solo creatives, collectives and minipreneurs!

Any thing that facilitates and empowers people to finance, create, produce, distribute without relying on corporate middlemen and gatekeepers (read banks, record labels, production companies, publishing houses…) is always a great thing in my opinion.

Kickstarter does just that – a brilliant crowdsourced fundraising platform that enables creatives to list creative projects and funds required and allows ‘pledgers’ to donate funds towards realising the project in return for rewards or other incentives offered by the ‘creator’.

Other favourites are:

Catwalk Genius – an Irish online fashion portal that enables you to ‘invest’ in the collections of emerging fashion designers as well as buy their designs online.

Sellaband – Aspiring musicians/bands can raise $50,000 to fund a professionally produced album. ‘Believers’ who contribute funds towards the album receive a limited edition of the CD and a pro rata share of 50% of any revenue derived from the release.

The relative success of Zopa, another peer to peer lending service (for amounts up to around 75,000 pounds)  has also proven the possibility of a ‘life after banks’…