Kickstarter CEO Say More Needs To Be Done To Support Participation In Arts

by

The National Endowment for the Arts asked a number of different people to respond to the 2022 Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA).

One of those asked to respond was Everette Taylor, CEO of Kickstarter, a site that has essentially become the alternative to foundations, governments, and institutional funders as a funding source for creative projects.

He says a partnership with Skoll Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and Creative Capital to provide $700,000 in funding to 600 BIPOC creators helping them raise $11.7 million.

“In recent research, still unpublished, Kickstarter creators report earning $5.15 in additional revenue from each dollar raised on Kickstarter. That places the total estimated economic impact of the $700,000 fund at close to $70,000,000, a 100x return on that cultural investment.”

That data comes from one of his recommendations about making funding to creatives more accessible, especially for smaller scale projects. Part of that includes making it easier for people to apply with fewer strings and follow up reporting burden attached.

His second recommendation is about strengthening community among art makers by providing some infrastructure for creating networks and sharing work, and encouraging cross-pollination and collaboration.

His third recommendation referenced changing the definition of art making, including who gets to participate in making art. He lists all the projects that have been funded by Kickstarter highlighting the expansive storytelling techniques facilitated by books, tabletop games, roleplaying games receiving support. He points to these games as something of an underdeveloped framework for allowing more people to participate in a creative process.

He warns that AI is in a position to marginalize and supplant many of the burgeoning creatives who have only just begun to realize success through opportunities for funding that platforms like Kickstarter provides. There is something of an implication that as much as Kickstarter has done to help these artists, their capacity is still comparatively too narrow to provide the support and resources the creative community needs to succeed.

Music, Lyrics, Comprehension and Memorization

by

Pretty interesting article on The Conversation about how different types of music can help or hinder cognitive activity. The target audience for the article it primarily students in relation to their study habits, but it does provide general insight about how tempo and lyrics can impact comprehension and memorization.

For example, I have found that I have a more difficult time creating anything with verbal or written content if music has lyrics. However, if I am working with numbers, say balancing accounts, lyrics don’t inhibit me at all. (Though my singing along might disturb my co-workers.) Though age may also be a factor because I don’t remember having as much difficulty with writing to music with lyrics when I was younger. And the article sort of alludes to the fact that different people have different capacity to multi-task.

Here is some of what the article has to say. A fair bit of space is also devoted to the damage volume can have on hearing.

Numerous studies have discovered how music can affect study and work habits:

  1. Listening to instrumental or familiar music in the background competes less with a study assignment than music with lyrics or unfamiliar music. Instrumental music also seems to interfere less with reading comprehension and assignments requiring verbal and visual memory than does music with lyrics.
  2. One study showed soft, fast music had a positive impact on learning, but loud and fast, loud and slow, and soft and slow hindered learning.
  3. Upbeat music with a higher tempo may help when you’re doing something requiring movement or motivation, such as exercising or cleaning your room.
  4. The more difficult your task is – for instance, memorizing material, problem-solving or learning something new – the more likely the music is distracting and people often need to turn it off.

People Are Reading Less AND Barnes & Noble Is Opening More Stores Than Ever

by

The National Endowment for the Arts recently released data showing that the number of adults and children (most of the data from surveys of 9 and 13 year olds) has been decreasing over the last decade.

 …according to its 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 48.5 percent of adults reported having read at least one book in the past year, compared with 52.7 percent five years earlier, and 54.6 percent ten years earlier. Meanwhile, in 2022, just 37.6 percent reported reading a novel or short story, compared with 41.8 percent in 2017 and 45.2 percent in 2012. As we said at the time, the fiction-reading rate was the lowest in the history of the SPPA, a survey that goes back more than three decades.

[…]

….the share of 13-year-olds who reported reading for fun “almost every day.” In 2023, the figure was 14 percent, down from 17 percent in 2020 and 27 percent in 2012. The share of 13-year-olds who fell into this reading category in 2023 was lower than in any previous test year, …

[…]

For decades, more than half of all nine-year-olds reported reading for fun “almost every day.” In 2012, that figure was 53 percent. In 2020, it dropped to 42 percent, and in 2022 (the most recent year for which data are available), 39 percent. Also in 2022, the share of nine-year-olds who “never or hardly ever” read for fun was at its highest: 16 percent.

Since these trends existed prior to the pandemic, we can’t blame it on Covid. I was harboring some hope that being cooped up at home might have led more people to pick up reading as a habit.

On the other hand, Barnes and Noble is planning on opening 58 stores in 2024, more stores in a year than they have since 2009. In some cases, they are re-occupying buildings they left years ago. From what I have been reading over the last year, some of their success seems to be attributable to the corporate office giving the individual stores more license to customize their spaces to the communities in which they are located and aim for a more independent bookstore vibe. The company recently bought a local bookstore chain in CO with the intent of operating under the local name rather than Barnes and Noble which seems to reinforce their local flavor strategy.

The BN store near me seems to always be hopping despite the dwindling fortunes of the mall surrounding it. It has appeared to be a third place gathering space for a lot of tweens to interact in a way that makes me secretly grateful. I have seen articles claiming there is a resurgence of reading among Gen Z thanks to the BookTok trend on Tiktok.

But I think both the decline of reading and Barnes and Noble’s growing success can be true. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Barnes and Noble is increasingly finding success selling non-book products, services, and programs. It all bears watching and considering.

Doing The STEM Strut

by

h/t to my friend Tonja Khabir for linking to a CNN piece about Yamilée Toussaint, the founder of STEM for Dance, a program which integrates dance with STEM subjects to encourage girls of color to pursue careers in STEM fields.

If you are thinking this sounds familiar, I had written a couple of blog posts about Philadelphia based DanceLogic, a program that is also designed to encourage girls of color to enter STEM fields.

For Toussaint, the germ of STEM for Dance started when she was studying mechanical engineering at MIT and was one of two women of color in her major. The article says the organization has programs in nine cities. It appears the activities are a mix of school clubs and camps in which the girls can participate.

The organization’s school and summer programs typically attract girls who identify as dancers but are hesitant about STEM. Through the supportive community and hands-on projects, the girls begin to see themselves as programmers, engineers, and innovators.

[…]

Rather than teach dance and STEM separately, the program combines the two. Working in small groups, the girls choreograph dance routines that include STEM elements, such as LED light strips that they code to light up with the music. The girls also create songs through computer science that they incorporate into their performance.