Governments matching of cultural crowdfunding: an exploratory comparative analysis of the Spanish and Swedish case.

Abstract

Over the last decade, crowdfunding has emerged as an important alternative and supplementary mechanism for funding, legitimising and developing creative projects. In many European countries, a number of regional governments have started to support this practice incorporating platforms as technological providers. Different types of governmental interventions exist, amongst them the provision of matched funding, or matching grants, effectively supplementing the crowdfunding campaign’s private contributions with public funding. However, few academic studies on CCI crowdfunding or cultural policy investigate these emerging forms of public-private partnerships and collaborations. Using a qualitative methodology, the article proposes a conceptual model for the different types of governmental support and collaborations with cultural crowdfunding platforms, alongside two case studies of public-private partnerships to support CCI crowdfunding at regional level in Spain and Sweden. The absence of support and intervention mechanisms may indicate that regional and local governments have thus far largely viewed crowdfunding as a marginal financing mechanism used by cultural projects unable to access other sources of funding.