CultureStake is a web-based voting and connection system for decentralised cultural decision making and investment.
Using quadratic voting on the blockchain, CultureStake’s playful front-end interface allows everyone to vote on the types of cultural activity they would like to see in their locality.
CultureStake democratises arts commissioning by providing communities and artists with a way to make cultural decisions together. It does this by giving communities a bigger say in the activities provided in their area, and by connecting artists and cultural organisations to better information about what is meaningful in different localities.
Using the CultureStake app people are invited to consider the social and cultural relevance of particular artworks to their localities. And they are given a way to rank how strongly they feel about artworks and the issues they raise. Votes are tracked and made visible, giving evidence of the types of projects communities would most value.
Currently major artists and cultural sponsors have the upper hand and this can result in one-size-fits-all ‘blockbuster’ programming. CultureStake is a practical response to a growing demand for greater transparency about how, and in whose interest, decisions about the public good are made. It opens the field for experimentation, for robust and sustainable alternatives to centralised and private decision-making practices.
The ultimate vision for CultureStake is that governance and funding of culture is put into the hands of audiences, artists and venues, acting together in and across localities and time.
In this way we hope to increase a shared sense of agency, imagination and alliances.
Software
CultureStake Software is published under a GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 AGPL-3.0
- Main Repository URL: https://github.com/bitspossessed/culturestake
- Smart Contracts Repository URL: https://github.com/bitspossessed/culturestake-contracts
- Subgraph Repository URL: https://github.com/bitspossessed/culturestake-subgraph
- Infrastructure Provisioning URL: https://github.com/bitspossessed/culturestake-provisioning
Credits
CultureStake is a DECAL/Furtherfield project.
Concept by Ruth Catlow, Charlotte Frost & Marc Garrett. Contributions by Sam Hart, Irene Lopez de Vallejo, Gretta Louw, Rob Myers, Stacco Troncoso and Ann Marie Utratel.
Technical development by Sarah Friend & Andreas Dzialocha.
Subscribe to newsletter