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.