Monday School Subscription Crowdfund

Monday School aims at creating a co-learning field where everyone can feel free to perform, and anyone is free to join without fees or sign-up needed. The original intention of creating this free event is because most performing arts students in Taiwan, and possibly most performers, are struggling to survive in the unfriendly environment. Statistically speaking, 70% of top dance department students couldn’t find a full-time job hence no regular labor and health insurance.

This long-term project is initiated by the performing arts co-op Les Petites Choses Production(LPCP) under a land bridge and realized by promoting the continuous and spontaneous actions of participants and on-site donors. Since 2016, we held more than 80 workshops regularly in different urban public spaces.

In the beginning, less than 20 people participated, and most of them were from art school. To respond to the authentic needs of the general public and empower the autonomy of individuals, especially nonprofessionals, a variety of gamified experiences that addressed the importance of self-discovery in co-learning have been introduced. Moreover,

This socially engaged bottom-up movement is an experiment dedicated to the art of commoning, and has attracted wider audiences' participation in performing art also attention from both domestic and international communities, shaping the creative city landscape and continuing to generate collective memory of art and society through co-creation.

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Challenge

As the above background states, performing arts students and especially graduates are actually needed to be incentivized to participate in this community-led growth art initiative for they are struggling with their balance between livelihood and self-growth.

In addition, most nonprofit events rely on governmental subsidies. However, subsidy is a kind of rivalry and excludable limited resources especially not conducive to the civil art movement and its sustainable management. How might we design a sustainable program that embraces the general public's involvement in co-creation that also meet the expectation of the professionals? How might we co-create a sustainable ecosystem wherein everyone becomes sharers instead of stakeholders?

Strategy

In order to create a social support system for performers(in a broad sense) that could grow together with the people, I transformed Monday School into a subscription crowdfund project in 2018. This establishment of a long-term strategic partnership between participants and the fundraisers would develop a diversified flywheel operation model, and actively expand reciprocal communication with society.

Impact

With the regular injection of public funds, we could take a long view, focusing on developing a resilient community culture of co-learning instead of being stuck in the dilemma most art groups face, being upset by repetitive administrative workloads and the uncertainty of fund application. Less than half a year after the launch of crowdfunding, we get more than 1.7k US from the public, enabling us to grow from a group of volunteers to a young professional team that specializes in organizing cross-border nonprofit art initiatives on the street.

In addition, having able to get in touch with the general public and maintain the relationship with them is not only our privilege, it indeed strengthens our competitiveness in the industry. Through word of mouth and some creative campaigns, the participants grow into a broader spectrum while the average number of participants exceeded 120 people after 2019, in summer ranging from 150 to 200. And the funders that year reaches more than 160. Gradually, Monday School becomes the 1st subscription crowdfund performing arts project in Taiwan history, and receive the Annual CrowdFund Achievement Award in 2022.

This long-term project, which has not applied for government subsidies, has been successfully operated so far. From schools, car wash, juvenile reformatories, urban public spaces, and discarded spaces to the virtual space during Covid, Monday School has been invited to Bulgaria, Paris, and Hong Kong. Its footprints have covered more than 10 different types of public spaces at home and abroad. As of 2022, Monday school has held more than 80 large-scale workshops, and nearly 10,000 people have participated in person, including Serge Laurent the Director of the Performing Arts Department of the Pompidou Center(France), Aymar Crosnier the Deputy Director of Centre National de la Danse(France), Tiago Guedes the Artistic Director of the Teatro Municipal do Porto(Portugal), and Katleen van Langendonck the director of KAAItheater(Belgium) as well as advanced leaders from National Theater & Concert Hall, National Culture and Arts Foundation, Performing Arts Alliance and so on.