Open Access / Education and Sustainable Funding Can Co-Exist

When it comes to building funding around creative and educational projects there can be two fallacies at play. The first being that an open educational or open access project cannot be sustainable on its own without institutional or non-profit money behind it. And the second being that trying to workout funding structures around creative, cultural, and educational projects represents greed.

In the words of Maria Grazia Suriano, I too strive to make culture free and open …

… and like Maria Grazia Suriano, I understand that in order to do this we need to make the creating of such resources sustainable to artists, storytellers, media makers, creative technologists, and educators, so that they are able to create and feed, house themselves, and plan for old age. And no, the answer is not to leave the creation of all such resources to the institutions and governments. We need independent artists and media for independent thought and in order to catalyse change, and those independent artists should not just exist within societies that have the means to support such endeavours.

It is for these independent artists, storytellers, media makers, creative technologists and educators, that we create this resource, so that they may find their funding pathways on the terms that are important to them with their projects. The reward for us to see more things created by people that are passionate about their projects and ideas, and driven to create both for the social good and as it is a calling, and not just a job.

Up Next: Plan for Sustainability