The Mobile Museum is a Kickstarter project with a unique aim – to create a mobile museum of cultural activity across 11 housing estates across the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

Local crowdfunding mission

The idea is pretty simple:

Take a large truck, convert it into a functional museum and travel between these estates to gather photos, words, images and examples of all existing current cultural activities from residents across the area, generating publications, exhibitions and discussions among people who live in the area.

“Contemporary cultural activity across the borough will be documented, mapped and deposited in the collection; from galleries, to photography clubs, reading groups, knitting circles and jigsaw making clubs,” the project team explain.

During the five-month journey across the Barking and Dagenham the museum will create personalized magazines detailing cultural activity across each one of the eleven estates it visits.

Creative community

This is great, because it should galvanize existing creative activity while also evangelizing and encouraging further work in the sector – and creating a record of what is happening now. What’s interesting too is that this is a classic example of crowfunding from within the community to address a local goal.

The project will culminate in a screening and celebration event at Valance House, the home of London Borough of Barking and Dagenham’s archives and a museum.

Another strand to the project is reaching out to the local community to encourage them to use the borough’s existing museums, galleries and archives.

Big society?

The project seems to be an innovative attempt to use crowdfunding to  bring communities closer together, to activate creative activity and to break down barriers between communities, while also recording what kind of creative activity is taking place in this part of London today. It seems an interesting example of an innovative project with a clear social and artistic message.

Take a look at the project here.

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London may be the UK hub, but this doesn’t mean business ideas and acumen don’t exist outside the capital. Crowdfunding service Indiegogo’s Anastasia Emmanuel has a vision to switch the UK on to its own potential.

Innovation everywhere

“Great Britain is a nation of innovation but Britons are being stifled by a lack of available finance. Through the power of Indiegogo, we want to see kitchen table businesses thrive, nurture new inventions, support amazing causes and stimulate Britons to fulfil their entrepreneurial ambitions and creative dreams,” she says.

Emmanuel took a moment to chat with CrowdfundInsider to elaborate on her plan to enable UK business inside and outside the capital. Entrepreneurs outside London have a much tougher time finding and getting their ideas financed because venture capitalists and angel investors are so often London-based and London-focused, she observed.

That’s a situation that distorts the nature of business success in this country.

‘More than London’ says Indiegogo

“We believe that lack of crowdfunding successes outside London, isn’t because of a lack of innovation or creative talent, but, a lack of awareness of crowdfunding as a viable alternative to traditional finance, be it bank loans, investment or grants,” she said. “London is it’s own bubble and we have amazing success stories every week on Indiegogo, distributing millions of pounds.”

In pursuit of the mission to make those outside London more aware of the potential of crowdfunding services, Indiegogo recently sent its roadshow to several cities across the UK. This will be the first of many such attempts as the service attempts to help stimulate business outside the capital, said Emmanuel.

Taking a slice

Investors take note — while it remains true that reward-based crowdfunding services such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo don’t yet offer a true return on any investment (beyond the chance to get to know innovators with good ideas) Indiegogo does plan to introduce an equity crowdfunding  platform in future.

Image c/o: Harshil Shah

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Sponsored by the City of London, Starting a Crowdfunding Business (£5/ticket) is aimed at those who already run or are planning to launch new crowdfunding platforms.

The event consists of a seminar with Governance, Risk and Compliance advisor, Jay Tikam, of Vedanvi Business and Risk Consultancy. Jay will explain how crowd funding businesses can become authorised with the Financial Conduct Authority, and how you can exploit that status once you achieve it.

From the event publicity:

“Crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending is booming at an exponential rate. Recent research revealed that, globally, a new crowdfunding project is created every three minutes, with around 500 new projects created every day. The industry is currently doubling every sixty days!”

“Technology and funding, previously the biggest barriers to entry, are now no longer preventing entry of new players in this market place. The biggest obstacle now is getting through regulatory approval.”

Get your tickets at Eventbrite.

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