Matchfunding, Crowdfunding, and the Cultural Economics Perspective

Carolina Dalla Chiesa, Assistant Professor of Cultural Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam

As digitalisation reshapes how culture is produced, accessed, and financed, a new online economy is taking root—one that Waldfogel has described as a “golden age of popular culture.” This Art Talk went deeply into how lower barriers to creation and consumption are driving profound shifts across cultural industries, and with them, new models of funding are flourishing. Crowdfunding and emerging matchfunding schemes are revealing how creators mobilise both use and non-use values, fostering alternative pathways for sustaining artistic and cultural production.