PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY NEEDS YOUR HELP!

This spring, Performance Philosophy is launching our first crowd-funding campaign, to ensure the continued running of the Performance Philosophy Journal (now in its fourth year) and the online network, and most importantly, to keep open a space for creative, experimental thinking through publications, events, and community.

WE NEED YOUR HELP. Performance Philosophy does not make a profit from its events, requires no membership fee to join, and relies almost entirely on volunteer labour. Publishing, translation, accessibility, and supporting innovative forms of knowledge production take time and money. We are currently in need of £5000 to cover the costs of running the journal for the upcoming year.  

If you believe in new forms of thinking, philosophizing, performing and doing, in and beyond the academic, aesthetic, and artistic sphere: would you please consider supporting us?

www.crowdfunder.co.uk/performance-philosophy

WHAT IS PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY?

Performance Philosophy is an international constellation of researchers, practitioners, scholars and activists interested in the investigation of new forms and formats of thinking, philosophizing, performing and doing, in and beyond the academic, aesthetic and artistic sphere. The network is open to all researchers and practitioners concerned with how the relationships between performance and philosophy inform each other and intertwine. Founded in 2012, the online community now includes almost 3000 members. The organisation’s core activities include: an international book series - which has published nearly 20 titles so far - as well as an Open Access journal, and a biennial international conference-festival.

WHY DO WE NEED MONEY?

With no membership fee and active experimentation in collective and horizontal models of organisation, Performance Philosophy aims to be financially inclusive and non-hierarchical. Performance Philosophy is not a profit-making organization, and unlike many academic networks, anyone is welcome to become a member of Performance Philosophy, regardless of their financial means.

We aim to continue this financial openness and maintain our relative independence from institutions, but this means that we now require support in the form of donations - particularly in order to maintain the upkeep of our Performance Philosophy journal, which is now in its fourth year. Until now, the journal has been able to sustain itself through a series of one-off donations from partner Universities; however, we cannot rely on this ad hoc income long term. The aim of this funding campaign is to provide us with a further period of short term support whilst we research a financial model that will be more sustainable yet without sacrificing our commitment to accessibility. 

This double blind peer-reviewed journal receives hundreds of contributions from scholars and practitioners for each volume, and its Open Access platform allows it to be widely read and cited both by members of the Performance Philosophy network and by other interested thinkers, artists, and performers outside of academic circles. We publish not only standard-format articles, but also experimental formats including video, audio, spatially-arranged text, collectively authored performative projects, and we are always open to new forms of knowledge production and critical thinking.

WHAT DO WE NEED MONEY FOR?

We are currently fundraising to cover the costs of running our journal and hosting our online network. Our goal is to raise £5000, which will support us for one year of producing the journal and and help us increase the readership by translating key articles into languages other than English. 

The costs for which we are raising money include:

Publishing Costs (around £2000)

• Membership of CrossRef: £250/year

Ensures that the articles are indexed and catalogued with a unique DOI number

• Proofing and layout costs: £750/issue

• Domain and hosting: £100/year

This includes the cost of hosting both the journal and the online network.

Translation Fund (around £2000)

We are committed to increasing academic dialogue and conversation outside of the English language, and aim to raise money to support translation activities. Thus far, we have published a bilingual issue in English and German and are looking ahead to the possibility of future issues in Spanish and Portuguese, incorporating scholars in our network from South and Latin America. At the moment, we are hoping to raise £2000 to support translation efforts for the journal, with the aim of translating a few key articles based on interest and support. Given standard academic translating rates of £25/page, this will allow us to translate two key articles of 20 pages each.

Accessibility Fund (around £1000)

We are committed to fostering alternative models of thinking and doing that challenge exclusionary thought, and to expanding the accessibility of both the journal and our in-person events. This money will go towards hiring accessibility consultants who will assist us in making sure that our journal and gatherings are as inclusive as possible.

WHAT ELSE?

Any other money that we raise will go to support the other costs of running Performance Philosophy, which include hosting and managing our website and online community, supporting grants for independent scholars and artists, and offering seed funding for projects around the globe on topics relating to performance philosophy. These outputs might include:

Other support for our members and writers (around £2000/year)

We aim to provide small grants for our authors to support the costs of obtaining permissions for the use of images and other content in their written work, which are especially valuable for independent scholars and artists who publish their work in our journal.

Seed Funding (around £2500/year)

In 2016, we were able to grant seed funding to five groups around the world organising events in line with the spirit of Performance Philosophy. This funding supported wide-ranging events in Slovenia, Belgium, and Trinidad and Tobago.

YOU TELL US!  We are interested to hear from network members about how they would like to see performance philosophy develop as a network, and what they think could be accomplished together with a little extra financial support!