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Detroit gets big share of Kickstarter microgrants

Thursday, October 28, 2010

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Detroit

Kickstarter may be a well-known buzzword in the Internet startup world, but it's also becoming well known in Detroit. And for good reason.

Excerpt:

Idealists like Noam Kimmelman, Tom Nardone and Ellen Donnelly flock to Detroit, eager to lay claim to what they see as a blank canvas for urban renewal.

Their projects are creative, artsy and altruistic -- but not quite fodder for traditional grants.

So each has turned to kickstarter.com , a global micro-granting Web site for art, film and creative projects. The three are among a dozen at any given time in metro Detroit asking the world for chunks of $25 or $50 to fund projects in their quest to fix the city. Donors have given thousands of dollars, so far, to local art-as-renewal projects.

It's a phenomenon the Brooklyn-based company is seeing only in Detroit.

"There's a groundswell of people all over, saying, 'Let's save Detroit,'" said Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler. "It's seen as a kind of wild west for art."

Read the rest of the story here.

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