One of the biggest challenges in this project for the past few months has been to assess our funding sources, and ascertain how much we can rely on grassroots fundraising and individual donors to turn these traditional music recordings into a publication. After getting estimates from friends in Tbilisi, Georgia about the cost of transcription and editing of our recordings, the Americans in this project - Carl Linich, Avery Book, Rosalie Elkinton ('11.5) and I - launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund discrete aspects of this project. Kickstarter is a website that allows artists to fundraise for their projects by setting a monetary goal to which individuals can pledge money. If the goal is met or exceeded, individuals donate the money. If it is not met, none of the individuals have to donate. We established $3,000 as the minimum goal, and it was met within a little more than 24 hours. Currently, individuals from Europe, Canada, and the United States have pledged a total of $4,380, which will go towards paying professionals in Tbilisi to make sheet music transcriptions of the recordings and begin sound mixing each raw recording. The total cost of the project is closer to $20,000, so we're hoping to continue raising money in the next 16 days.
Below is a link to our video about the project (a required part of any Kickstarter campaign):
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/174626307/svan-recording-project?ref=live
We have more information at the www.svanrecordingproject.com, and there are a few audio posts on the global conversation that include sound clips from this project.
I graduated from Brown this December and I'm hoping to spend some time this spring applying for more grants from foundations to continue raising money for the Svan Recording Project. I'll continue to post on the Global Conversation Website with news of our work.
