Crowdfunding Canadian Theatre: An Exploratory Analysis of Kickstarter Data with US Comparison

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive exploratory and descriptive analysis of Canadian theatre projects on the Kickstarter platform, using both quantitative and qualitative data. In the country-level analysis, comparative statistics are provided with Kickstarter projects based in the United States. Our quantitative analysis finds that many theatre projects in Canada are successfully raising funds on Kickstarter, with the success rate being similar to that of theatre projects in the US, but on a relatively smaller scale in terms of the amount of money raised. Only Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, have more than three theatre projects on Kickstarter and of these, only Quebec has a proportion of Canadian theatre projects (and successful projects) on Kickstarter that are lower than its proportion of Canada’s population. In our qualitative analysis we find that theatre crowdfunding in Canada has a strong philanthropic component, and highlight limitations with Kickstarter data and the challenges of measuring success in crowdfunding more generally.