Did you know that only 8% of Spanish artists can make a living from their work? The cultural industry's obsolete and highly intermediated. Culpass was born with the mission to empower creators by helping them to create unique cultural experiences in a simple way. We believe artists are the key to create diverse communities and make relationships more human. Culpass is a marketplace for collaboration among artists, booking venues for their events and promoting/selling tickets of the events.
Culpass is a platform that serves and facilitates cultural creators and venues to create unique, collaborative and participatory cultural experiences. This platform works is a marketplace, very similar to Airbnb. Creators, independently and without intermediaries are able to find other artists from various fields with whom to collaborate in cultural events. In addition, they can discover unique spaces to book and host their experiences. Finally, the platform offers tools and learning courses to users on the creation of events and experiences, as well as tools and resources throughout the process of creating such events: from pre-event (promotion, ticket sales...) to post-event (customer reviews, payouts...).
When we talk about unique cultural experiences we are talking about cultural events of great innovation and diversity. We understand these events as the collaboration of diverse artists that bring together different fields/expertises to give birth to something never seen before, more enriching and multicultural. In addition, these events are characterized by being intimate and on a smaller scale, where the public participates actively and dynamically in the event, being one more "actor" of the experience, learning, enriching and enjoying. Participants feels like part of a family, of a movement; because they can join with friends and family, or just by themselves to meet new people. Nevertheless, the atmosphere created is always driven to create this sense of belonging.
In short, the Culpass project was born with the mission to humanize relationships and connect people while stimulating the local economy. With this project we want to make creators become an engine of cultural change and values. In addition, we want to give them the tools and means to turn their passion into a decent career, because currently in Spain only 8% of artists can make a living from their creative work.
Please highlight how the concept/idea can be exemplary in this context
Culpass was born contemplating in its culture and philosophy four SDGs: Quality education (4), Decent work and economic growth (8), Industry, innovation and infrastructure (9) and Sustainable cities and communities (11).
Our goal is to create a community connected to local heritage and traditions, cultural and artistic dynamics. We believe that creators and artists are the key to this. Artists are often sensitive and empathetic people who become they key to transmit and pass on to new generations our heritage, traditions, as well as values necessary to achieve a united, diverse and sustainable community.
- Our first concrete objective is to promote the circular economy based on strengthening the concept of neighborhood. Through the Culpass experiences, the platform gives visibility to local creators and spaces such as bookstores, stores, bars, restaurants, squares and even private houses. Said this, getting to know this local venues we are planning to generate a commercial flow around these spaces. Our calculations estimate that 80% of the spaces where events are held can increase their visibility by more than 50%.
- We create job opportunities for creators. Our challenge is for 40% of Spanish artists to earn more than 12,000 euros per year in the next 5 years (currently less than 16%).
- Collaboration with brands that contribute to environmental sustainability, such as the Madrid beer brand La Virgen, or the sustainable fashion brand from Barcelona, @Laagam.
- However, our emphasis lies on the influence that the platform can generate in creators and the public by promoting events and experiences with social impact, bringing and making visible issues such as inequality or climate emergency. This is done through collaborations with experts such as @climabar__.
- Finally, Culpass also aims to disintermediate the cultural industry through the marketplace, simplifying and making the event creative process more efficient and generating more value for the creators.
Please highlight how the concept/idea can be exemplary in this context
Culpass experiences are unique cultural events. These experiences are based on the collaboration between creators who usually come from different cultures and fields. Events are an intimate experiences, with a low number of participants where quality and participation as well as personalization take precedence over large crowds. These experiences favor inclusion and quality of experience for people, generating ecosystems more predisposed to communication, learning, meeting new people, transmission of culture, among others. Of course, such events are based on participatory processes that involve local communities as well as visitors, tourists and others. The process, therefore, is a "handcraft" creation from all the parties to delivery the best experience to the audience. This experience aren't born only with monetization objectives, but with an altruist vision.
It should be noted that thanks to the process of creation of experiences that we offer to the creators, as well as the facilities of collaboration between artists and the reservation of spaces, these events and experiences are highly replicable, being able to be replicated over time; or even in different geographical areas. We are proud to say that this local solution solves a global challenge. This project can be scaled to any part of the world, since in every city there are artists, culture and unique venues for cultural experiences.
Unlike other ticket-sale-platforms, we focused in the process of creation, collaboration and community, bridging the gap that connects the three parties.
Please highlight how the concept/idea can be exemplary in this context
As explained above, the cultural and artistic sector tends to be a complicated industry in terms of job opportunities. The main reasons are due to the fact that it is a very unstandardized and highly intermediated sector. In Spain alone, 46.9% of cultural creators state that their total annual income is equal to or less than €8,000.
The key objectives of the Culpass project in terms of inclusion are:
- to generate greater job opportunities for independent cultural creators (musicians, dancers, plastic artists, sculptors, artistic entrepreneurs). To this end, we offer them tools and facilities to create experiences such as collaborations, space booking, marketing tools or ticketing tools, among others.
- Increase public participation: because the cultural events industry is not standardized, the creation of events is an expensive and time-consuming process, so there is always a tendency to do the same type of events. Thanks to the process we propose, the creation of more innovative and collaborative experiences allows for public participation in a much more dynamic way. Culpass events always take into account that the public participates and is enriched, learns and connects through proactivity.
- Co-design: the process of creating events that we propose has co-creation and collaboration between artists at the core of the formula. The experiences resulting from this multidisciplinary process are much richer and diverse.
- Thanks to the standardization of the process, we are carrying out an innovation in value, that is, generating the same impact at a lower cost. This is why we estimate that creators and experts are cutting costs related to the organization of experiences by around 20%. This will have a positive impact on event prices, making culture, art and heritage in general more accessible and affordable.
Please highlight how this approach can be exemplary
Culpass is a cultural project with the aim of making relationships more human, conveying a sense of belonging through local communities. Humanizing relationships can only be understood as a combination of diversity, inclusion, sustainability and quality experiences.
Our project combines sustainability through a new business process based on culture, traditions, knowledge, arts, diversity and local creativity. We do this by connecting synergies between creators, venues and the public to encourage a life based on circular and local economy, as well as the heritage of traditions.
On the other hand, Culpass leverages diversity and inclusion by mobilizing integrated approaches, based on participatory and dynamic events and experiences, involving communities. It is worth noting that this process is highly replicable thanks to our business model, the Marketplace, as well as the existence of culture, artists and spaces everywhere.
Lastly, we believe that this project is aesthetic and generates high quality experiences. We achieve this by bringing together quality artists from diverse cultures and fields, bringing cultural transformation to any place or venue that demonstrates the way in which an environment can come to share culture and more human experiences. In such a way, connecting with local heritage and historical traditions as well as demographic realities, cultural and artistic dynamics.
In Spain, for example, we are facing a major problem known as "Empty Spain", with more than 42% of municipalities in Spain at risk of complete depopulation in the next 15 years. Therefore, we are working hard to bring these opportunities not only to the cities, but also to the rural environment. We also expect that with this, tourism and cultural experiences will reactivate the rural sector and stop this demographic trend.
Unlike traditional solutions or mainstream practices that you see in the day-to-day cultural and arts industry, our unique value proposition is that we are innovating in value. Innovating in value means delivering greater value at lower cost.
The innovations that Culpass brings are summarized in six points explained below:
- Quality events and professional growth: creators are at the center of the formula, we empower them to have control and decision-making power, we give them resources and facilities to carry out the experience of their dreams. In addition, we give them sources of inspiration from other success stories. This generates better efficiency and ease of creating higher quality experiences, which translates directly into professional growth for the creators.
- Greater cultural offerings for the audience: culpass offers an enriched and varied offer of events and cultural experiences for the audience.
- Venue visibility: venues are more easily accessible to creators and the participants of the events.
- User experience: Our platform is simple and intuitive. It provides a great user experience, making it easy and intuitive to create events, generating confidence for all Culpass users confidence to all Culpass users. We want to make Culpass seen as an accessible platform for everyone.
- Strong and recognizable brand: we have values that make us easily identifiable, people trust us and people trust us and people want to be part of the movement. We believe in make relationships more human. In addition, we have a close and responsive customer service. We are seen as a solver and facilitator. Always courteous, close to people and friendly.
- Empowered Non-Customers: in order to create local communities, we encourage any Culpass user, including the audience and the public, to create unique experiences in a very easy way, since everyone has something to share.
Culpass was born as a technology-based cultural startup. We understand the development of our business in three main aspects:
First, the development of the digital platform. It is a marketplace that works both on mobile devices and on computers/tablets. The decision to choose to make a hybrid application is to get a first MVP in an acceptable time and cost, but with a guarantee to offer our users a great user experience. The marketplace is being custom developed by our development team using the latest web technologies: React, Node.js, MongoDB and Stripe. The development has been divided into three stages launching a first alpha version in April 2022, a solid MVP in June and lastly, a completed version in Fall 2022.
Second, the promotion of the platform and Sales strategy are divided into: 1) audience and creators (based on AIDA method); 2) and venues by consultative selling. Our channels are:
- Content creation and promotion: events with creators to showcase the contents and potential of the platform.
- Direct channels to microinfluencers: creators and venues function as an external marketing channel.
- Direct contact to venues.
- Joint advertising with other companies that want to support culture and their values.
- Newsletter campaigns.
Third, the implementation of the project: the project consists of five stages depending on the market.
- A first four-months-stage limited to Madrid area, a city with an intense cultural sector and a large and diverse population (+6M people)
- Because Culpass is a very scalable business at low cost, the second stage (2 years) contemplates expanding throughout the rest of the Iberian Peninsula (potential market of almost 28,000 million euros).
- EURO zone, with a potential market of €230,000 million.
- Expansion to America, starting with New York City (potential market of 300 billion euros within 3-4 years).
- Finally, a stage with a global expansion with a target market of 180 countries and a market of 1.3 trillion US dollars.
If our project is awarded in the New European Bauhaus Prizes 2022 and we receive a grant of EUR 15,000 and a communication package, we would take a series of initiatives to make very robust project and generate greater social impact earlier. These initiatives are summarized as:
- Invest €8,000 into the development of a more robust and scalable platform that gives greater visibility to our users by summer 2022 (this would allow us to reach a product at least one quarter earlier). We believe this would help us to reach our customers much faster and deliver our solution to them earlier.
- Organize 10 events with social impact creators in Madrid with an average event cost of 300€/event. Those events will be taken both in Madrid city but also in small towns to give visibility to rural areas. This would take €3,000 in order to organize the events by us in co-creation with other artists.
- Launch a promotion and marketing campaign in Madrid through social networks (Instagram and LinkedIn) with microinfluencers. The goal would be to reach a community of 20,000 followers on instagram by summer. To achieve this we'd need to invest €2,000 on Facebook/Instagram ads.
- Create a marketing team and start the promotion to overcome a first milestone of 100,000 impressions through social networks, direct channels, pilot events for the next whole year. Although the rest €2,000 wouldn't be enough to conform a full-time team for marketing, it would establish a base for a future team.
@Kleinman Ruiz, 2022
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