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Find petit patrons for your art with this new class

Find petit patrons for your art with this new class
Independent Film Project

Brooklyn is home to a dizzying number of art galleries, spaces, and collectives, and it is arguably the place that sees the most usage of the word “curate” to describe everyday tasks such as choosing a bottle of wine or flipping between football games, but last week the borough added an artists center with a quirk that manages to stand out from the crowd — a stamp of approval from the city.

The Made in New York Media Center in Dumbo will provide an educational center for designers, performers, and artists and it has the backing of Mayor Bloomberg himself. Bloomberg’s Office of Media & Entertainment helped to pick the Independent Filmmaker Project as the operator of the facility that will also serve as a venue and affordable community workspace.

The big names attached the project previously sparked rumors that the building would be the host of a Sundance Film Festival outpost in Brooklyn, but if this is the case, the mayor’s office continues to deny it. Still, the center on John Street between Jay and Pearl streets will still offer services to the community, including hosting classes run by tech instructors from the company General Assembly on subjects including public speaking, web design, and storytelling.

Perhaps most usefully for the lingering recession and ongoing federal government shutdown, the first class of the season will teach artists, inventors, and entrepreneurs how to use crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter and AngelList to raise money for their projects from everyday people. The aim of the class is to teach media makers how to start money-making campaigns, using an in-depth case study to look at the myths, facts, and best practices for seeking small-gift patrons, said Marti Adams, a spokeswoman for the center. Arie Abecassis — the founder of AppStori, a crowd-sourcing and funding platform for mobile apps — will teach the class, meaning that students will be getting the inside info straight from the horse’s mouth.

The crowd-funding class has been offered before for other crowds, Adams said, but it was picked as the center’s debut class because of how perpetually broke artists tend to be.

“Crowdfunding for Artists, Inventors, Entrepreneurs, And Everyone Else” at the Made in New York Media Center [30 John St., between Pearl and Jay streets in Dumbo, www.nymediacenter.com]. Oct. 21, 6 pm. $35.

Reach reporter Jaime Lutz at [email protected] or by calling (718) 260-8310. Follow her on Twitter @jaime_lutz.