I wrote a few weeks back about the rise of amateur culture, and the possible coming boom in creative content produced by non-professionals. Bob Baker’s extended discussion of the trend led me to this report by Demos on The Pro-Am Revolution, subtitled ”how enthusiasts are changing our economy and society.”
The report offers a fascinating spin on the traditional amateur/professional dichotomy we’ve taken for granted (professionals create exceptional work, amateurs are lovable hacks). It’s a bias that lives in many industries, and certainly in the arts. The Demos report sketches out a third alternative in the amateur/professional spectrum, the ”Pro-Am,” described as ”innovative, committed and networked amateurs working to professional standards.”
From software design to international policy to astronomy to art, Pro-Ams are creating exceptional work outside of the professional world. And, as my early weblog suggested, they are likely to be a growing force in cultural production, distribution, and consumption for the coming decade.
Give the paper a skim to see how your professional-grade organization might respond to or engage this emerging and passionate group.
Hard to know what “amateur” means. We celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s miraculous year 1905 in which he shook the foundations of several fields of physics. He was employed as a patent examiner so was, literally, an amateur physicist. Isaac Newton became Master of the Mint and did his late work in physics literally as an amateur. Same for major poets, etc.
Andrew, It’s not quite the same thing, but definitely check out the Media Streams Metadata Exchange Project at UC Berkeley:
http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/msmdx/blog/introduction/
Their stated goal is “to create a platform for collaboratively annotating, retrieving, sharing and remixing multimedia content on the World Wide Web.” But I think the underlying concept applies for all art: finding an underlying system that allows for art to go through multiple stages of collaboration and re-invention by various groups.
It also nicely ties in with your previous posts on bringing in enthusiasts who want to do more than passively experience art.