Today, I’m excited to announce two new leaders at Kickstarter in newly created roles.

Sarah Hromack joined us six weeks ago as Kickstarter’s first-ever Chief Culture Officer, and Jamie Wilkinson joined us two weeks ago as our first-ever Chief Product Officer. Sarah and Jamie have both built distinguished careers working in service to artists and creators. We continue this journey together working to fulfill our mission to help bring creative projects to life.

This summer, Kickstarter joined forces with four film and artist support organizations in New Orleans — NOVAC, The New Orleans Film Society, #CreateLouisiana, and Film New Orleans — to form the New Orleans Tricentennial Story Incubator. The plan? To help bring to life five films from local filmmakers about their city, ahead of NOLA’s 2018 Tricentennial celebration.

Five years ago today a Kickstarter team was supposed to be over in the UK celebrating our first international expansion. Unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy trapped them in a soggy New York. But the Kickstarter community in the UK quickly flourished regardless: In the last five years, 27,500 UK projects have launched, and they’ve attracted £168 million in pledges.

This felt like the right moment to look back at some of our favorite UK projects. It was a tough list to whittle down, but we hope it conveys the breadth of the creativity that has come out of Kickstarter in the UK, and the impact those projects have had at home and abroad. 

Making movies is tough, but thrilling. And there’s nothing more thrilling for filmmakers than to see the fruits of their labor in post-production and eventually on to festivals and distribution. But there are countless challenges along the way, and filmmakers must to be able to step out of the edit and see their work on a larger format in order to be able to fine-tune it and, ultimately, lock picture.

Kickstarter’s Film team wants to ease the financial pressure on alumni filmmakers in post-production who are looking for a venue to screen their work. So, earlier this year, we decided to open our fifty-seat theater at our headquarters in Brooklyn to select Kickstarter alumni with films nearing completion. This gives them the chance to show their works-in-progress to funders, collaborators, and test audiences. For some of them, it will be the first time they see their work on a big screen.

A home for citizen-run investigations. A platform for community storytelling. A podcast network created to revolutionize the medium.

Since Kickstarter launched eight years ago, writers, photographers, and podcasters have used it to forge their own paths in journalism. And a community of readers and listeners has followed: as of this month, over $10 million has been pledged to Journalism projects on Kickstarter.

To mark the milestone, we spoke with the creators behind three memorable Kickstarter-funded journalism projects. They shared their thoughts on the future of independent journalism and the potential for journalists —  by teaming up with the Kickstarter community  — to transform the field.

Surprising things happen when creators and their supporters make things together. 

Leading up to the launch of Commissions, our newest creative prompt, we’re highlighting twelve Kickstarter-funded creations that resulted from collaborations between creators and their backers. Take a look, then start working on your own Commissions project to launch this November.

We often learn new things about ourselves while working on creative projects. Jesse Genet launched Lumi, a line of light-sensitive ink kits, over the course of two Kickstarter campaigns. In the process, she discovered that she loved solving the logistical puzzle of shipping things. So she shifted her company's focus to helping other creators design beautiful packaging for their projects. We asked Genet to share some tips on how to plan for packaging and shipping before you launch a Kickstarter campaign.

Personalized rock songs, customized storybooks, and tweets transformed into comic strips.

These are just a few of the rewards we’ve seen emphasizing the spirit of backer-creator collaboration that’s always been at the heart of Kickstarter. Now, we’re putting this type of collaboration front and center with Commissions, an open call for projects that invite backers into the creative process.