Please describe your proposed solution.
Our solution is to develop a comprehensive and representative database containing information about women's participation in art history, also from a decolonial perspective. We will give special focus to female creation in NFTs, presenting how Blockchain is democratic and open to enable greater gender equity in the arts.
With this open database, which will be released on an interactive platform, we will publicize female achievement in NFT art and contribute to the promotion of gender equity in the art world and the blockchain ecosystem. The platform will highlight the importance of women's participation in society, and provide information on the creative and professional works of women artists.
With the evolution of the database and platform, we plan to use a decentralized governance model inspired by the Catalyst project, in which women artists will be able to contribute, vote, and support governance, and receive rewards for doing so. Our project aims not only to increase women's participation in the NFT art market, but also to expand the use cases of the technology and knowledge built with the Catalyst project and Cardano Blockchain to create applications aimed at empowering women. Although there are some databases and platforms that address the presence of women in the arts, few of them work with a systematic overview of women in art history, few are open and collaborative, and even fewer are focused on NFT art.
Once launched, the platform can be accessed for personal, academic and professional research. It can also be used as a reference for the construction of educational and informational materials dedicated to the importance of gender equality and the promotion of female visibility in the artistic field.
BACKGROUND
Gender inequality is not a new phenomenon, but a historical consequence that is present throughout the world.
Gender inequality is not a point of view, but a fact backed up by statistics, be it in highly developed countries or not. This results in the persistence of many forms of violence, including the obstruction of women's access to education and job opportunities. In the arts, for example, less than a century ago, women were barred from attending art schools and colleges around the world.
- Art created by women sells for almost 50% less than art made by men.
- Only five to 15% of current NFT artist accounts are run by women.
- Out of the top 10 most expensive NFT artworks sold to this date, only one belonged to a female creator.
<https://nftnow.com/features/art-women-sells-50-less-mens-nfts-could-change-that/>
<https://news.artnet.com/market/nft-sales-just-16-percent-women-2030490>
History shows how uncountable female artists had their work signed by men or published anonymously in order to be recognized or taken seriously. Although the art market is now relatively more open to women, the historical consequences of these erasures still persist. For example, most museums and galleries around the world have far more works by male artists in their collections than by female artists, a fact that many artists today are fighting against, such as the Guerilla Girls collective. If we were asked to name brilliant male artists in the history of art, the answer would be quick and easy, even for those who do not come from the field of art; there are many men who have been elevated to genius, such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and so on. However, to name five female artists who have been considered geniuses by history, we have to think hard to come to a conclusion. The history that has been told to us needs to be reformulated.
An important step in this journey is to remove the invisibility of these female artists, to tell their stories, to showcase their work, and to include them in the history of art as relevant professionals, as well as to encourage them to enter and pursue this career. The opportunity to have a beautiful and open platform on the Internet makes it possible for these stories to not only be told, but also to be replicated and perpetuated.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
The challenge brief describes itself:
“Catalyst Open aims to seed the ideas which might, in time, grow the ADA economy and inform our future funding priorities*. It’s all about* exploring the gaps where Catalyst innovation funding hasn’t reached yet.”
And this is exactly what we are proposing here with this project: to run a pilot project that involves exploratory research, establishing partnerships, and constituting the first database of the project. This, in turn, will help us to arrive at the stage of releasing the open-source platform containing our data bank of women artists and with the functionality of collaboration in the Catalyst Project’s style. Therefore, we are seeking support for our initial foundation.
Unfortunately, we are still too far in Catalyst from having a challenge dedicated to women’s empowerment. Luckily, we can count on Catalyst Open challenge to accommodate this part of our project.
The project aims to expand gender equity and increase the participation of women in the Cardano ecosystem.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
This project requires considerable research, and the representativeness and quality of the initial dataset is one of the key metrics of success in this project. For the first stage, we aim to have a minimum viable dataset that allows other contributors to better visualize and join this project, and also to find stakeholders that can support it later. The quality of this initial dataset will be measured by external review, based on the feedback collected by the interaction with other female artists and art & feminism researchers. We have access to a great network of experts, feminist collectives, and art collectives of which we can count on their support. In addition, the initial dataset will be actively shared with the Catalyst community, and NFT collectives interested in the topic. For example, organizations like: #WeTheWomen collection; World of Women, and UnicornDAO.
By connecting people with are non-familiar with blockchain and the Cardano Ecosystem, we will be successful also in raising awareness about its potential and ways to engage in the community.
In the long-term, the success of this project can be measured by its impact both in the Cardano/Catalyst community, with an increased presence of women artists in the NFT space, and increased visibility of successful artist women - not only from North American and European countries but from other countries as well.
Although the number of women participating in the Art NFT industry could be used as a metric to determine our impact, we also need to be realistic and consider that this project alone will not be the determinant cause for the increased participation of women. Therefore, community feedback and involvement will be used to measure our success qualitatively.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
After establishing the initial dataset and collecting feedback about its robustness and quality, we will start a social media campaign on Twitter and Instagram to release drops of information about the project, results from the research phase, and to disseminate the artists’ work. In addition, all the project results will be shared in the open channels of the Catalyst community, including Town Halls.
Instead of doing passive communication and waiting the audience to arrive at our platform and data bank, we will do active communication and do our best to reach people beyond the artistic niches. Our project is about giving visibility; therefore, we will work hard on communication to make it visible.
Finally, the web platform itself will be the place to make the data bank available and public to anyone.