Feast Greece off to Texas for SXSW Digital Creativity Fair

Photo © Yannis Kolesidis

Crowd funding event organizers Feast Greece will be participating in one of the world’s largest digital creativity fairs — the 23rd annual SXSW Interactive Festival — to be held in Austin, Texas, on March 11-15.

Feast Greece has been singled out by the US Embassy in Athens to participate in the event, which serves as an “incubator” of cutting-edge technologies and digital creativity.

Feast Greece’s SXSW participation includes the presentation of the group’s business plan at the Greek SXSW Startup Expo stand organized by International Accelerator, with the support of the Hellenic Initiative and the US Embassy in Athens.

“Part of our mission in Greece is to present to the Greek audience US models from the fields of business, culture and education. Another parallel aim is to create partnerships,” said Thomas J Pierce, Public Affairs Counselor at the US Embassy in Athens.

“Therefore, for the second consecutive year we are sponsoring a Greek mission from the country’s creative economy to participate in SXSW… I am delighted that we have again discovered a group of innovative people doing excellent work in the difficult conditions of the economic and social crisis.”

Photo © Yiannis Simitopoulos

Feast Greece is based on the Feast idea, first developed in the United States in 2010. Today there are 91 community organisations in nine countries.

Photo © Yannis Kolesidis

Feast Greece organizes guerrilla dinners where four projects seeking funding are presented. Applicants have about 10 minutes to present their projects and win over dinner guests’ votes. At the same time, the dinners also provide a great chance to network. Once the event is over, the team with the most votes receives the fees (aka micro-grants) collected during the dinner.

Serving as an alternative way of funding creative projects and innovative business plans with the help of local community, Feast is ideal for art and cultural collectives, creative groups, non-profits, social entrepreneurs, theatre companies, music bands, activist groups, small businesses.

“Our goal at SXSW is to follow and be inspired by new trends in community funding, public and digital communication as well as making those contacts that will pave the way for our next steps in Greece,” said Feast Greece co-founder Argyro Barata.