Since 2008, CAN has been at the forefront of innovation—facilitating and driving the conversations about technology, society and critical making. It has played an important role in uncovering and contextualising noteworthy work, featured on the festival and gallery circuit or developed as academic research. From online/offline publications to live events, CAN’s initiatives have played an instrumental in shaping the innovative creative practices we know today.
Over the last 15 years and with over 100,000 monthly visitors, we’ve cultivated a progressive audience of artists, designers, technologists and cultural producers that push the boundaries of creative production every day. We spend hundreds of hours every month to research, curate, edit, develop, maintain and manage this website. We also provide free access to over 5,000 students through our educational partnerships worldwide. None of this would be possible without the support of our readers.
If you enjoy reading our articles and find them valuable, we kindly ask you for your support: either by becoming a member or making a donation. Your support will go a long way in keeping CAN alive.
→ Membership
By becoming a member you will be able to access all content on CAN, post your own projects, events or announcements (for organisations), access full job archive and benefit from discounts and complete ad-free reading.
Joining CAN is simple––just click on the PayPal button above and complete the registration. It’s only $20/year! For organisations, please click here.
Q&A
Why are articles locked?
For the first 8 years (until 2016) all articles on CAN were open to public. We tried inviting our readership to join as members to support CAN but the response was marginal. Only a small number of dedicated readers understood the struggle (not only specific to CAN but independent publishing as a whole) and we mostly got by while doing other jobs. By 2016 things had gotten so difficult that we had to either require support from readers or shut down CAN completely. We decided that saving CAN was more important than providing open access—and membership is very affordable. However, we do still offer free access to students via our educational partnerships.
What about ads?
There are occasional ads on CAN, purchased by educational organisation to promote courses. These are visible to public visitors only, not members. We also value your privacy and do not use 3rd party ad platforms. In addition, we support the move away from the current model of the web where privacy is traded for access. We believe in the model where the community/reader supports the publisher and vice versa.
How are the funds used?
Our current income is enough for one person on the team (2 days/week) and pays for hosting and a number of other services required to provide core features.
We would like to do is be able to bring more voices to CAN and pay our contributors. We have tried to do this in the past but it has proved incredibly difficult without the funds. Reaching our goal would allow us to bring on at least one contributing editor part time.
What is the long term plan?
We understand the importance of keeping CAN as open as possible and this is why only articles older than 2 years are locked. As the memberships gain momentum and we gather sufficient support we would consider relaxing or removing the locks altogether. After all it is in CAN’s benefit for the readership to grow. However, we do not believe that providing extra content for members is the way forward. We want our members to support CAN because they understand its importance and will remain members regardless of whether the content is open access or not. This is a hard balance to strike but we are working on it. The important thing is that currently, at over 50% of goal, CAN is moving forward even though it has taken a very long time to arrive at this point.
