I’ve been working on a new hub and community for artists on the IndieWeb. The idea is to encourage artists to post on their own site, but also feel part of a community. The site is now live and accepting limited sign ups:
https://artocalypse.org
I wanted to have a platform that doesn’t have an algorithm, or ads. It is also critically important that artists don’t upload work into it – they retain full control of their content permanently on their own website. So the whole idea is built around RSS. We take their feeds and display each artist in reverse date order.
There’s also a discord community behind it with monthly challenges and expos to help inspire your creativity. The expos are curated content that will also be displayed in a separate section to the artists own feed.
The platform costs $40 a year to join, and should be thought of as a club rather than a service. It’s very much a volunteer effort, and the fee goes towards the hosting infrastructure.
It’s been an exciting journey so far – there have been a lot of positive reactions from artists who have seen it. This is my contribution to try and produce engaging web communities away from the big tech platforms.