Building a Home for Book Arts in London

Artists Simon Goode and Ira Yonemura talk about what it was like to connect with their community directly through their Kickstarter campaign.

Artists Simon Goode and Ira Yonemura opened the London Centre for Book Arts in 2012 to provide an open-access work space and resources to people interested in book-binding, printing, and self-publishing. “People work on all sorts of different projects [here]. Some of them are artists, some are craftspeople, some are hobbyists,” Goode says.

The studio’s membership swelled over the years, and the pair started talking about what it would take to expand the Centre. “We knew that we wouldn’t be able to do it in our own,” Yonemura says. So in July 2017, they launched a Kickstarter project to expand into a new studio, planning to host workshops and special events, house a new library and reading space, and purchase new equipment. And with the support of 470 backers, the pair raised £24,000 (over $33,000) to expand the London Centre for Book Arts.

In the video above, Goode and Yonemura talk about why they decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign after years of being entirely self-funded, and what it was like to connect with their community directly through the project.

Discover more Kickstarter creator stories here.

Ready to launch your own Kickstarter project? Get started here.