MUTI: Supporting Artists and Nurturing Creativity on NEAR
MUTI is both a collective and a DAO. Founded in 2021 by Tabea and Nuno, its main goal is to support artists and educate them about web3, its advantages, and possibilities, especially for creative minds.
Both Tabea and Nuno have experience in the cultural field for many years. “I started working in the cultural area at 15 years old, being part of cultural associations, working on festivals and events, and with all kinds of artists. In 2015, I moved from Germany to Portugal and started to dive into the local scene. Besides my regular job, I was always connected to associations and places, which would gather creative minds,” tells Tabea.
Nuno is a musician who describes himself as a traveler and a food lover: “Self-taught artist, have been exploring music for over ten years, lived on the road in a camper, busking, and working as a cook in different countries around Europe. I now have the pleasure to have my own music cave and explore weird stuff.”
Last year during the first Hackathon Near, Tabea and Nuno put together some ideas on how to onboard creatives on web3. “We submitted one proposal which suggested a creative collective in which the public would have the power to decide on the next artists, future of the collective, by supporting artists and receiving social tokens, which would lead to a % of the influence on the collective. In order to do so, we had to create a DAO. During the pandemic, it got more difficult to organize physical events, but we both had the goal to create some kind of cultural entity to work with artists. This is how MUTI was born,” remembers Tabea.
MUTI Collective and MUTI DAO were then created at the same time. “The creation of the DAO helped us speed up the process of creating the collective. We are currently setting up a legal entity as well so that both the DAO and collective have a solid foundation,” explains Tabea.
Near: The Right Tool
MUTI was born in the engaging NEAR environment. “NEAR makes sense for us as it has the option for creative minds to participate without yet being a developer or too technical minded. It offers free courses (NEAR university), and the UI is fairly simple, which helps a lot to bring more people in who have never been in contact with crypto before”, tells Tabea.
Supporting Creativity and Artists
MUTI started with the idea of giving artists the tools and financial support that they need — be it buying guitar strings or painting for the next project. “We quickly realized the value of working in web3: fast transactions, no middle man and infinite possibilities to connect artists with other like-minded people, publicity through online streams, and, of course, NFTs and their royalty system,” says Tabea.
Tabea and Nuno are planning on supporting even more artists, with a strong focus on physical events, which include a digital component, such as streams, NFT ticketing, and merchandising sales through NFTs, as well as educating them about NEAR and web3. The artworks pieces produced through the project are sold on Mintbase. MUTI also started a collection on Paras and will support artists by buying NFTs through the DAO.
Growing Community of Artists
Up to now, MUTI has worked with more than 100 artists — through funded projects, residencies, creative bounties, minted NFTs — their council consists of three artists, and every month they are working on onboarding more collaborators. Artists can connect with MUTI through social media and Telegram, where they share open bounties and possibilities. “We’re always looking for artists who would like to do one of our online streams or dive into web3 through NFTs. We have also been restructuring our budget so that we have a certain amount available per month, which we use to keep funding individual projects from artists”, explains Tabea.
Despite the pandemic, MUTI has been very active since its creation. “We organized two physical artistic residencies, three events, two to four online streams in the Metaverse each month (through muti.on), funded nine recording sessions in studios for LPs (through muti.rec program), opened a Mintbase store and sold art pieces, funded 11 individual projects and 11 collaborative projects, received our own space on NEARhub, have a presence on Tamago, organized two workshops (about DeFi & NFTs), and we’ve been programming the rooftop stage at NEARCON in Lisbon,” tells Nuno.
And it does’t stop there. MUTI also collaborate with other DAOs, such as MarmaJ, NxM, Cudo, Incubadora, Mãe Solteira, The Garden Collective DAO, Arroz Criativo, and Gruta.
Heading to a Bright Future
After having a solid base of artists, now the collective is heading toward the future. “Our next steps are creating the legal entity for the collective, producing one physical event per month which will blend the digital with the physical, and collaborating with more DAOs and artists. We are also researching methods for making the DAO self-sustainable — be it through DeFi, an own token, or other mechanisms which can help MUTI become independent”, says Tabea.
Both Nuno and Tabea believe in the future of crypto and how it may impact the lives of the creatives. “Given that I started my crypto journey with NEAR and that we have been able to build something, I am able to see the developments and how the public reacts to them. It started with ‘crypto is a scam’ and slowly became more of an ‘it is real, easier than expected, and actually worth diving into’. I hope it will lose the rather bad image and that we can prove with our work that decentralization and transparency are goals to aim for”, ponders Tabea.
Nuno says he is a dreamer. But who isn’t? “When looking at the current world events, the use cases of crypto for good purposes and the normalization of it when talking about assets and technologies, I feel the image towards it is shifting, and it seems that we might be heading to a bright future with almost infinite potential. Let’s see how the governments and institutions adapt and consider implementing these technologies in their services and governance tools, and hopefully regulations will help bring up the full potential of it for everyone”, he concludes.
This piece was written by Camila Gonzatto. Click to connect with MUTI
