FEAST: PB by and for artists

Since February 2009, a group of artists in New York City has been organizing its own variation on participatory budgeting, called FEAST (Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics). As the website explains:
FEAST is a recurring public dinner designed to use community-driven financial support to democratically fund new and emerging artmakers. At each FEAST, participants will pay a sliding-scale entrance fee for which they will receive supper and a ballot. Diners will vote on a variety of proposed artist projects. At the end of dinner, the artist whose proposal receives the most votes will be awarded funds collected through the entrance fee to produce the project. The work will then be presented during the next FEAST.

Saturday October 3rd is the 5th FEAST event. The previous events have funded 11 diverse arts projects, many of them political or community-oriented. Do FEAST and other similar efforts, such as the UK's "Who Wants to Be?", represent a new form of PB, emerging autonomously from artist communities?