DK 290604
Contact: Dragan Klaic
balakla@xs4all.nl
Conclusions of a preparatory meeting of festival researchers
Brussels 1-2 May 2004
1 Description
A group of 20 researchers of various disciplines met in Brussels May 1 and 2, 2004,
hosted by the KunstenFestivaldesArts and Vlaams Theater Instituut, with the support of
the Flemish Ministry of Culture, to consider parameters and directions of a possible
systematic research of festivals in Europe. This paper describes the key outcomes of
this meeting.
2 Starting premises
The preparatory meeting envisaged a research project lasting 2 to 3 years and bringing
together competences of researchers from various disciplines: theater scholars, cultural
economists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and cultural researchers who
would work together combining their approaches and methodologies, following
individual interests, within a set of shared principles, criteria and concepts.
The field of research is defined as the festival phenomena in the European cultural
space in a broader sense, going beyond the frontiers of (an expanded) European Union.
The researchers are eager to consider various festival formulae, believing that festivals
have become emblematic for the issues, problems and contradictions of the current
cultural practices, marked by globalization, European integration, institutional fatigue,
dominance of cultural industry and shrinking public subsidies. Festivals reshape the
public spaces in Europe, assert new focal points beyond the traditional cultural centers
and further the intercultural competence of al parties involved.
Festivals are intensive, logistically complex undertaking that rely on multiple
stakeholders, creating divergent and perhaps mutually excluding expectations.
Festivals tend to be rather exposed in the media, closely watched by the professionals,
attractive to the sponsors and funded by the public authorities for the reason that do
not always have much to do with arts and culture. Those circumstances make festivals
rather visible, even prominent but also vulnerable and place them in the zone of
turbulence and public controversy. And yet, the complex dynamics affecting the position
of a festival are rarely systematically researched, especially in a longitudinal and
comparative manner, and thus widely misunderstood.
3 Objectives
The purpose of the research is to systematically examine the crucial factors of festival
operation and their mutual interaction, so as to analyze the combined investment in
various festival formulae and their artistic, economic and social impact, developmental
scenarios and effective models.
4 Outcomes
The results of this research will be addressed to
- festival operators and participants;
- public authorities offering subsides
- sponsors and
- the media.
The research project will
- deliver a set of conclusions on the contemporary festival practices and their impact
- forecast some future trends in the running of festivals
- offer a set of recommendations for festival operators and festival participants, public
authorities and sponsors.
5 Selection criteria
The research will focus on the performing arts and music festivals and seek to include
the new media festivals. There is no clear consensus yet on the inclusion of film
festivals but there is a certain predilection to include those film festivals whose artistic
ambitions clearly prevail over commercial objectives, thus festivals positioned in various
specialized niches of film genres and interests (festival of human rights film, nautical
film, educational film, anthropological film etc) .
The research sample will be composed of festivals which fulfill the following criteria:
-Festivals that display a clear primary artistic objective and value.
-Occur on urban setting.
-Operate on a professional management level.
-Last more or less a week or longer.
-Occur in one or more venues/sites.
-Possess a separate juridical status or otherwise enjoy an operational autonomy.
-Display an international programming component.
-Delineate a certain developmental path, for instance, by having 5 or more yearly
editions.
-Have been able to secure some support of public authorities.
6 A scale of possible functions: complementary or contradictory?
Researchers are aware of various programming ambitions and strategies that determine
the composition of the festivals and shape their prevailing functions. Some festivals are
capable of clearly foregrounding one key function while others seek to balance several
functions at the same time. The question is with what success and for how long?
While some festival programmers aim chiefly to inform their public, others go further
and strive to highlight, promote and affirm a certain discipline, style, an artistic
tendency, a generation, or some individual artists and companies. Therefore, some
festivals do not accept only a role of a programmer or presenter of works made
elsewhere but assume a role of an active producer or more often of a co-producer,
pooling resources and sharing risk with other artistic organizations.
While initially most festivals aimed to compensate with their selection for the
shortcomings and limitations of the established institutional infrastructure and
programming in the course of a regular cultural season, today many festival assume the
role of an innovative force and opt for a clear developmental function, offering to the
professionals ample opportunities for networking, reflection and debate and acquisition
of additional competences (master classes, workshops). Those festivals that (co)produce
new work create in fact short-term platforms of international artistic cooperation whose
dynamics is in itself worth investigating.
Celebratory function of festivals stresses the benefits of the local community, such as
increased social cohesion, self-awareness and consolidation of the civil society on the
micro level.
Promotional function of festivals is visible in their effort to make their location known
and appealing as a tourist destination and to enrich its tourist offer.
Economic function of the festivals means that they strive to create new (albeit
temporary) jobs and increase local consumption.
Political function is being manifested in the ambition of the festivals to affirm certain
political relationship (for instance, festival of Polish music in Slovenia) or political
concept (drama festival of francophonie).
Educational role of the festivals is revealed in their impact on the audience, participants,
staff and volunteers, advancing their appreciation of arts but also their intercultural
competence.
7 Location
Festivals are players in the urban politics of space and location, they are capable of
achieving a certain re-mapping of the city in the minds of its inhabitants and visitors, to
challenge habitual perceptions of the urban environment, dispel prejudices and
“common truths” about some neighborhoods, create alternative routes for the curious
and set out new paths of mobility.
With festivals, the question “where?” often means “who”: the location determines the
participation and implies a certain target audience. The choice of location is not just a
matter of decentralization, discovery, recycling and appropriation of alternative sites and
possibly their subsequent steady usage, but also a matter of inclusion, engagement and
stimulation of some population groups and inhabitants from some urban quarters.
Festivals also revitalize and valorize chosen objects of cultural heritage.
8 Temporal dimension
A single yearly edition of a festival could be seen as a self-contained narrative but a
series of yearly editions could also be perceived as an extended, protracted narrative.
Continuity and discontinuity, routine and sameness vs. transmutation and conscious
transition are key issues on a temporal axis of research, seeking to determine which
factors influence the direction of a festival, provoke discontinuity, change, shift and
repositioning. What are circumstances of crisis, how frustration and dissatisfaction of
certain constituencies result in pressure and what are the usual scenarios of resolution,
including the termination of a festival?
9 Expanded impact
Festivals are often seen in a dialectical link with the cultural institutions that have a
continuous producing and programming pattern. But festivals themselves, with their
short, concentrated and intensive output could seek to de-territorialize and temporally
expand their impact by creating various media spin-off products and offer them to
constituencies other than their core live public, and thus benefit audiences abroad or
serve specific educational purposes.
10 Contradictions and dilemmas
Festivals are expensive and complex undertaking that demand considerable resources
and commitment of various partners but if the collaborative capacity of a festival
organization could be seen as a crucial success factor, involvement of various partners
raises divergent expectations that could at some point become increasingly competitive
or even incompatible.
Most festivals experience a certain tension between their local impact and international
ambition, that is a need to serve the local artistic community and the local public while
at the same time seeking international validation and appealing to foreign visitors,
professional and tourist. While claiming to contribute to local social cohesion some
festival declare their contribution to the consolidation of a common European cultural
space, Europe-wide mobility and positive political and cultural climate of international
cooperation and understanding. These purposes might stand at odd as well as the
options to seek distinction in fine specialization (programming niche) or go for
interdiciplinary linkages. Artistic ambitions sometimes clash with the expectations of the
local tourist industry. And marketing strategies do not always square with the audience
development goals. Involvement of volunteers for economic or political reasons might
jeopardize the desired professional standards of operation. A standing of a festival
among the professional peers, local or international, could be at odd s with the opinions
of the local press that subsequently impact audience motivation, political support and
readiness of potential sponsors. The research would seek to investigate how are those
contradictions and dilemmas perceived, phrased and resolved internally, at the different
levels of festival organization (governance, artistic leadership, management and staff,
participants, volunteers) and externally – among the partners, funders, sponsors,
supporters and audiences.
12 Input/output
The organizing matrix of the research is the following scheme of input and output
elements whose coherence and balance would be investigated.
INPUT
Subsidy & sponsorship
Human resources
Political support
Social energy
artistic vision & creativity
OUTPUT
economic impact
HR development
political advantages
community benefits, soc capital
artistic development
13 Key questions
- How do festivals articulate and mutually reconcile various dominant functions?
- How do festivals affect the local micro-geography in cultural and socio-economic
sense?
- How do festivals manage their own growth, development and transition in relation to
the changes in their environment?
- How can festivals transcend their core audience and prolong, de-territorialize and
expand their cultural and artistic impact with the use of new media.
- How do festivals balance their local and international inputs and maximalize their
synergy?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of festivals’ specialization and what of
conscious interdisciplinary work?
14 Tentative research phasing
2004
May
First meeting in Brussels, brainstorming and preliminary formulation of
the research project
June/July
Definition of the research project with a tentative formulation of research
questions
June
Distribution of individual tasks: commitments
July
Festival lists: from S&P Communication group, corrected from the EFA,
IETM lists
June-Oct
Fundraising
June-Oct
Desk research: screening the available literature, summary reports,
bibliographies
June-Aug
Website construction
June-Aug
Questionnaire construction
Sept-Oct
Questionnaire testing, adjustment, distribution
Nov-Dec
Chasing Q answers, pushing and nudging
2005
Jan-Feb
March-Apr
March-Apr
May-Sept
Oct
Nov-March
2006
Apr-May
June
Fall
Reworking and analysis of data. Redefinition of the research questions,
formulation of the working hypotheses and models
Interviews with selected individuals
Focus groups
Theoretical framing, result discussion, preliminary reports and studies,
Researchers meeting, debate, issue clustering
06Further case studies, comparative studies and cluster analyses
Internal discussions and mutual feed back
Conclusions, trends and recommendations
Presentation and dissemination
Entire duration: 32 months
15 Resources needed
The initial group of 20 researchers who met in Brussels in May 2004 will certainly need
to be expanded and enriched with specific competences. Involvement of graduate
students is desirable. A better geographic spread of researchers should also be
attempted.
Association with IETM, EFA, IAFE will facilitate research contacts with the festivals.
At some point, the research team might want to appoint 2-3 coordinators of specific
areas of research.
There should be also some technical-administrative coordination and a web master.
2 festivals need to be found to host the researchers meetings in 2005 and 2006.
16 Funding needs
The research project needs some means in order to provide:
- Technical and administrative coordination of the project eur 20.000 for 32 months
- Construction and maintenance of a web page for the input of data and easy retrieval
by the members of the research consortium eur 17.500
- Some funds for those researchers who will not be able to access their national or
university research funds eur 35.000
- A modest travel fund to enable individual researchers to conduct interviews and focus
groups and meet in 2005 and 2006: 12.000
- Presentation of the results: eur 12.500
TOTAL funding needed for the entire research: eur 97.000
This sum doe not include the work of the researchers paid by their institutes and
universities nor the hospitality costs of 2 meeting, to be covered by the hosting festivals.
17 Individual commitments made in Brussels
Michael Kemp is ready to set up the project web site
Dirk Noordman has an intern who could be deployed on technical matters 4 hours per
week.
David Pickard will have an intern for research support tasks.
Dragan Klaic will write the conclusions of the Brussels meeting and circulate for critical
feed back.
Peter Inkei will scan available literature in C and E Europe and check whether festivals
could be a topic of a CIRCLE yearly mapping exercise in 2005.
AM Autissier and Greg Richards will formulate the questionnaire by July 1 and circulate
for critical feedback.
Jennifer Elfert and Sarah Gorman will scan available literature in English.
Julie Penghini will scan available literature in French.
Alessandro Bollo will explore via Fitzcarraldo the possibility of research funding by Italian
foundations.
James McVeigh will check the readiness of the Arts Council of England to provide some
funding.
Hugo de Greef will have by Sept 1 a clearer picture how EFA could support this
research.
Raimund Munichbauer will provide some preliminary theoretical reflection on the
festivals.
Dasha Krizhanska will list festivals in Russia, perhaps in former USSR and in Poland and
screen the literature in Russian language.
Further commitments to be defined in the course of the summer 2004.
18 Participants of the meeting
Dragan Klaic, Univ Leiden balakla@xs4all.nl
Dirk Noordman, EUR Rotterdam noordman@fhk.eur.nl
Alies MacLean, HVKU Utrecht alies.maclean@central.hku.nl
Sanja Jovicevic, UU Belgrade portofino@yubc.net
Anne Marie Autissier, Paris8 amautissier@wanadoo.fr
Raimund Munichbauer EIPCP Vienna minichbauer@eipcp.net
Dasha Krizhansakaya, A’dam dasha.krizhanskaia@theatreconsulting.org
Alessandro Bollo, Fitzcarraldo Torino alessandro.bollo@fitzcarraldo.it
Julie Peghini, Paris8 julie.peghini@free.fr
Sarah Gorman, Univ Sussex sag.155@virgin.net
Jennifer Elfert, JWGoethe Uni -Frankfurt/m atomjenny@web.de
Greg Richards, Interarts Barcelona grichards@interarts.net
David Picard, Shefield Un d.picard@shu.ac.uk
Valentina Valentini, Univ Conzenza, Rome valentina.valentini@fastwebnet.it
Michael Kamp, UVA michael@decameleon.nl
Bernadette Quinn, Dublin Institute of Technology bernadette.quinn@dot.ie
Peter Imkei, Bpest Observatory, bo@budobs.org
Bob Palmer, Palmer Rae Consultants, Brussels Robert.palmer@brutele.be
OBSERVERS
James McVeigh, Arts Council of England james.mcveigh@artscouncil.org.uk
Hugo de Greef, EFA hugo.de.greef@skynet.be
HOST
Els Baten, VTI els@vti.be
Excused but interested in participating:
Dorota Ilcsuk, Univ. Jagel Cracow/Warsaw dilczuk@post.pl
Juliusz Tyszka, Univ. A. Mickiewicz Poznan osty@wp.pl
Franco Bianchini, DMU Leicester fbianch@dmu.ac.uk
Chris Maughan, DMU Leicester cmaughan@dmu.ac.uk
Georges Banu, Paris 6 georges.banu@wanadoo.fr