STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
Since then, Arts Council England has published David Micklem’s report, which takes stock of
the sector and confirms its position. It has also embarked on a study of the mobility and
movement of UK street artists in Europe. A general report begins by restating the Arts Council’s
definition of street arts: ‘In the Strategy and Report, the Arts Council defined street arts as
encompassing dance, music, circus, pyrotechnics, theatre, comedy and spectacle. It has a
diversity of practitioners using many forms from situationist street theatre to samba musicians,
to large-scale puppets, and it has been used as a form of political performance as well as focus
for participatory work. Street arts take place outside in sites that do not have the usual signifiers
of a performance space, such as formal seating, lighting or staging. It takes places in streets,
parks, shopping centres, and markets and can be site specific, ambulatory or static’ 211 . Today,
street arts practitioners remain on the whole optimistic about the future of this sector.
3.1.5. Spain
In Spain the late 1970s marked the return to democracy and the end of an authoritarian and
centralised regime that had assumed a monopoly over culture and kept it in check, rejecting
multilingualism and restricting the creativity of cultural production. This was followed in the
1980s by a period of social, associative, artistic and cultural flowering, the Movida. The public
authorities showed a firm resolve to make cultural policy a priority. Since the 1990s, however,
cultural policies in Spain have been in a state of crisis.
Today there is a movement towards decentralisation and recognition of the multinational and
multilingual nature of the Spanish State, which organises the institutional system and defines
cultural policies. The 1978 Constitution draws a distinction between three levels of territorial
power: the central State, autonomous communities, and the local corporations, which include
the provinces and the municipalities. Culture comes under the responsibility of these different
levels. The role of the State in cultural matters is assumed mainly by the Ministry of Culture;
created in 1977, it disappeared in 1996 when the People’s Party came to power and was reestablished
in 2004. Under its aegis, the National Institute for Theatre Arts has taken on
responsibility for the promotion, protection and dissemination of theatre, music, dance and
circus performances in Spain and abroad. It also coordinates the autonomous communities.
According to the Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, 2006 edition, the
central administration pursues the following five main priorities:
• preservation of historical heritage;
• promotion of cultural arts and industries in the sectors of cinema, books and theatre arts;
• inter-ministerial cooperation, concentrating mainly on communication with the
autonomous communities;
• dissemination of the Spanish language and culture abroad;
• renovation and development of major cultural institutions.
‘Central government is therefore left with a limited area of responsibility in terms of public
policy-making, though it has considerable weight in underlying policy through its constitutional
211 Tucker, Anne: UK Street Arts and Mainland Europe: Opportunities and barriers to exploiting work from
England in the rest of Europe, op. cit., p. 2.
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PE 375.307