STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
movement has changed. Instead of provoking local and national policies, street art became one
of the tools for urban and cultural development by the 21 st century. In several Western European
countries, street art is subsidised by national cultural funds: for instance, in the United
Kingdom 298 or in France.
Street art is also often used by local policy makers. For municipalities, it is a form to make
publicity of their area and to attenuate the social tensions characterising this area. In Paris,
almost every week-end of the summer months is charged by street events organised in the
different districts of the city. These events always contain some street art spectacles (music or
small performances). In Budapest, in one regenerated neighbourhood of the city, a new ‘cultural
street’ has been created by the local municipality, and to promote it, the mayor of the district
initiated the organisation of a local street art festival lasting longer and longer every year…
Of course, these changes does not mean that the protesting or provocative character of street arts
have entirely disappeared during the last period. It only shows that as all other disciplines or
branches, street art is also diversifying: there are initiatives sustaining political aims, there are
profit-oriented ones, while some others are representing different social, urban, or cultural
interests often in a provocative manner…
2.4. Perception of street arts’ role in the city in the different parts of Europe
The aim of this sub-chapter is not only to explain how communist regimes tended to prohibit
street art movements under socialism. The reactions of state policies to the different movements
or initiatives were never black and white, even in communist times. In Hungary, cultural
policies followed the strategy of divide et impera, and supported, tolerated or prohibited cultural
events according to their political weigh. The same is available for street arts. In Poland as well,
street arts occupied an important role in the country’s cultural life. However, it is evident, free
expression has never been a direct subject of street events in these countries, in spite of several
alternative events that were still tolerated by the central political power.
By the 1990s and 2000s, in post-socialist countries, street arts continued to occupy a different
position as in Western European countries. First, as a result of the withdrawal of public
financing from cultural sector, an important segment of street art movement, with other types of
the ‘off’ culture remained omitted by cultural subsidising. Second, as a result of the weakness of
the civil sector and the lack of the recognition of citizens’ ‘responsibility’, all events willing to
enhance social cohesion and urban restructuring remained marginal for almost the whole decade
of the 1990s. Street art only developed in countries where it already had its traditions (like in
Poland, in Croatia, and very partially in Hungary), and it could not develop in countries where it
had no traditions (like in Latvia). In these countries, street art events and festivals are very often
in conflict with local authorities that consider them as dangerous events, that are disturbing local
life, creating disorder and frightening the potential urban investors from the urban areas. (This is
less the case for events attracting direct economic or urban input as for example, festivals
financed by private founds or events promoting local development related to a municipality.)
In several cases, in eastern European countries, street arts still play the provocative impact on
local and national policy-making. They tend to call attention to urban subjects that in other parts
of Europe are already integrated in public spatial policies, such as the necessity of urban
rehabilitation face to demolishing. One of the reasons of this particularity is certainly that urban
298 Reports of Hall, 2002 and Jermyn 2002.
178
PE 375.307