STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
based on a project sponsored by the city of Tartu (Estonia), which discusses the challenges
linked to the development, organisation and internationalisation of festivals, sets out their
virtues and limits.
‘Could there be a more obvious way to give a boost to the local cultural circumstances in a town
or a city than to start a festival? Thousands of cultural operators have come to this idea and
many succeeded to shape a unique and much appreciated formula. Many others started a festival
only because everyone else is running one, without developing a sharpened sense of distinction,
and remaining in an imitative mode. Whoever thinks of initiating a festival had better consider
the following questions: what is the artistic purpose of this festival? Who needs this festival?
Who will constitute its primary audience? Who will benefit from the festival and how?’ 332
In the case of street arts, the floodgates opened in Europe in the 1980s. France has already
celebrated their 20 th anniversary: Aurillac (2005) and Chalon dans la Rue (2006). In the
Netherlands, the Oerol festival held every June (launched in 1982) attracts some 40 000
spectators to the island of Terschellings (much of which is a nature reserve) in the north of the
country. The United Kingdom has about twenty street arts festivals. One of them, the Stockton
International Theatre Festival, held in a region (the Tees Valley) also much loved for its natural
beauty, expects around 200 000 spectators every summer. In Spain, where the Fira del teatre del
carrer de Tarrega, in Catalonia, remains an important venue, the Festival Internacional de Teatro
y Artes de Calle in Valladolid has become a major attraction over the last few years. Some
eastern European countries have a fairly established street arts tradition, such as Poland, where
companies on the margins of official institutions managed to circumvent the bans. The festival
of Malta, in Poznan, although not devoted purely to street arts, has now become the venue of a
new generation. In Romania, on the other hand, only the Sibiu festival seems to welcome
creative work regarded as ‘experimental’.
These few examples show that street arts are part of a more general move towards making
festivals out of European cultural practices. Although most of those who initiated street arts
festivals were not really aware at the outset of that trend, they actually found themselves faced
with the same issues common to all festivals. The first research work carried out under the
European Festival Research Project (EFRP) 333 that started in May 2004 notes, indeed, that
festivals of whatever type are affected by similar problems, especially in regard to their impact
on the people.
‘Festivals have become emblematic for the issues (…) and contradictions of current cultural
practices, marked by globalisation, 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 all parties involved’ 334 .
There are complex tensions between international and local presence, support for contemporary
creation and mainstream programming, ephemeral and long-term events, and so forth. That
means that those running street arts festivals have to grapple with the same difficulties as other
disciplines. A festival is an issue for a town. By occupying public spaces, street arts festivals
place themselves very much in the eye of the storm.
332 Ibid., p. 28.
333 http://www.efa-aef.eu/efahome/efrp.cfm
334 Klaic, Dragan, Conclusions of a preparatory meeting of festival researchers, EFRP, Brussels 1-2 May 2004 (no
page numbers) (http://www.efa-aef.eu/efahome/efrp.cfm).
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PE 375.307