STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
(…) Women from generations born from 1960 onwards have higher qualifications than their
male counterparts, often having an education in literature and the arts (…)’ 348 .
That analysis clarifies the findings of the Eunetstar survey. The feminisation of street arts
audiences clearly goes hand in hand with the youth of those audiences. Regardless of the
inevitable special cases, young people attend street festivals in huge numbers. That phenomenon
alone is a fundamentally positive point, given that young people tend to shun cultural events
(outside compulsory school hours). Taking the average of the seven countries concerned, 30%
of those questioned were aged below 24 and 27% between 25 and 34. More than half (57%)
were under the age of 35. We must, however, note some marked disparities. In Oerol the figure
for those under 35 falls to 32%, whilst 34% of those questioned were aged between 35 and 49.
In Cognac the distribution between age groups seems more balanced, with a stronger presence
of those aged between 35 and 49 – although less marked than for Oerol. Eastern Europe has
strikingly young audiences. In Poznan 63% of those questioned were under the age of 24. And
in Ljubljana 74% of the audience was aged under 34.
Despite those striking disparities, we should note one major phenomenon, alongside the
feminisation of audiences, which obviously cannot be attributed to the sector itself. Street arts
manage to reach a relatively varied spectrum of age groups, especially in western Europe
(Belgium, France, Netherlands, UK), whilst most live-performance-related artistic disciplines
are characterised by audiences that are very much divided into sectors in terms of age. Roughly
speaking, modern music attracts young audiences, as does urban dance, whilst classical music
and ballet attract older generations. Street arts seem capable of attracting all of them. That is one
of the points made by Michel Crespin, an established French street arts performer, in his
definition of what he regards as the characteristic ‘public-population’ of this art form.
‘My definition of the public-population (...) is in three parts: extremely wide cultural pass band,
extremely wide social pass band and extremely wide generational pass band. (…) [That] I think
is the basis of the public. (…) [The artist] may have, before him, at the same time, in that open
space he has chosen as a performance space, people from an extremely wide cultural range, or
from other cultures, people who are completely different socially, and completely different
generations.’ 349
Although the conditions for attending street performances mean they are not very accessible to
older people (who have to stand, often in the heat of the sun), those aged over 50 are not
automatically excluded and they are present. The uniting power of street arts is particularly
strong here and highlights their capacity to reach the general population and, therefore, to bring
all its components together.
3.2.2. Social groups
Public surveys are a useful means of validating, or in some cases invalidating, the actors’
intuitive and pragmatic knowledge on the ground. The professional street arts sector has little
doubt about the artists’ admirable ambition to use the public space to reach everybody. It must
be admitted, however, that the ‘perform outdoors=mass audience’ equation seems a little
simplistic. The Eunetstar survey casts doubt on some received ideas.
348 Donnat Olivier, ‘La féminisation des pratiques culturelles’, in Développement culturel, Bulletin of the
Département des études, de la prospective et des statistiques, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication,
No 147, June 2005 (http://www2.culture.gouv.fr/deps).
349 Crespin, Michel, interview of 9 August 2005.
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PE 375.307