STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
entry point into an artform or a venue and then built a relationship with participants through
education and outreach work’ 359 .
4.2.1. Effects of artistic residencies
Today, the principle of participation is relatively well developed in live performance shows and
at times tends towards the demagogic. The idea is that under the pretext of public participation
the show is democratic and the spectator plays an active part. Such assumptions are prejudicial
to the very principle of public involvement by diminishing the real impact it can have if it is
handled carefully and sensibly. Whilst the principle of public involvement seems to be
particularly effective in the case of disadvantaged audiences, street arts show that it also bears
fruit in any kind of encounter of this kind with the public.
The principle of artists’ residencies is not exclusive to France or to street arts. The Pronomade(s)
project in Haute-Garonne puts their benefits into sharp focus. Between April and October this
national street arts centre organises, at département level, a season of combined street arts,
circus, theatre of objects and so on, which is aimed at establishing a relationship specific to the
inhabitants and spectators. The Pronomade(s) team promotes the principle of residencies,
periods during which the artists, working in preparation for the coming show, have day-to-day
contacts with the inhabitants of the village where the show will be held. The inhabitants are
involved in the process at very different levels. Their barn may serve as a storeroom or a games
room, they may put up some of the artists, lend out material, etc. In that way they become the
artists’ temporary neighbours, using the same living space. The involvement of the local
population and their transformation into an audience also occur at this very simple but quite
fundamental level of everyday relations. By promoting this kind of encounter between artists
and local people, Pronomade(s) establish a new relationship between the two.
Aside from that, the team’s aim is to raise people’s awareness of art so that slowly but surely
they will include this cultural practice in their everyday life. In that sense, David Moralès, who
is involved in the Pronomade(s) association in Haute-Garonne, is a kind of typecast example of
‘cultural democratisation’.
‘I am the “non-selected, non-elitist” public. And that’s not all. It is true that the day I discovered
street arts I was on my way to see my daughter play music! In the end, I met artists, people, a
family near enough… One day I came across street arts and the result was that I became open to
art, full stop’. 360 .
A study of audiences conducted in 2006 361 stresses that the audience is local, given that 65% of
spectators live in Comminges, the area covered by Pronomade(s)’ activities. The survey also
reveals the presence of a large number of neophytes, with nearly 30% of spectators saying it was
the first time they had come. The fact that the performance is free is clearly also an incentive,
even though those questioned did not necessarily give that as a main reason for coming. In fact
63% of that neophyte audience attended free performances. The study also confirms the
existence of ‘monomaniacs’: 25% of spectators questioned did not visit any other live
performance venue. The season offered by the national centre was their only opportunity to
359 Rose Catherine, ‘Audience participation’, Essential Audiences issue 69, Arts Council England, New Audiences
Programme (http://www.newaudiences.org.uk/resource.php?id=306).
360 Moralès David, ‘Bonjour, merci de m’accueillir’, in La Relation au public dans les arts de la rue, op. cit., p. 49.
361 Dedieu Chloé, Les publics de Pronomade(s) en Haute-Garonne, study carried out at sixteen different interviews
between April and July 2006 (unpublished internal document).
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