STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
perhaps because grants to larger companies cover maintenance of the organisation as well as the
show and cannot easily be separated.
‘Companies can ask the "Fond Darstellende Künster", the "Kulturstiftung NRW" to give
subsidies for a new project. "Theater Titanic" receives a total amount of institutional grants of
€ 50 000 for their new project. The total budget of the production is € 300 000, which they have
to finance by their own. The "Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg" finances the new production
of "Theatre Panoptikum" with an amount of € 550 000’ (Germany).
I was informed by one respondent that on average, the larger French shows may receive
€ 150 000, but this was not endorsed by several artists! It could be a useful piece of research, to
find this out and link it to the amount of money needed to create shows large enough for
audiences of 10 000.
Several festivals help fund new work for artists to perform at their festivals. This money is
usually called ‘commissioning’. Several different festivals may co-finance expensive projects, in
order to see new shows appear every year. This is done individually, with artists writing funding
applications to festivals as well as official funding agencies, explaining their new project and
what is needed. In reality, across Europe, most companies approach or are approached by
festivals who know their work very early on, to discuss future plans and collaborations.
In France, there are direct links between festivals and creation centres, and to the production of
new shows. Commissioning is a very common way of generating new product – the large
festivals are directly responsible for much of the large and middle scale projects emerging from
France today.
3.3. International co-productions
In the last five years, a small number of international projects have been set up, through the
European Community Culture 2000 initiative. Two of these are specifically designed to support
new work being created and toured around Europe.
3.3.1. Eunetstar
Formed in 2003, this programme involved co- organisers from Belgium (Flemish), Belgium
(Francophone), UK, Netherlands, France, Poland and Ireland, with two other countries working
as partners on some projects (Slovenia and Romania). The Eunetstar brief involved support to
artists and festivals in a number of different ways – in addition to supporting new productions,
there was mentoring of artists, ‘a network of scouting and spreading’, necessary qualitative
research and reports.
3.3.2. In Situ
Also formed in 2003, this programme involves organisers from seven different festivals in five
European countries (Spain, France, Belgium, UK and Austria) working together to “support the
creation and presentation of high quality artistic projects with an inter-cultural dimension and
based on collaboration between artists from numerous European countries, dealing with
common concerns and adapted to the diversity of European languages.” Over three years they
have been involved in the creation of nine new projects, which have toured across borders
within the EU.
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