STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Artists:
244
Street Artists in Europe
Many artists are poorly resourced and cannot or do not provide glossy high quality publicity to
mail to festivals.
"But more often the publicity helps to get us the booking after they have already seen or heard
about us from somewhere else. We rarely get a booking just by sending out publicity randomly."
Yet others claim:
"Web site and mail outs are very important."
"We have just mailed out to European festivals and are getting a good response."
From the ACE survey (which is mostly about British companies abroad) it is clear that
programmers have difficulty finding out about foreign groups unless they have seen them:
"I know very little about the work of English companies, because of their very poor visibility in
France.”
"Other people do not attend [foreign] festivals therefore they do not know what the work is
about. I really think that the festivals should promote themselves better abroad as well as the
artists."
"NO, we see very little work and have very few proposals. I think that those in government in
charge of selling British work abroad do not have a network of street festivals in their address
books."
Artists need to market their work – in as many different ways as possible. Publicity is useful,
ideally in several languages. Street arts as an artform generates a selection of wonderful images,
that successful companies exploit very effectively. However, it is perhaps worth pointing out
that cultural differences in aesthetics may give rise to surprising difficulties:
“ The images (photos or videos) often seem unattractive to us, 'too much glitz' , humour is often
the most important aspect , little or no poetry, images often linked to carnivalesque themes ... "
‘Relying on publicity is deceptive. It looks impressive on paper, but the show itself maybe empty,
vacuous and lacking any theatrical depth.’
Use of the internet, emails, the telephone, all are helpful to reinforce contact . Appearance at
showcasing events is a good way to be seen by programmers. Once a company is known, word
of mouth travels fast between programmers and artists Lists of principal showcase festivals in
each country are available from Hors les Murs / Circostrada. Building a trip to a local showcase
could be an intrinsic part of creating a marketing budget.
PE 375.307