STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

3. International touring
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Street Artists in Europe
From previous research (ACE), it is clear that the majority of festivals (58 out of the 60
surveyed in 2005) either invite international artists as a matter of course or strive to do so.
Reasons for this are multifold:
Scale - the big festivals must invite international groups for prestige (3 festivals).
Definition - the whole conception of the festival is to be international. This also included one
festival stating 'because we are part of a European programme' (Interreg) (13 festivals).
Quality:
a) there is not enough good work in our own country (10 festivals),
b) it gives opportunities to see the great range available (14 festivals);
c) there is good quality work abroad (20 festivals).
Variety - it makes our festival more varied and interesting, different cultural patterns enrich our
own (9 festivals).
International co-operation and cross-cultural understanding (12 festivals).
'global village' - there are no frontiers (6 festivals).
Opportunities for local people to see international work (4 festivals).
Financial Support and encouragement offered by embassies and consulates of foreign
companies (2 festivals).
"My closeness to other European countries and the enlargement of Europe encourages me to
work more to open up work with international groups."
"I think that now that we have the euro, we should programme companies from every country
that uses the euro!"
3.1. What Proportion of the Programme is made up from International acts?
(ACE) This question was answered by most festivals, and ranged from: 10% to 100%.
Interestingly there was no obvious correlation between well-funded festivals and the proportion
of international artists they booked.
As a generalisation, festivals in France use the lowest proportion of international artists and
Belgian and Italian festivals the highest (the majority of those who cited 'lack of national artists'
as a reason for why they used international groups came from these two countries).
4 festivals did not answer this question and 2 claimed it was impossible to generalise, there were
such variations every year.
Of the artists consulted, they all greatly enjoyed international touring for reasons of cultural
cohesion, meeting interesting people from different backgrounds, expanding their cultural
horizons and of course expanding the market for their work. It was clear that some companies
travel very widely – groups interviewed have visited festivals and events in all continents,
including Africa and Latin America.
PE 375.307