STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

5.1. Background
CHAPTER 5: STREET ARTS AUDIENCES
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Street Artists in Europe
The expansion to Bulgaria and Romania on January 1, 2007 has made the European Union a
gathering of nearly 580 million inhabitants. Can they be envisaged as 580 million potential
spectators? Street arts pointedly raise the question of the conquest of those excluded from art
and culture. How can street arts, by shifting the territory of art, help reduce this artistic and
cultural divide from which all the European populations are led to suffer?
5.1.1. Diversity of the audiences?
The street arts publics in Europe cannot be isolated from the much greater question of the
publics of culture and the live performance. Thanks to the surveys on cultural practices, habits
and behaviours that a great many European countries have been conducting since the 1970s, the
social determinants of the attendance of show venues and of the different genres (opera,
concerts, theatre, dance, etc.) are now known. One comparative international study has even
shown that, with rare exceptions, it is the same factors (education, age, gender, income, place of
residence) that influence or determine, in the same way everywhere, access to the show.
5.1.2. “New Audiences program”
In England, The Arts Council of England funded, from 1998 to 2003, an enormous programme
called New Audiences Program 63 intended to support the many innovative actions that aimed, as
a priority, at the populations not reached by art. It concerned on one hand targeting the so-called
‘prevented’ publics and on the other experimenting with new action modes by notably
developing projects outside artistic and cultural institutions and projects directly involving the
population.
Street arts fit fully into an approach (which goes beyond them) that attempts to conquer new
publics. Through the work of these urban artists, the public space becomes a potential place for
the convocation of art, and by this means, a common space to be shared. From this viewpoint,
street arts seem to be in a position to take up the challenge of a cultural democratisation that is
still pending 64 .
5.2. Framework
5.2.1. “Festivalisation”
Street arts are taking part in a global movement of the “festivalisation” of cultural practices in
Europe. They now find themselves faced with the same challenges as all festivals. The initial
63 www.newaudiences.org.uk
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‘One can believe or not in the social impact of theatre. Inside the very theatre, it is actually the street theatre
which has a larger “field of fire”, because apart from the conscious spectators it also reaches some random
onlookers. It has a chance to reach a greater number of people. The street performances give a chance of
meeting to various groups of people, who in other circumstances would rather avoid each other (for instance in
England, among the audience of our performance there were punks sitting along with very elegant spectators; it
was even more striking in India, where spectators were from different casts). It creates more egalitarian
conditions of reception and other mechanisms of reception.’ (Artistic Director, Poland – interview).
PE 375.307