Festivals - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

authorities but also of the players of private sector such as larger companies and foundations
that operate on a wider scope than the local scene.
Residents and visitors attending the festivals are very often searching for more than
an artistic performance; they look for a socializing experience within a creative and
inspiring milieu. Festivals can therefore play a very important role also within a local
community, that goes beyond enjoyment and aesthetics.
It is then not surprising that festivals can create opportunities for local development
processes and can be a very interesting and useful tool for urban regeneration, setting
up or bringing special events in deprived urban areas, interacting with local changes,
stimulating creative interventions, planning activities that can affect regeneration
processes, in the short and long term.
A festival enables the residents to create a new vision, a way of looking at the place
where they live from another point of view, it can improve the quality of communication
among the residents and enhance the mutual understanding of social, ethnic,
age and cultural groups. Holding events in a “risky” area can help in making it more
attractive and safer for the duration of the event and hopefully beyond.
All these elements can create and/or reinforce the self confidence of the residents and
change the perception of the area within and outside the community, an essential
step in any process of urban regeneration. The social benefits deriving from a festival
may have a more relevant impact, if an adequate follow up of permanent artistic and
cultural activities is planned.
Contributing to a process of regeneration is also a very effective way to provide the
local community with social and environmental benefits which transcend the simple
economic impact connected with the expenditure of the audience and the guest artists
and staff during the duration of the festival.
Where ethnic communities have a strong share in the population of the territory, festivals
can represent a creative and powerful chance to open a new intercultural dimension
as well as to reach out to new audiences.
This type of involvement offers a concrete opportunity for stimulating new intercultural
processes, as has happened in Marseille on the occasion of 2 large scale street
Festivals, Massalia, held on June 1999, and Marsceleste, held in June 2000. Both events
involved for months thousands of citizens belonging to the many communities and
neighbourhoods which make up Marseille, in the preparation and realization of the
events, each of them attended by hundreds of thousands of people.
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The variety of cultures of the inhabitants was taken by the organizers as a positive resource
to mobilize the various communities and social groups, stimulating an interactive
and cooperative practice during the creation and the preparation of the festivals.