Anyone involved or interested in the arts cannot avoid festivals; it’s impossible. They have become an intrinsic – almost a backbone – of the arts industry both in the UK and overseas; prevalent, popular and enduring. Caught up in this tsunami of celebration, it is very easy to think that festivals are a new phenomenon. Indeed, most of them are: a twenty year-old festival is considered long-running, but zeroing in like this loses a larger perspective. A particular festival might be new – many particular festivals may be new – but the idea of a festival itself is very old, ancient even.
In this context, we can view festivals in a new light; the light of social history. Questions of whether a festival is good or not abound, but we rarely ask what makes a festival? Celebration is a very murky definition. What, really, do we go to festivals for?
In a Western tradition, the idea of festivals really started with the bacchanal, a heady – and initially secretive – worship to the Roman God, Bacchus (in Greece Dionysus). Today, it’s tempting to categorise them somewhere between binge and orgy. There was a lot of drinking, drugs, music and sex; a bit like Glastonbury today. However, associated with these – the first festivals – was the idea of purging; a cleansing cathartic experience that was ultimately very good for a community. These festivals were performative, certainly, but there was a very strong element of self-expression. Festivals were communal – and it’s an idea that stays with us. We still feel a sense of ownership to festivals, and a sense of place.
The St Patrick’s Day Festival in Dublin captures a strong sense of the communal. One of the biggest festivals in the UK, St Patrick’s Day in actuality goes for five, and community participation is strong. In this sense, the festival is one of the more egalitarian models. There are hundreds of events, catering to families, tourists, young and old. It is not about hiding out in a theatre, watching show after show; this is outside, interactive, celebratory, and some would say perhaps a little safe. But, it is wildly popular. In 2003, the festival generated just under eighty million pounds. Hundreds of thousands of people flock to Dublin every March, and this trend shows no sign of stopping with the festival turning ten next year.
But where is the excess? The orgiastic fervour? Can we even find that in the United Kingdom any more? We can, certainly, we can, but the attendee becomes more of a viewer than a participant. In the twenty-first century, it seems we prefer to watch the threatening rather than initiate it.
Edinburgh has become a magnet for the avant-garde. Both the Fringe, and the International Festival pride themselves on progressive, innovative content. For a Fringe festival, this is to be expected, but the success – critical and financial – of the International Festival is a testament not only to the organisers, but to us, the patrons who are prepared – and eager – to be challenged. Could this be the element of release and Other that people engaged with in bacchanals? Obviously, it’s no orgy, but it can be threatening, it can be excess, and it can be wild. Unfortunately it can be expensive, too.
Thinking about festivals these days, finance becomes a major consideration. Omnipresent – especially with the high art festivals – is the idea of cost, both for us and the organisers. It’s an important thing to be aware of; the interplay of festivals in class structure. The cheap and cheerful St Patrick’s Day is for the masses; it’s participatory, there are markets, open air shows, and fireworks. The Edinburgh festivals, on the other hand, are neither particularly cheap or cheerful. Art comes at a cost, and it is worrying to think that – despite booming ticket sales – we effectively prevent part of the community from engaging with a certain type of discourse – the historically bourgeois discourse of art.
But how can we conquer this? After all, art is expensive. It costs a fortune to host, and for better or for worse, we don’t live in an age where governments are wholly content to pick up the tab. The very niche-like nature of avant-garde festivals works against them in this respect. A fireworks display can be watched by millions; a one-man show about a transsexual Peruvian serial killer, only a few. Faced with a budget that cannot cover everything, festival organisers do the best they can, and sometimes that’s expensive.
By way of riposte, Edinburgh offers the people’s festival: a cheap, working-class – but no less artistic – alternative to the bigger-named events, with two pound tickets. Other festivals, like the City of London, incorporate the community in different ways.
There are few art forms more bourgeois, inaccessible and pricey than classical music. With a reputation for pushing the envelope in terms of both acts and venues, it’s seems a Herculean labour for the City of London Festival to become a truly communal event, but it has. An extensive education program puts musicians in schools, youth clubs and community settings all over London. The education program has been one of the biggest successes of the festival, and it’s a fabulous demonstration of how to keep these events communal.
This highlights a really crucial aspect of all festivals: we want them to be a part of us. In the context of art, this is good; it is inclusive, optimistic and fascinating. But art is always embedded in a social context and festivals like Xposure04 (running all this month in London) are utilising this almost as a form of advocacy. Xposure04 is the London Deaf and Disability Arts Festival, and the biggest of its kind in the UK. The theme runs both through performance aspects of the festival, and the audience. Shows are playing in accessible venues all over town; they are not just engaging with our ideas of what deaf or disabled means through art, but also through the concrete reality of a festival itself.
Watching this: threatening, artistic, accessible in the very broadest, best possible sense, perhaps we haven’t moved so far away from those original festivals way up in the Etruscan hills. It’s not a bacchanal (though a drink never seems too far away at any festival) but the purpose may not be so different. It is about engagement, with both yourself and the community around you. A plural connection through song, dance, painting – or anything really – with the people who surround us every day. The rise of festivals – the growing popularity of them – can be viewed as our desire – as citizens, patrons, and performers – to make a connection. The fact that we succeed so regularly in doing so is a testament to the people both in front of and behind the curtain. And in a time where it’s all too easy to marginalise art and focus on difference, that’s definitely something worth celebrating.
