Money talks. And quite rightly organisers of major arts festivals around the world are required to keep one eye on profitability – after all, if the festival doesn’t turn a profit, chances are it won’t be around for long.
Those who would argue that arts festivals are not sufficiently accessible point to ever increasing ticket prices as a sign that ordinary working people are being ‘priced out’ of attendance.
Ironically, one of the world’s most famous fringe festivals, the Edinburgh Fringe, which began life as the original People’s Festival in 1951, has been criticized for becoming to commercial and too expensive for the punters.
When tickets for some shows topped a whopping £15, Colin Fox, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, decided enough was enough. “The Festival has become too commercial and expensive. It’s no longer aimed at the Edinburgh people and it can’t pretend it is an event for the people of the city. It’s become nothing more than a tourist attraction,” he said. Fox’s solution was to start his own festival, the Edinburgh People’s Festival (sound familiar)?
But is Fox just being naïve, or merely trying to accrue political capital and public support that will secure him longer in Parliament? According to a report by Brian Logan that appeared in The Guardian, the main fiscal beneficiaries from the Edinburgh Festivals are the city council, and just about every local business. “It is difficult to find an area where the town is not gaining from the festival,” venue operator Christopher Richardson is quoted as saying.
Whilst this is obviously great news for Edinburgh residents, it is frustrating for artists and promoters who claim that the cost of ‘being’ in Edinburgh, coupled with standard production costs mean it’s almost impossible for them to turn a profit. Hence the need to raise ticket prices, which draws shouts of elitism from critics such as Fox. The other point to bear in mind though, is that the artists and promoters still come. Whether lured by the chance of making a profit (successful shows can cover more than just their costs), or the possibility of becoming one of the festival’s darlings, the fact that anyone can put on a show would suggest that any whiff of elitism is not intentional.
It seems that expensive ticketing, and programming that aims to attract punters who can afford to pay top dollar, is more a reflection of what happens when a festival establishes itself as a commercial success than any particular desire to make it elitist. And even creating a program made up of elitist acts has to balance the budget sheet.
Of course the programming argument – that certain art forms such as opera, chamber music, recitals, etc. are more likely to be appreciated only by ‘elites’ and that weighting a festival with such fare constitutes creating a festival that can only be appreciated, or is certainly aimed at, an audience comprised of members of the elite – is rather like a swamp, easy to get stuck in and very difficult to get out. After all, how do you define an ‘art elite’, and isn’t art appreciation a matter of exposure and education at a young age – putting the construction of art snobbery in the realm of education and government funding of education? Do non-elites not attend opera because it’s too expensive or because they think it’s rubbish? Is there a hidden agenda behind why they think it’s rubbish, or do they hate it because they don’t drive a Mercedes?
With over 2000 major cultural festivals held in Europe alone, it is inevitable that some festivals are elitist in their programming, just as others are designed for the adherents to counter-cultures, which could be argued to be equally elitist, except these elites don’t have the same high social status or six figure bank balance commonly associated with the term ‘elites.’
Perhaps a more useful question would be to ask which festivals and artforms receive the bulk of public funds to support them, and whether the money consistently ends up in the same constantly-cupped hands. If it is found there is a pattern to arts festival funding that seems to favour a select group of people, then it may be possible to not only identify who actually constitutes the elite or elites but to work out what that actually means for the arts.
