[LUM#13] It is through what is missing that we see the place culture occupies

[LUM Magazine] - Published on December 7, 2020 in Art & Culture, Science & Society

As a direct result of the health crisis, many festivals were forced to cancel their 2020 editions, causing significant economic and social losses for both the cultural and arts sector and local communities. A study published last May estimates these losses at between 2.3 and 2.6 billion euros. Political scientist Emmanuel Négrier*, co-director of the study, explains.

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You published this survey just two months after the crisis began. How were you able to complete it so quickly?
It’s a subject I know well, since I’ve been working on festivals for about fifteen years. In June 2019, my colleague Aurélien Djakouane—a sociologist—and I launched a new research project called SoFest, which focuses, among other things, on the socioeconomic indicators of festivals. When the crisis hit, the survey was far enough along to allow us to work on estimating the losses caused by the cancellation of the festival season.

How many festivals have been affected by cancellations?
From April through August, the number has already reached 4,000 festivals. You estimate the economic losses to be between 2.3 and 2.6 billion. What does this figure represent, and how did you arrive at it? It is an estimate of the negative economic impact resulting from these cancellations. The direct negative impact refers to the total expenditures that the festivals will not make. We know the budget structures of the festivals in our sample, so we took their usual total expenditures and subtracted the amount of subsidies, which, in the vast majority of cases, were spent to support the companies and artists on the program. Based on 4,000 canceled festivals, this gives us a range of between 580 and 811 million euros that should have been spent by the festivals but were not. And what about the indirect negative impacts? This second indicator concerns the lack of spending by festivalgoers this time. Thanks to surveys conducted as part of SoFest, we know that a festival-goer spends an average of 53 euros per day (drinks, transportation, food, lodging, tickets, etc.), which must be multiplied by the total number of festival attendees, or approximately 26 million. This brings us to 925 million euros that are not spent by festivalgoers. This represents a loss for the cultural sector and for the region.

But haven't we reached the 2 billion mark in losses yet?
Because we still need to measure the ripple effects of festival activity. For example: a festival creates jobs for the local carpenter who builds the railings, who in turn hires people who spend money in the local area.

To measure this impact, we used a multiplier that has already been validated in the cultural sector, which led us to estimate economic losses of between 2.3 and 2.6 billion.

What does the future hold for festivals? Will we see them disappearing en masse?
For heavily subsidized festivals, the strategic uncertainty lies in whether their subsidies will be maintained; objectively speaking, I can’t predict what the state of public finances will be in a year, but I suspect there will be some turbulence.

For those with little or no government funding, the uncertainty lies in ticket sales. It all depends on whether people return to live performances under normal conditions. Driven by sheer desperation, some will manage to stay afloat next year, but what about after that? I’m worried about 2022.

Does your study also estimate the impact on employment?
Yes, a festival is also a human ecosystem—social and employment-related. For this indicator, the study considers all individuals whose paid employment is likely to be at risk: employees, service providers (
), self-employed workers, and interns. We arrive at a fairly wide range of between 52,000 and 111,000 jobs.

You also mention the impact on livelihoods. What’s the difference?
This refers to all the people whose livelihoods—whether paid or unpaid—have been completely wiped out by the cancellation of festivals. We’re talking about “festival-related work,” which includes volunteers and the entir
of people whose work begins up to four months before the festival, and we estimate that between 230,000 and 360,000 people are affected.

For festivalgoers, what does a summer without festivals in France mean?
Our surveys show that festivals have become an experience that goes beyond mere artistic consumption. They are like little republics because participating in a festival has a civic impact that extends beyond the cultural experience. That’s what we’ll be missing.

Will these festival cancellations have an impact on the 2020–2021 cultural season?
With Le Printemps de Bourges, Avignon, Aurillac, and Châlonall canceled, the opportunities for producers, programmers, and artists to come together are being lost. It is this function as a marketplace in the broadest sense that is disappearing. It is through this absence that we see the place culture occupies—and within culture, the place festivals hold… And we see that it is considerable.