It is through lack that we see the place occupied by culture

As a direct consequence of the health crisis, many festivals have had to cancel their 2020 editions, resulting in heavy economic and social losses for the cultural and artistic sector, as well as for local communities. A survey 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.

You published this survey just two months after the start of the crisis. How did you manage to do it so quickly?
It's a subject I know well, since I've been working on festivals for some fifteen years. In June 2019, together with my sociologist colleague Aurélien Djakouane, we launched a new research operation, called SoFest, focusing among other things on the socio-economic indicators of festivals. When the crisis hit, the survey was sufficiently advanced to enable us to work on an estimate of the losses engendered by the cancellation of the festival season.

How many festivals are affected by cancellations?
From April to August inclusive, we're already at 4,000 festivals. You estimate economic losses at between 2.3 and 2.6 billion. What does this figure correspond to, and how did you arrive at it? It's an estimate of the negative economic impact of these cancellations. The direct negative spin-offs are all the expenses that the festivals won't be making. We know the structure of the budgets of the festivals in our sample, so we took their usual total expenditure, from which we subtracted the amount of subsidies which, in the vast majority of cases, were spent on supporting the companies and artists programmed. On the basis of 4,000 cancelled festivals, this gives us a range of between 580 and 811 million that should have been spent by the festivals but wasn't. What about the indirect negative impact? This second indicator concerns the lack of spending by festival-goers. Thanks to SoFest surveys, we know that a festival-goer spends an average of 53 euros per day (drinks, transport, catering, sleeping accommodation, tickets etc.), multiplied by the total number of festival admissions, i.e. around 26 million. This equates to 925 million euros not spent by festival-goers. This is a saving for the cultural sector and for the region.

But we haven't yet reached the 2 billion loss?
Because we still have to measure the induced effects of festival activity. For example: a festival creates jobs for the local carpenter who makes the balustrades, who hires people who spend money in the area.

To measure this impact, we have used a multiplier that has already been tried and tested in the cultural sector, to arrive at our estimate of 2.3 and 2.6 billion in economic losses.

What are the prospects for festivals? Are we going to see mass disappearances?
For heavily subsidized festivals, their strategic uncertainty lies on the side of maintaining their subsidies, and objectively speaking I can't predict what the public finance situation will be like in a year's time, but I suppose it's going to be rocky.

For those with little or no subsidy, the uncertainty is on the ticketing side. It's the return of people to the show under normal conditions. With the energy of desperation, some will stay afloat next year, but after that? I fear 2022.

Does your study also estimate the impact on employment?
Yes, a festival is also a human, social and employment ecosystem. For this indicator, the study considers all those whose paid employment is likely to be affected: employees,
service providers, self-employed workers and trainees. We arrive at a fairly wide range, from 52,000 to 111,000 jobs.

You also talk about impact on business. What's the difference?
We're talking here about all the people whose activity, whether paid or unpaid, has been reduced to nothing by the cancellation of festivals. We're talking about "festival-goers", which includes volunteers and all
people whose activity starts up to 4 months before the festival, and here we estimate that between 230,000 and 360,000 people are impacted.

What does a summer without festivals in France mean for festival-goers?
We know from our surveys that festivals have become a practice that goes beyond artistic consumption. These are little republics, because going through a festival experience has a civic impact that goes beyond the cultural experience. That's what's going to be missing.

Will these festival cancellations have an impact on the 2020-2021 cultural season?
Le Printemps de Bourges cancelled, Avignon, Aurillac, Châlon... These are meetings between producers, programmers and artists that won't take place. It's this function as a marketplace in the broadest sense that's disappearing. It's through this lack that we see the place that culture occupies, and within culture the place taken by festivals... And we see that it's considerable.

Emmanuel Négrier, co-director of the study.

*Center d'études politiques et sociales: environnement, santé, territoires (UM - CNRS)