The institution of the rue de Cambron proposes to condition state aid more to the requirements of creation and cultural democratization.
By Olivier Ubertalli
© NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP
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Sdo you know how many festivals there are in France? The Court of Auditors reveals a precise figure in its annual report published this Friday morning. There were exactly 7,282 festivals in France in 2021, compared to less than 2,000 twenty years ago. A French specificity which attracts a large number of local and foreign tourists throughout the territory, especially during the summer. But also a myriad of structures where it is difficult to see clearly.
Not shy, the Court of Auditors decided to plunge into the jungle. On about thirty pages, it looks at the support of the State for these festivals, certainly much less important than that of the local authorities. In 2021, notes the institution of the rue de Cambron, the State subsidized 593 festivals, or 8% of the events. Subsidies to live performance festivals reached nearly 41 million euros, or 70% of the total amount of subsidies allocated in the same year by the Ministry of Culture and its three operators, namely the National Center for Cinema and Animated Image, the National Music Center and the National Book Center. The State mainly supports internationally renowned festivals, foremost among which are the Festivals of Aix-en-Provence and Avignon, which have received more than a quarter of funding from the Ministry of Culture.
The case of the Avignon Festival
For Avignon, the most important event of theater and live performance in the world, the Court of Auditors is surprised by a lack of supervision. She takes the example of the direction of Olivier Py, between 2013 and 2022 (he was recently appointed to the Théâtre du Châtelet). “Although the statutes of the Festival d’Avignon provide that the public partners send a letter of mission to the director, the one who was in office from 2013 to 2022 did not receive any document of this type during his successive mandates. The objectives which were expected of him or which he intended to make his priorities, and which should have structured the conventions linking the festival to its supervision, were therefore not formalized. »
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And the institution to drive the point home: “This deficiency is all the more damaging since in this case, the director is authorized to carry out his activity as an artist in parallel, which is therefore not framed. ” The Ministry of Culture retorts: “It should be noted that only the leaders of national public establishments, financed solely by the State, receive a letter of mission from the Ministry of Culture. For all the other structures, including labeled ones, the managers’ objectives are set within the framework of multi-annual objective agreements (CPO), which have the advantage of being multi-partner. »Overpriced accommodation
Still on the Festival d’Avignon, the Court notes that the festival-goers belong to high social categories and highly qualified (73% are above bac + 3 and 38% above bac + 4). Workers represent 2.4% of festival-goers and employees 7%. “We also observe over the period under review that the average age of festival-goers has remained stable (48 years), that the proportion of people under 35 has halved between 2014 and 2021 (from 32% to 16%), while the share of over-65s has increased (from 22% in 2016 to 29.5% in 2021). These developments are all the more worrying as the festival has pursued a voluntary policy to rejuvenate and diversify its audience, in particular by offering preferential rates to those under 25”, worries the institution. According to her, it is above all the cost of accommodation that constitutes an obstacle to the sociological and generational renewal of the public of the Festival d’Avignon.
While it recognizes that the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to necessary aid for festivals, the Court recommends that the Ministry of Culture concentrate its aid on festivals which make a strong contribution to artistic creation and cultural democratization. Rue de Valois replies that these are indeed its objectives and cites, in good faith, the example of the Culture pass. In 2022, it was used to buy more than 200,000 festival tickets.