Creativity in a Crisis

The European cultural sector is an industry always in-flux, constantly adapting to a myriad of challenges ranging from fundraising and financial cuts to the recent rise of online streaming. Then the pandemic hit, raising the levels of uncertainty tenfold. Would arts festivals go ahead, and if so, under what guise? How much did it really matter? For Veerle Simoens, general director of the Ghent Festival in Belgium, the answer was a lot. ‘Last year we were lucky, our festival was between two waves of the virus, so we were able to put on a smaller, more intimate edition with a third of the budget and only local artists,’ she recalls. ‘You just have one slot so if you cannot organise something then you disappear for the whole year. We were able to keep that connection with the audience and give artists the chance to perform.’

Similarly, for Eckhard Thiemann, artistic director of the Shubbak Festival, the UK’s largest biennial festival of contemporary Arab culture, cancelling was not an option. ‘As our festival is biennial initially we felt quite unaffected. We thought that by 2021 the world would be back to normal but of course it became clearer that the pandemic would take a hold on the world for longer,’ he says. ‘It’s been a real rollercoaster and a period of incredible insecurity, working on several plans simultaneously with some expectation that one might become feasible. One thing was very clear: I didn’t want the communities we serve, which are under-represented in the cultural sector, to have to wait another year.’  

His solution was a hybrid programme of online and physical events, which took place in July of this year. ‘Many plans had to be curtailed because of the inability for artists to travel internationally but what it enabled us to do was to have a much more outward facing attitude,’ recalls Thiemann, who cites a Richer Life as being curious and open to new ideas. ‘We looked at how we could build on the relationships we have with our partners in the Arab region to create work digitally on the ground where the artists live, and share that with a wider audience. It has been an opportunity that we haven’t had before and that is something really positive.’

He found that another plus was not having to worry about visas for international artists. ‘Ironically, visas are always one of our biggest challenges, which this year we didn’t have,’ says Thiemann, who applied for less than a dozen compared to the usual 100.  ‘In the future, with Brexit, this will be even more difficult as we now have to apply for work permits, even for those artists with EU passports.’

Last year, for the first time ever, the Holland Festival was completely online. ‘As a sector I think we really embraced the opportunities that the pandemic gave us,’ says director Emily Ansenk, who reverted back to a live line-up this year. ‘We had to find new ways to get content across and one of those possibilities was streaming. I think the quality of content has risen enormously – it just has to be done with love, effort, money and an artistic vision.’ 

Another benefit to have come out of working digitally for Ansenk is that it has taken away some of the need to hop on a plane. ‘Usually, we travel a lot to visit different artists and makers all over the world, but we found that for conversation Zoom also worked. This makes it less necessary to travel – or when we do in Europe, we’ll take the train everywhere rather than fly – which is good for sustainability. We are careful about what meetings we travel for, so this has changed the way we are working.’

While online content may have increased global festival audiences for some, in the UK there is little evidence that streaming live theatre, say, attracted more diverse viewers. ‘This idea that digital is the magic bullet to transform the quite narrow demographic of those who engage in the arts isn’t true,’ says Dave O’Brien, a Chancellor’s Fellow in Cultural and Creative industries, based in the School of History of Art at the University of Edinburgh. ‘The Audience Agency carried out research which showed that people who are highly engaged in the arts to begin with did carry on engaging digitally but there was little or no evidence that the switch generated large numbers of new audiences. The classic challenge is how to make culture that people are interested in enough to spend time and money engaging with.’

For many festival directors, their success lies in collaborating with the artists themselves, continually adapting and remaining relevant by commissioning work that reflects the current issues of society. ‘Since I’ve been in charge, the programme has had more of a focus on political and contemporary issues,’ says Rolf C. Hemke, artistic director of Kunstfest Weimar, central Germany’s leading festival of the arts. ‘In a city of classic institutions, it is crucial that we are edgy and political and try to reflect what is happening around us in society.’

The Shubbak Festival has also evolved in recent years, moving away from a model of inviting artists to perform existing work and moving towards new commissions. ‘We’ve been on this trajectory for a number of years,’ confirms Thiemann. ‘As a festival there is a responsibility to see how we can play an active role in furthering creativity and innovation, and we do that through commissioning. It also means that we can create work that is completely right for the context. A lot of the work has been informed through a research period by the artists in local communities.’

Another aspect of adaptation for Simoens has been the way that organisers and artists have really worked together throughout COVID-19 to face challenges. ‘Because of the pandemic we’ve really managed to listen to each other and make the best of it. Before COVID-19, it was more like two worlds, the organisers and then the artists, but now we are coming closer to each other to manage the situation,’ she reflects, describing a Richer Life as being able to connect with culture and discover new things. ‘We realise that we have to keep the lines of communication open and talk to each other; the flexibility needs to be there on both sides.’

However, she feels less positive about the overall cultural debate and how the arts are viewed by politicians. ‘We won some small discussions, but it didn’t change much of society and that really bothers me. In England, Holland and Belgium there were many conversations about how essential culture is for our wellbeing and health, and we didn’t win. I believe culture is necessary for our wellbeing; we need to connect and talk and experience culture as a society. But it’s sad that after COVID, we aren’t a step closer to putting culture high on the agenda.’

Of course, whether those in power also believe in the necessity of culture, in many cases, affects funding. ‘Fundraising is always an enormous challenge; we spend six months of the year trying to secure funding,’ says Niranjan Kamatkar, artistic director of GFEST, the UK’s LGBTQI+ arts festival. In contrast, for Hemke, the financial contributions from the German government for Kunstfest Weimar are guaranteed until 2023 – and, he says, the festival contributes a lot more than it takes. ‘If you break it down, the festival is incredible value for money for the town and we are a big factor in the local economy, but that’s not always recognised.’ He cites his biggest challenge as ‘raising money and defending the status of Kunst. In the political landscape there is very little money for the arts and it is always convenient to cut funding.’

Meanwhile in the UK, O’Brien feels that last year’s call to have a major rethink about who and what the arts are for has given way to more practical, immediate concerns. ‘We’re still detecting that momentum around rethinking the arts, but at the same time, the reality of re-opening and keeping organisations afloat has really hit home.’ This makes sense: it stands to reason that inviting visitors back through the doors of arts organisations and managing to put on festivals in such unprecedented times is what’s at the forefront of many people’s minds. As Ansenk concludes, ‘our mission is to keep international and live performing arts happening. Even in difficult times we still managed to do that in some format – and I’m so proud of this year’s work.’