Expensive festival flops by Gunduz Kalic

Where is the celebration?  Australia’s capital city festivals could learn a thing or two from Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Arts industry-organised festivals in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, and now Brisbane lack a precious and essential ingredient at the heart of true people’s festivals like the Mardi Gras - a genuinely celebratory atmosphere.  It is not fun which overtakes these cities at festival time.  Instead, hype rules the occasion as if it can substitute for the real thing.

Interestingly, the Mardi Gras has received little government assistance.  In contrast, the festivals are heavily subsidised by the taxpayer.  This largesse is justified, arts lobbyists argue, because of the indirect economic benefits and promotional value attached to holding a world-class festival.   The spontaneously grown Mardi Gras generates worldwide attention and monetary spin-offs ($38 million in 1993, the last year surveyed) which dwarf anything achieved by the festivals. 

The newest kid on the festival block, the hastily organised 1996 inaugural Brisbane Festival, has been trumpeted as a great success.  However, this festival came and went, the fact of its happening scarcely registering with the vast bulk of the Brisbane public.  The cost of the Brisbane Festival was $7 million.  Ticket sales were $1.8 million.   The shortfall was therefore $5.2 million, most of which came out of public coffers.

Viewed another way, 80,000 tickets were sold at an average of $22.50 per ticket.  However, the full or true cost of a ticket was $87.50, meaning that festival goers were a subsidised to the tune of $65 per show attended.  To put this figure in a national context, analysis published in the Adelaide Review shows the average subsidy per ticket of the Adelaide Festival is $44, the Sydney Festival is $49 and the Melbourne Festival is $59.  The Perth Festival includes a Film Festival - its average per ticket subsidy is $20.

And as to real participation, a recent Victorian study reports that the core arts consumer in Victoria represents 5 per cent of the population of the metropolitan region.  No one would begrudge this minority its cultural pleasure, but should Government be footing the bill?

And, most importantly, where is the celebration for the city at large?  What impact does the existence of the expensive, capital “F” festivals have on the impulse to create more organic "bottom-up" festivities?

A festival is by tradition a feast, a celebration.  Its nature is such that it cannot be engineered from above by arts managers. Festivals that really work succeed by tapping the creativity of their community.  In practical terms this means that a considerable portion of the local people spend a considerable amount of time - and money - preparing for their festival.

Currently, the situation is back to front.  “Community events” are at best tolerated and patronised on the periphery of the big city festivals.  In lieu of creative participation, the public is served up an emulation or imitation of festive spirit by the culture brokers.

Festivals should be encouraged by governments to get back to basics.  In the first instance, the best way to do this is to stop tipping so much of the taxpayers’ good money into them.

This article appeared in the Australian Financial Review, October 4, 1996.