Chapter 24 The Future of European Festivals

Abstract

Even if we sometimes trace the word ‘festival’ back to its ancient root (calling to mind the traditional events of Bayreuth, Orange and Verona), the idea of the arts festival as we know it is relatively recent. The modern festival has evolved as part of the ‘leisure society’, with its extended summer holidays and its all-pervasive media. The theatre festival in Avignon, the oldest and best known of all the French festivals, was founded in 1947 by actor and director Jean Vilar. Yet Vilar would never have imagined the success and geographical expansion that the future would bring to the festival phenomenon. For him, the festival was just another one of the many methods he used to bring young people together to share his aesthetic and moral values. Immediately after World War Two, festivals sprang up simultaneously in several countries. At the same time as Avignon and Aix-en-Provence were started in France, similar events in Edinburgh and Recklinghausen were born. This synchronicity implies that the festival is both a social and a historical phenomenon, one both rooted in and responding to the spirit of the times and to our consumer society.