European Festivals Association takes its assembly to Armenia

Meeting in Yerevan, capital of Armenia, for its 70th anniversary assembly (12 - 14 September) could have been a huge risk for the European Festivals Association (EFA). Not only is Yerevan hard to get to (most planes land and take off in the middle of the night); the country has to manage a difficult political balancing act, virtually surrounded by powerful neighbours who are often hostile. That was underlined when Azerbaijani troops started shelling across the disputed border on the second day of the conference. The reaction, though, was not terror but a determined reaffirmation of EFA's 1952 founding purpose: the building of peace through the medium of arts festivals.

Given the logistics it was impressive that more festivals were represented in person than online. Away from the conference rooms, delegates were welcomed at the Mount Ararat home of composer Stepan Rostmoyan, who founded the Yerevan Perspectives Festival that hosted the event, and who was cheered on stage when his First Symphony was played by the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra in the city's concert hall. The hall is named after Armenian compopser Aram Khachaturian and delegates also spent time in the impressive museum built on the back of Khachaturian's town house.

These days the EFA has cities as affiliates as well as festivals themselves and the resulting mix meant that issues of sustainability, new collaborations and outreach were at the centre of the debate. These topics became the most significant sessions. Festivals saw their outreach as a crucial part of the process of helping their audiences recover from the isolation of COVID and of crossing generational divides. Meanwhile the digital collaborations established during the pandemic are evolving into longer-term partnerships for sharing content through forum and archive mechanisms named after one of EFA's founders, the political philosopher Denis de Rougement.

Sustainability is seen as a double sided issue. One side is the financial and artistic shaping of festival events at a time of inflation and potential recession, with pressure on public budgets and sponsors' contributions. The other is the way arts festivals can be used to highlight climate change and develop practices that go beyond carbon neutrality. There were impressive examples given from the Valley of the Arts Festival in Hungary, Wonderfeel (the outdoor classical music festival held in a nature reserve close to Amsterdam), and the cities of Krakow and Leeuwarden. There is also a project called the European Festival Forest, through which an optional contribution from ticket buyers can offset festivals' carbon footprint by planting trees with the help of the Icelandic Forestry Service.

City culture departments too are linking up to stimulate public awareness of the role their festivals play in economic and social development. A founding group of seven cities (including Edinburgh) have signed a binding document called the EFFE Seal - EFFE being an acronym of Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe - a form of treaty committing them to a series of clauses embedding arts festivals into a wide range of city policies. In Yerevan a further group signed up and it is expected to expand in the EU via those cities that have been or seek to be European City of Culture and outside the EU via those that recognise the treaty's potential.