Are festivals ‘fundamentally unjustifiable’?

Perth International Arts Festival’s Jonathan Holloway gave delegates at the recent APACA conference a frank insight into arts festivals with his controversial comment that they can be seen as 'fundamentally unjustifiable'.
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Les Studios de Cirque’s Place des Anges opened the 2012 Perth Festival in spectacular fashion. Image via perthandotherplaces.blogspot.com.au

Unlike performing arts venues, which exist 365 days of the year, arts festivals are relatively ephemeral and are consequently significantly harder to justify to both the general public and to governments, said Holloway, who has been Artistic Director of the Perth International Arts Festival since 2012 and was formerly Artistic Director of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival in the UK.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts