CEPEL

Festivals in Guadeloupe

A global approach

In addition to the historical and health context, the joint request from the DAC of Guadeloupe and the Conseil Régional de Guadeloupe comes at a crucial time for the observation of the festival sector, reinforcing the opportunity for collaboration with the CNRS.

Following the publication of the initial results of the SoFest! research, our CNRS team (Aurélien Djakouane and Emmanuel Négrier) was involved in setting up the États Généraux des Festivals (EGF), promoted by the French Ministry of Culture last October 2020.

At the end of 2020, the latter commissioned us to extend our analyses to all festivals in artistic sectors hitherto not included in our research: visual arts, cinema, literature, storytelling, street arts, etc. As early as February, our team circulated a questionnaire on festival activity indicators (economy, human resources, programming, etc.), incorporating questions on sustainable development and the impact of the health situation.

In June 2021, the Minister officially confirmed the prefiguration mission of a festival observation system(dof) likely to federate all local initiatives and encourage the convergence of methods and the perpetuation of indicators and around the CNRS-France festivals tandem.

As a reminder, the SoFest! research (190 festivals) and its extension through the implementation of the festival observation system (1,400 festivals) offers a wealth of unprecedented knowledge that will serve as a comparative framework for all future studies.

*SoFest! describes the social and territorial footprint of festivals, i.e. their social, economic, artistic and cultural impact.

The research was divided into six parts, the results of which are available here:

https://www.francefestivals.com/

  1. festival audiences: 26,000 questionnaires processed
  2. socio-economic indicators for festivals: 184 structures
  3. volunteers, 3500 questionnaires processed
  4. festivals' public-interest partnerships
  5. social communication at festivals, 200 events analyzed
  6. an estimate of the economic, social and artistic losses associated with the 2020 cancellations

Full results to be published in November 2021: A. Djakouane, E. Négrier, Festivals, territoires et société, Paris, DEPS/Presses de Science Po, coll. "Questions de culture".

*In 2021, the Dispositif d'Observation des Festivals (dof) produced an initial typology of festivals based on a sample of 1,400 festivals.

It is based on an online questionnaire (approximately 20 minutes to complete) distributed to the entire festival sector (performing arts, cinema, visual arts, literature). The questionnaire produces over 450 indicators on festival activity: organization, offerings, partnerships, budgets, resources, sustainable development actions, activity during the health crisis, etc.).

This first work produced :

  1. A typology of 7 festival families illustrating the diversity of the sector, beyond artistic fields.
  2. A comprehensive analysis of festival activities: economics, human resources, programming, mediation, partnerships, etc.
  3. An analysis of the effects of the health crisis
  4. An analysis of actions to promote sustainable development and solidarity

Scientific motivations for the partnership

Despite the thematic and territorial extension of our work, the observation of festival reality in the overseas territories remains a blind spot for us.

research. Yet we know the value of observing the singularity of overseas territories, as we were already able to do on Reunion Island in 2014 (A. Djakouane,Une Réunion de publics.Un festival et une saisonen outremer, Nanterre, PressesUniversitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2018). This monographic work, on the scale of a season and a festival, highlighted the economic, sociological and anthropological characteristics of festival-going on the island. It also enabled us to produce a working method capable of comparing the dynamics and cultural practices of the island with those observed in France. Each overseas territory requires specific adaptation.

For our research team, the challenge of a scientific collaboration with the Conseil Régional and the DAC of the Guadeloupe Ministry of Culture is based on four motivations:

  1. Produce an unprecedented and comprehensive observation of the festival ecosystem on the scale of the archipelago: economy, organization, spin-offs, contribution to artistic life, audiences...
  2. Refine our search tools to make them operational in Guadeloupe.
  3. Construct a comparison that clarifies what the festival experience has in common and what it has in common with the rest of the festival world as observed in France.
  4. To describe in even greater detail the anthropological phenomenon of festival attendance, and the contribution festivals make to economic, social and cultural life. And to disseminate this knowledge to a wide audience.