EFA - European Festivals Association

EFA is a membership community of and for art festivals set up by festival makers to enhance international contacts, collaborate and undertake training and peer-to-peer knowledge exchange throughout the year.

EFA’s main role is to connect festival makers in order to inform, inspire and enrich the festival landscape. It wants to bring to life a community for festival makers that serves as a pool of peers to ask each other for advice, co-produce and get fresh ideas across borders. In this respect, the EFA is a festivals’ service provider – the oldest cultural network of European festivals! It was established to bridge the distance between organisations in order to enrich festivals’ artistic scope and thier organisational opportunities.

2017-2020 CREATIVE EUROPE PROJECTS

The RISE 2 project aims to build an engaged, cross-generational, multidisciplinary, cross-sectorial community through ongoing activities like the Festival Knowledge Center, the Festival Places Portraits videos and the EFA Festival in Focus interviews. The Culture Commissioner Round Table takes place annually as does the Arts Festivals Summit (April 2018, Ljubljana | April 2019, Lisbon | April 2020, Galway). Events specifically aimed at young professionals include Ateliers for Young Festival Managers and Production Managers and workshops on European legislation with Pearle. To encourage cooperation in the community EFA will work with the Future Heritage Ambassadors, the In Situ Insight delegations to festivals and the Arts Festivals Council. The focus will go from the human capital at the center of festivals, their connection with audiences and places and culminates with connecting festivals with artists to build dialogue, empowerment and empathy. It’s on the basis of long term engagement that the EFA will have a long term impact on society.