Rising to the Occasion: Enabling a Sustainable, Innovative, and Influential European Cultural Landscape through Festivals

EFA’s project proposal “Rising to the Occasion” (RISE) supports festivals in being sustainable, influential, and innovative cultural actors in our ever-changing society. RISE works along 3 action lines: 1. Educate, 2. Exchange, and 3. Enable. Each year has a specific priority and a core activity produced in collaboration with a particular partner as well as further activities implemented under each of the three action lines. Year 1 focuses on Educate to provide knowledge through capacity building of cultural actors in several cross-generational and international educational exchange activities. Year 2 focuses on Exchange and builds on the networking events organised by EFA to produce and analyse the content of the Festival Knowledge Centre. Year 3 concludes the project with a focus on Enable to cultivate a policy framework in which festivals can thrive. Through educational, exchange and networking platforms, festivals and various groups such as young festival managers develop skills, acquire knowledge, and engage in artistic collaboration. Knowledge is made accessible via publications and digital platforms, e.g. the online Festival Knowledge Centre, and is deepened by researchers involved in the project.Member and participating festivals, through these tools, will be able to further enrich their audience’s lives through their artistic and outreach programmes and to build a better Europe through its most valuable resource, its culture. The experience of every single actor and partner is multiplied across the larger festival landscape through various activities, open also to non-EFA members increasing the scope artistically, geographically, and politically at international, European, national, regional, and local level, and complementing EFA’s expertise in specific areas (artistic creation, skills, research, advocacy, business). Through RISE, EFA takes its 60+ years of experience to set up new initiatives, engage with more partners, and interact with more festivals.