The world of performing arts has been experiencing some cold sweats since the end of October and the announcement by Gérald Darmanin of the cancellation or postponement of the summer 2024 festivals. The cause invoked by the Minister of the Interior: the lack of availability of the police, which will be massively mobilized during the Olympic Games, scheduled from July 26 to August 11.
Since then, the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, has thrown her forces into battle. The result of its negotiations with the Ministry of the Interior and its consultations with the organizers of major festivals and union officials was published on Tuesday 13 December.
In its press release, the Ministry of Culture assures that “solutions have already been found for most of these events in order to ensure that they are held during the summer of 2024”. This mainly concerns the most important festivals, which require reinforcements from law enforcement. The Festival d’Avignon, usually organized during the month of July, will thus have to ” start earlier » to adapt to the calendar, which plans to ban large events between July 18 and August 11.
Tuesday evening, in the columns of Parisianthe Minister ensured the maintenance of the major festivals, before admitting that the Lollapalooza, a pop-rock event organized in Paris, remains “a complicated case because it is in Île-de-France and is held during the Olympic events”.
” It was time ! »
If the press release from the ministry gives the organizing committees time to prepare, it also puts them in the face of new challenges. ” We have been working with all the players since this situation arose, confides the press service of Opus 64, which handles the communication of the Festival d’Avignon. First to ensure the security guarantee, then to solve the logistical and practical problems. We should get there, but the dates announced remain a working hypothesis. »
Moving the Festival d’Avignon to the end of June involves in particular a pileup with the school calendar, while several performances usually take place in the courtyard of certain establishments.
“If governments consulted us, we could work upstream of the problems rather than downstream, regrets Vincent Moisselin, director of the National Syndicate of artistic and cultural enterprises (Syndeac). There is a real problem of dialogue, of space for consultation and this affair of the festivals demonstrates it. »
He still expresses some relief: ” It was time !This press release tempers the remarks of the Ministry of the Interior, and we are delighted to see that the alliance of culture and sport will be built. » Delicate construction, whose first bases, just laid, remain fragile. “We will have to be very attentive to how the prefects will read and apply the circular”.
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