Category: Magazines

If we accept that Europe has also a community of individuals and diverse cultures and not only of institutions, we might be longing for a more humanistic world. Arts and culture are a way to tell the stories of the individuals, communities, and the different realities that confront them.

Eye-to-Eye, on the verge of European Parliament elections, zooms in, as always, to highlight a series of individual visions, motivations, narratives, and possibilities for community building through the arts and arts festivals.

Enjoy reading these and please use your right to vote if you have it.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

In the Winter of 2024 the one thing we call for is peace and understanding. In this edition of Eye-to-Eye, five women and one man from different parts of the world share with us the ideas that drive their thoughts about the role of arts and culture in our communities and societies.

Also this year, we’ll keep on sharing voices and acknowledging the need for our task to contribute to reciprocal understanding. We will reiterate our call for decisions and actions that can truly make a difference.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

Artificial intelligence, nature and arts, the individual versus the collective, arts in rural areas and artistic curation of festivals: All the articles in this issue relate in some way to reflections about change, whether at a personal or societal level.

Eye-to-Eye zooms into the perspective and minds of six individuals who ask themselves in one or another way how the arts and their place in society makes sense to them.

Enjoy your reading.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

“Lets talk…” was the guiding thought of this year’s Arts Festivals Summit of the European Festivals Association in Girona hosted by Festival Castell de Peralada in April. And we talked… and talked! 227 people bound together by their work and love for the arts, for festivals and for connections between people and ideas from around the world for 5 days. Some of those who contributed actively to the Arts Festivals Summit are featured in this Eye-to-Eye Magazine. You’ll see, it’s a mixture of diverse thoughts that connect, whether they are central or peripheral to mainstream debate, that you’ll enjoy reading.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

Our times are presenting their specific challenges continuously, and changing in weight. The turn of the year often serves to make us more aware of such challenges and start the new year with good intentions. Anniversaries can have the same effect. EFA’s 70th anniversary Arts Festivals Summit in Yerevan in 2022 brought together thinkers that know more about the new relationships between the arts and cities, the business and activism.

This Eye-to-Eye magazine catches some of the perspectives shared in Yerevan, and speaks about new beginnings.

Happy New Year!

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

What can and should the arts do in a changed world? How should festivals define their position in the societies within which they work?

70 years ago, Swiss writer and philosopher Denis de Rougemont and Ukrainian conductor Igor Markevitch launched the European Festivals Association (EFA) as a peace project, a dialogue platform, an expression of hope and reconciliation. They believed in the power of the arts and their impact on societies.

EFA has been a platform for dialogue since its inception; a place to meet, to listen, and to speak about the responsibility and possibilities of art and culture. EFA wants to facilitate conversations that have the constructive energy to create an effective intellectual and artistic capacity to look at the world’s challenges in a nuanced way: the Eye-to-Eye Magazine is a contribution to this endevour. The 6 articles presented in this new edition are the perfect illustration of it.

Enjoy the reading.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

Yes!!! The mountain was high again in 2021. But we decided to keep on looking far from wherever we start.

We are in visionary company in this winter edition of our Eye-to-Eye magazine: 6 powerful women and gentlemen are pointing at pertinent issues of the arts and of festival life from the outside: as artists, as scientists, as politicians.

We are ready: Let’s make the best from the new year all together.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

Presenters, promotors, producers, artists: we all contribute, we need each other, we join in different frequencies the daily noise, the music of life’s symphony. We manage, take our roles, do our jobs. This edition of the e-magazine bears witness to serious work done: from reflections on Schubert’s work to festivals’ role in society, philanthropists’ responsibilities and finally the importance of bringing a range of narratives from different parts of the world to audiences. Dive into their prose. Enjoy their insights.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

It was a coincidence at first, then a beautiful result. The third edition of Eye-to-Eye, The Festival Quarterly, is giving a voice only to artists: artists and their view and vision of the moment, the challenges they are dealing with, and the very individual story they share with us. Again, we are happy to have this great variety of contributors from such different starting points: dancers, theatre makers, actors, visual artists, musicians, poets… from North, South, East, and West. This is not to tick boxes, but to tell us that the world is local, individual, complex and fragmented, yet our shared concerns keep on bringing us together.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

I am pleased to present you our 6 new contributors to the second edition of Eye-to-Eye: The Festival Quarterly. They all together and individually set so beautifully the tone of this e-magazine and more importantly of who and what informs us, and it, festival making, today: individual perspectives from persons living in Turkey, Serbia, Australia/UK, Singapore, Poland and Italy; eye-to-eye with artists, psychologists, film directors, city representatives; with men and women of the arts, younger and older, and one who will always stay with us: Frie Leysen. Frie was the founder and the director of deSingel in Antwerp and the internationally renowned Kunstenfestivaldesarts.

Let us hope that when the next edition of Eye-to-Eye comes out festivals will be able to look forward with renewed confidence.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General

Eye-to-Eye…

…with those that inform, influence or inspire festival makers and making: the artist, the economist, the philosopher, the urban planner, the academic, the politician.

The European Festivals Association’s (EFA) ‘The Festival Quarterly’ Eye-to-Eye assembles a variety of voices that speak about our society, the state of the arts and reasons why the arts exist, concepts, and moments in contemporary life.

It includes articles we commission and material we ask editors to provide. Eye-to-Eye offers a mosaic of reflections, opinion pieces, personal statements, seemingly unrelated yet fitting with each other. It reflects EFA’s journey to broaden our conversations and dig into the habitat of festivals, taking us well beyond the process of festival making.

Today we are sharing with you the very first issue: The Festival Quarterly’s Summer 2020 edition. We intend to publish Eye-to-Eye articles, film abstracts and material every 3 months.

We will develop this project with the experience of each edition: Eye-to-Eye will be an evolving project, taking into consideration the suggestions we will receive from festivals and our stakeholders community. Be part of it.

Kathrin Deventer
EFA Secretary General