How Festivals Boost a Country's Image & Economy
On April 4, the conference of the ‘Creative Entrepreneurship Academy 2019’ was held in Rooms Hotel’s Lolita seminar room. The theme was the impact of festivals on the local economy. The event was organized by Creative Estonia, Creative Caucasus and Creative Georgia.
Festivals are great boosters for the local economy. They bring culture to the local community and build a new image of the city as dynamic, young and attractive for talents. They also provide work to local companies such as hotels or restaurants by bringing large numbers of visitors.
The panel of presenters gathered five guest speakers from Estonia, who came to talk about the success and challenges of the creative economy in their own country. Then, representatives of Georgian festivals talked about their own experiences.
Different subjects were addressed, including branding, financing and space management. The main challenges encountered when organizing festivals were noted to be finding a stable source of funding, reaching an audience, dealing with weather conditions, facing competition and managing unexpected situations.
Tarmo Noorma organizes the annual Viljandi Folk festival in Estonia and at the Academy explained how the festival grew from 200 visitors the first year to 25,000 in 2012. It is now the main folk festival in the world and is a successful example to other festivals. He explained that he always makes sure that people who buy tickets enjoy the best experience possible and that the musicians are perfectly welcomed so that they are in a good position to give quality concerts.
Bianka Soe works for the Telliskivi Creative City which is a former Estonian industrial complex that was transformed into a place that welcomes festivals, cultural events, restaurants, stores and more. She described how people were able to re-dynamize a place that had been abandoned. The 25,000 meter-square space now welcomes more than a million people each year.
Among the Georgian speakers was Michael Maisuradze, who came to talk about the 4GB festival that will happen in May, a very important electronic festival staged each year since 2011 in Tbilisi. Nino-Ana Samkharadze presented the annual Kolga Tbilisi Photo festival where, for five days in May, Tbilisi will host photo exhibitions from local and international artists in different places throughout the city. It is one of those rare high-quality festivals that people can enjoy for free. Other guests presented the Sou festival, Tbilisi International Festival of Theater, Tbilisi Architectural Biennale, the Blues Fest and CinéDOC-Tbilisi, all very inspiring cultural events set to happen again this year and that participate in making Tbilisi and its surroundings a growing cultural hub. Such festivals attract a young and dynamic population to the city, educate people and more than anything, make arts reachable for anyone. Georgia needs to put more emphasis on events of this type and in diverse cities.
By Gabrielle Colchen
Image source: Creative Georgia Facebook page