The Fragile Festival Economy They draw crowds, generate income and play a unique role in spurring creativity. Now the coronavirus threatens the future of this tenuous ecosystem. By Aisha Harris Ms. Harris is an Op-Ed staff editor and writer. South by Southwest was an early sign that things were getting serious, fast. In early March, the massive multimedia festival held in Austin, Tex. was canceled by city officials just a week before it was scheduled to begin, out of concern for the spread of the coronavirus. The impact was immediate and devastating: Hundreds of thousands of people attend the conference each year, bringing with them hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to Austin. New films that were scheduled for screenings weren’t screened; musical performances didn’t go on; panels and workshops disappeared. Freelance film, music and tech journalists, many of whom had to pay out of pocket to make the trip, lost out on work in the absence of events to cover. The cancellation also brought with it an abrupt uncertainty about South by Southwest’s fate beyond 2020. In the creative sector, it’s difficult to imagine a world without South by Southwest, a cultural institution more than 30 years in the making. And yet a Wall Street Journal article featuring an interview with the festival’s co-founder and chief executive officer Roland Swenson, painted a troubling picture of a company scrambling to find resources to “keep from running out of money by summer” and forced to reduce a third of its full-time staff. “We are planning to carry on and do another event in 2021, but how we’re going to do that I’m not entirely sure,” Mr. Swenson told the Journal last month. (Mr. Swenson declined a request for an interview.) The U.S. economy is plummeting: restaurants have shuttered; the travel industry has been decimated; movie theaters feel like a distant memory. Among the many casualties is the festival circuit, an ecosystem that plays a vital role in shaping the American cultural landscape, but that may also be uniquely ill-suited to getting back on its feet again once this is all over. The NBA, MLB and other sports leagues will weather this storm. Conglomerates like Disney will survive as well. But when it comes to once-a-year events meant to bring enthusiasts and artists together and promote creativity while invigorating local business, the pandemic reveals just how tenuous of a web the network that produces such forms of entertainment is. With just one tug of a string — just one cancellation or postponement of a festival that might take up to a full year to prepare for — it can all fall apart. Most film festivals are “kind of like start-ups year over year,” Lela Meadow-Conner, the executive director of the nonprofit Film Festival Alliance, told me. “You raise the money that you need to put on your festival, and then you put on your festival and you have to start all over again.” Festivals exist in a sort of symbiotic relationship with their host towns: A range of industries, including hospitality and gig workers, for instance, count on events, from big ones like the New Orleans Jazz Festival (initially postponed, optimistically, from this month to the fall before it was canceled outright last week) to those as intimate as your local arts fair to provide a bump in their business year after year. In return, funding for these events comes in part from local sponsorships, such as restaurants and other small businesses making in-kind donations. With the country mostly on lockdown, those businesses are struggling, and many may not make it through to the other side of the pandemic. “The hardest thing to know right now is, with the economy, just who’s going to be willing to spend any marketing dollars in general,” said Ryan Watt, the executive director of Indie Memphis Film Festival. “Especially on sponsorships of events that are public.” Indie Memphis is held annually in the fall and for now it is scheduled to go on as planned in October, though Mr. Watt anticipates this year they will have reduced sponsorship. Many uncertainties abound, and like many artistic organizations, they are pivoting to producing events online in the coming weeks and months — movie live streams followed by virtual Q & As, including a weekly movie club. Their ticketing platform Eventive is working to incorporate a streaming component in the event that they are unable to hold the festival in person. “If we need to go virtual, then that’s something that we’d be prepared to do,” he said. But going virtual can only soften the impact so much. This month South by Southwest announced an online film festival showcasing features that were supposed to be shown at this year’s conference. For a 10-day period (the exact dates have yet to be revealed), anyone with even a basic Amazon account can view the available movies for free. This is cool for viewers, but may be less of a great deal for the filmmakers who choose to participate; they’ll get a “screening fee,” according to the news release, but it’s not clear how much. And from a business standpoint, filmmakers are understandably hesitant to accept Amazon’s offer. The prevailing question among several who were interviewed anonymously for an article in The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month: Why would any distributor want to pay money to screen a movie many people outside of a festival audience have already seen for free? For the festival organizers this year, money has already been spent on things like venues, contracts, travel expenses and merchandise, Ms. Meadow-Conner said; recouping those losses is hardly guaranteed. As with South by Southwest, many organizations have been forced to reduce their staff — included in the Seattle International Film Festival’s cancellation announcement was the reveal that it would have to furlough the majority of its employees. And the smaller festivals face an uphill battle when it comes to bringing audiences back once we’re on the other side of this pandemic. “When will audiences be ready to venture out again? How do you keep them engaged online during this time?” Ms. Meadow-Conner asked. Attending a festival as an audience member is often not a cheap endeavor, especially if you’re traveling from afar. A three-day general admission pass to Coachella, which has been postponed from spring to fall this year, is $430 before fees. In the midst of what will potentially be a massive recession, how many people will still be able to afford such events? Perhaps you’re someone who has never attended — or had any desire to attend — a festival. They’re not for you: too crowded, too pricey. Unless you disdain all culture completely, this implosion should still concern you. These events play important roles in the grand infrastructure of culture. They are a vital source of income for musicians; a way to promote a film and (hopefully) secure distribution rights to reel in a more general audience further down the line; a showcase for new artists and authors. They bolster local businesses. In other corners of the industry, they serve as an additional revenue stream for magazines like The New Yorker and Essence, in an age when print circulation is down and advertising dollars are fickle. It’s not as if the arts sector being generally underfunded is a revelation — this is common knowledge for anyone who has attended a school in which music and drama programs are among the first to go in a budget cut, or who has taken note of the types of people who can usually afford to pursue a career in the arts. But as someone who has attended many types of festivals, both professionally and for fun, this moment truly feels scary. As a communal experience, there’s nothing quite like it. I love thinking back to the artists and films I’ve experienced among an electrified crowd just as eager to be entertained, moved, wowed by the work. I can fondly recall the brief but memorable encounters and the friendships forged with those I would not have otherwise met. When there isn’t a crisis going on, putting up a festival is already an often financially precarious endeavor. Of course, some organizers will find ways to adapt and work around it, or are already doing so, but the ability to undertake an event with so many moving parts and variables just became infinitely more difficult. The ramifications are reverberating far and wide.
Aisha Harris (@craftingmystyle) is a staff editor and writer in the Opinion section, where she covers culture and society.
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