Music
Foreign aid
Peter Phillips
Having just written an article in this column on the subject of how healthy festivals in England are, who pays for them and so on (26 May), and finding myself passing the time of day in the office of the Festival Estival de Paris, as one may do, I thought I would ask a few questions. Comparisons have their pleasure quotient: one may justifiably moan at being hard done by, or smile if other nations do not have as many good things as we do. I was forced to the unlooked-for conclusion that politicians of every persuasion are at the moment dead set on the devolution of funds, but also that the French take a great deal more care of their festivals than we do.
I made the point before that devolution of money to local bodies is not in the interests of (necessarily expensive) excel- lence. For such organisations it may seem difficult to justify a budget for festivals which has at its head the price of an `international' extravaganza, costing say £40,000, followed by a collection of `do-it- yourselves' at £2,000 a time. Put like that the big event seems disproportionate, whereas in the context of the Arts Coun- cil's expenditure £40.000 blends into the background. Thus the Arts Council is better equipped to take a broad view to the question 'Is it really worth it?'. The situa- tion is almost exactly the same in France. In 1981, when Mitterrand came to power, the financing of all but 20 of France's festivals was devolved. Before that every festival of any stature was funded direct from Paris; now the government gives money in proportion to the amount the
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