Festival Insights

YOUROPE The European Festival Association wraps up successful 3F project

James Robertson

YOUROPE 3F at ADE Green. Photo: Roeland Hoefsloo

The European Festival Association’s Future-Fit Festivals (3F) project finished after three years. Besides advocating for the popular music festival sector and building capacities, YOUROPE used the EU funding to release useful guides and toolkits. Publications like the European Green Festival Roadmap 2030, the Diversity & Inclusion Toolset, the Festivals for Ukraine Toolkit, and the 3F Safety Report are free to use for everyone. Despite the project finishing, this is not the end for 3F yet.

How can festivals become resilient, responsible, and relevant? This is what YOUROPE – The European Festival Association set out to answer with their project “3F Future-Fit Festival”, co-funded by the EU’s Creative Europe program. YOUROPE delivered publications, training events and other activities to help festival promoters tackle challenges like climate change, attracting new audiences and delivering safe events.

The most important outputs and activities are summarised in the “3F summary publication”. Use it to find a resource that can help make your festival future-proof. The best thing: all publications released under 3F are free. The summary publication was translated into Spanish, French, Chinese and Arabic to make 3F’s learnings accessible to festival promoters even beyond European borders.

Here are some of 3F’s highlights:

3F publications:

 

3F international communication campaigns:

YOUROPE will continue organising training events to share best practices and knowledge. The next events are the 11th GO Group workshop in Roskilde, Denmark, April 7-8, and the 6th European Festival Conference in Évora, Portugal, Nov 18-21.

Green Operations Europe (GO Group) is YOUROPE’s think tank to inspire people in the music festival and events industry to run their operations greener, smarter and more sustainable. This year’s workshop is organised in cooperation with Roskilde Festival and will have a special focus on social sustainability. It is open to everyone interested. Find more info and a link to the registration here.

The European Festival Conference is fully dedicated to festival topics and organised by YOUROPE every two years in a different location. This year’s destination is the Ecorkhotel in Évora. Compared to other conferences, the EFC is more intimate due to a limit on the number of participants – yet it is open to everyone interested in festivals. It is known for its relaxed atmosphere, intense exchange, and great program both inside and outside the conference room. Find all info and a registration link here.

Holger Jan Schmidt, General Secretary of YOUROPE: “3F marked a turning point for YOUROPE (The European Festival Association). After more than 20 years of existence and groundbreaking achievements, we applied for European funding in the middle of the pandemic for the first time. The Network Support of the Creative Europe Program offered the opportunity to expand on what had been achieved so far, to put it on a more solid foundation and, in addition, to supplement it with new, complementary activities in order to consolidate and strengthen the scope of the association.

YOUROPE has been a partner of the longest-running Creative Europe project of all time – the European Talent Exchange, developing and promoting music and artists across Europe. 3F now gave us the opportunity to concentrate on what it takes to offer them a stage as part of our festivals: future-proof events, with skilled, happy teams and the highest possible standards in all conceivable production areas.

Let’s not kid ourselves: no two festivals are the same, and in many areas, there is no one size fits all solution. We cannot credibly set a standard for future-fitness. What we can do, however, is provide the thousands upon thousands of brave, creative and enthusiastic festival makers with tools and knowledge that will help them to confidently master the process of moving into the future. After three years, I feel that YOUROPE has come closer to this goal. We speak for and especially with festivals of all kinds – from boutique to major – in all of Europe. We help outsiders understand our sometimes crazy industry and we help to ensure that the magical moments that we all love so much can continue to be created!
The confirmation of the EU funding for 3F’s successor project is a significant recognition of the quality and relevance of the achievements made. Therefore, while wrapping up 3F, we have already started 3F 2.0, continuing the great work and developing new tools and guidance on additional focus topics, such as fair ticketing, extreme weather, and resistance to new threats, be they political, economic, or societal.”

yourope.org

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