This festival has brought together nearly 80,000 spectators for sixteen years. The 17th edition will take place from June 18 to July 18. It is aimed at all the heads of municipalities and intercommunalities in the Basin, the presidents of the Department of Gironde and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region, as well as state representatives.
You challenge elected officials and decision-makers in a local, national and international context of tensions. Why?
It is as an artist-citizen, conductor and cultural operator of the Arcachon basin that I take a stand. This period is quite worrying for our civilization in many areas. Our world is won over by political demagoguery, of those who, for example, put themselves on stage with chainsaws. In such a context, the politician’s reflex could be to erase the line of culture with the stroke of a pen.
You have to save money somewhere, right?
We are well aware of the current budgetary constraints and necessary trade-offs, but I want to recall the contribution of culture no longer simply through the prism of civilization but in the role of wealth creation and economic leverage. It is in fundamental truth. France is a cultural superpower and this explains its attractiveness. Our soul supplement is culture, otherwise we become a country like any other.
You say that culture creates wealth?
Of course. I could mention the figures published each year by Bercy and the Ministry of Culture on the contribution of the latter to the national GDP as well as to the creation of real wealth. An association like Les Escapades Musicales works in the general interest in the territories, does not redistribute any profits or dividends to third parties but above all generates for each euro of subsidies obtained three to four euros in the real economy! The flow of wealth, material and immaterial, truly exists when culture is managed with rigor and ambition.
We can understand that communities do not subsidize everything…
