In April 2020, EFA started a long zoom journey and has organised many online meetings with its members, EFFE Labels, festival makers, cities, sponsors, artists...

The meetings were divided in several groups:

• The EFA Members Catch Up meetings offering a space for EFA members to connect, to share and to support each other
• The Nassim Taleb's Black Swan group meetings tackling programming, curating and positioning festivals
• The Marshall Plan group meetings dealing with evolving relations with sponsors, public authorities and other stakeholders
• The Festival Cities meetings bringing together cities and festivals to discuss their role in cities’ public life.

Many topics and questions were raised during these meetings:

What does it mean to run a festival. Why? For whom? What will the future look like in terms of programming, digitisation, environmental sustainability, social inclusion? Which business model should festivals develop? What can festivals and cities do together to contribute to Europe? 

Discover now our selection of extracts. They are spontaneous, from within a context of conversations: they weren't made for review as single pieces or prepared as keynote speeches (you will see people’s kitchens, bedrooms and sofas... you will see first try outs of zoom sessions, and later better versions...); yet we are courageous enough and convinced about the added value to allow an insight into our reflections... Some good food for thought :)