A lot of my friends & colleagues are heading to the major music festivals this year, and good luck to them.
Some of them are working there, some are just enjoying the fun.
I have been outspoken in the past about the ever-increasing corporate nature of the majors, likening some to 'mobile clone-town shopping malls' fearful of the lack of choice that's actually on offer, once one becomes a captive market.
I particularly have a problem with the new co-promoter set up, where (invariably) Sky Arts takes over the wall-to-wall coverage of the event, so we can sit at home and watch the muddy revellers dance in their own piss, for the meagre price of say £200 + necessary essentials.
We at home, by & large, can't afford a few hundred quid to waste on a few days in a boggy field.
We still get to see Download 'live' and we'll definitely get the best bits from the Isle of Wight, but we won't get the true festival experience, because sadly, we need that money to pay bills and put food in the mouths of our children.
Or will we?
Because the problem with Sky Arts as co-promoter is, unless you subscribe to Sky Arts (currently approximately £60 per month inclusive bundle) you
don't get to experience Download, Latitude or Cambridge Folk.
It could be argued that only a certain section of the public get to see it; those wealthy enough to afford the ticket, or those wealthy enough to have subscriptions to Sky.
And I liken this to affordability of health care.
If I personally didn't have to pay for food and electricity, or could afford luxuries in these times of austerity, I would spend my money on private health, as I'm sure a lot of Sky subscribers and festival revellers do already.
I am desperate for an operation but way down the NHS waiting-list.
There will always be those however, that can't or won't have private healthcare, because it's an impossible dream.
If Murdoch, or News International, or BSkyB or McDonalds became co-promoters in the running of private health companies there would be outrage.
We would see the whole system as profit-driven for the benefit of the rich.
So why do we not feel the same about the arts?
There are those that can appreciate art, without feeling the financial pinch.
The rest of us are left with Snog Marry & Avoid, Take Me Out, street buskers & graffiti
(I deliberately left out prime-time talent shows because it would be too easy to underline this argument).
The galling thing is that my friends that work at or attend these corporate functions
(and make no mistake, they ARE corporate functions - the sponsors for the Latitude Festival in Suffolk are Vodafone, Pepsi Max, Lucozade, Spotify amongst many others)
are vehemently against fat-cats, global capitalism, the ever increasing wealth gap and the Rupert Murdoch empire;
yet give them a bean-bag with a logo to sit on, when everyone else is upright in shit-coated wellies, and they'll forgive just about anyone.
And I know that art is accessible elsewhere.
Whilst my friends will be chuckling at Lee Nelson or swaying to Elbow tomorrow night, I will be 9miles down the road, volunteering as a waiter at my local public hall, for an event that features an up & coming spoken word act. If they are successful at this years Edinburgh Fringe, chances are they will be booked for the summer festivals in 2013. Part of their fee will be free guest tickets, some would say with a face value of nearly £200.
But 35,000+ paying punters creates a lot of profit. As does sponsorship. And the majority of the acts at the festival see very little of that.
A lot of my colleagues agree that it is a false economy to say
"300 live acts - £150 ticket - that's 50p an act and great value!"
because not only will you NOT see all 300 acts, but the ones you do see will have tailored their art to a festival sized slot.
You get to see twenty minutes of John Cooper Clarke at Latitude (if you're lucky), standing room only, most likely in damp & smelly clothes, for nearly two hundred pounds (inclusive of booking fee etc.).
You can see an hour of John Cooper Clarke at Colchester Arts Centre for less than fifteen quid.
And a lot of the acts you could see in their entirety for much less than that.
The one thing you are guaranteed however, is to see the Sky Arts balloon towering above the corporate executives marquee.
The big screens will fill the interval gaps with the latest ads from Pepsi.
And even at the marvellously quaint Port Eliot Literary Festival, Barbara Hulanicki's Biba revival has been replaced by those nice chaps at Topshop.
The Edinburgh Free Fringe runs from August 4th 2012.
