CIRCOSTRADA × SIPAM - Scale, Identity, and the Art of Gathering Five festivals. Five countries. One stubborn question: what does it actually take to gather people in a public square — and keep doing it, year after year, until the city can’t imagine itself without you?
This panel brings together the people who do it. From Chalon-sur-Saône, where Nathalie Cixous steers France’s flagship street-arts festival; from Catalonia, where Abigail Ballester runs FiraTàrrega, the Iberian marketplace where careers are made; from Prague’s Letná hill, where Anna Šmat has spent fifteen years turning a park into the Czech Republic’s great circus gathering; from Waterford, where Deirdre Dwyer programs the street theatre that takes over an Irish city each August; and from Sibiu, where Dan Bartha-Lazăr curates FITS Outdoor.
Together they trade the unglamorous truths behind the spectacle: how you fund the unfundable, hold an artistic identity as budgets tighten and sponsors circle, and tell the difference between drawing a crowd and belonging to a place. When does scale deepen a festival’s bond with its city, and when does it hollow it out? What do you owe the artists you platform — and the public you assemble? A frank conversation about the art, and the labour, of gathering. Abigail Ballester · Executive Director, FiraTàrrega (Spain)
Anna Šmat · Festival Producer, Letní Letná (Czech Republic)
Deirdre Dwyer · Street Theatre Programmer, Spraoi Festival (Ireland)
Dan Bartha-Lazăr · Curator & Coordinator, FITS Outdoor (Romania)
Nathalie Cixous · Director, Chalon dans la rue (France)
Moderator — Erwin Șimșensohn · General Director, Constanța State Theatre; Founder, SEAS (Romania)
Event in English, with translation into Romanian and French Duration: 1h 15min
