Focus themes

For over seventy years, EFA has been inviting for a continued agenda setting for festivals. The starting point for the ongoing and evolving reflections is the 70-Years-On Agenda.

EFA is committed to offer learnings and exchanges on sustainable practices within the festival sector, aligning with broader global and European climate initiatives. 

Its commitment to fostering collaboration, interaction, and the exchange of ideas makes it a cornerstone of cultural dialogue. 

Festivals often serve as vibrant cultural platforms, but they also have a powerful role in shaping political dialogue. EFA plays a critical role in gathering the knowledge, questions, and needs from the festivals’ community and translating them into meaningful policy discussions.

In all its conversations, EFA puts the artistic dialogue forward, and the place of festivals, and the arts, in society including most recently festivals’ potential or task to nurture health and wellbeing—within their teams, among their audiences, and in the wider communities they serve.

EFA supports festivals in crises countries by connecting them with EFA Members (match-making, tandem memberships, mobility Fund, visibility).

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility and Belonging (DEIAB) have become essential priorities for society, more and more for politics, and hence for many arts festivals and the broader cultural sector.