填空题 {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}If the setting is scenic, its claims to fame are slender: a thriving umbrella industry and a reputation as the coldest place in the country. Understandably, the tourists stay away. Except, that is, for one hectic week each summer, when the community plays host to the International Festival of Street Theater, an extravaganza that now attracts 100,000 visitors keen to watch performers from as far away as Poland and Chile. The bars fill; the shops prosper. "It's put Aurillac on the map," says festival director Jean-Marie Songy. "We're a place that people visit as opposed to simply passing by."
And as countless festival organizers and chambers of commerce have realized, the longer visitors stay, the more they spend. As the summer season draws to a close, communities across the world-from outsize cities to modest villages-are counting the rewards of tapping into this booming cultural economy. This year Europe alone will stage some 400 arts festivals, ranging from the Reykjavik Jazz Festival to the Edinburgh International Festival of music, opera and theater, which last month celebrated its 60th anniversary.
{{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}"More and more places are recognizing the massive economic, cultural and social benefits of a festival," says Joanna Baker, the Edinburgh festival's marketing director. To be sure, a successful arts festival represents a happy union of commercial self-interest and public entertainment. Though many of even the best-known festivals need public subsidies to survive, they still provide an opportunity to lift a community's profile or pack its restaurants and hotels.
Festival-goers face an increasingly eclectic array of subjects-and venues. Barcelona, for one, boasts 26 major arts festivals a year-only one more than Melbourne, Australia. Film buffs can now choose between showings in cities from Aarhus in Denmark to Zagreb, not to mention the Pan-Afri-can Festival of Film and Television in Burkina Fast.
Ambitious promoters are now looking across borders to push successful formulas. In recent years, the Hayoon-Wye literary festival in Britain has established similar events in Segovia, Spain, and the Colombian city of Cartagena. Even newcomers to the market have little problem filling seats; Manchester reports packed houses and reckons it's on target to attract 300,000 visitors within a few years.
{{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}The new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has spoken of the proliferating literary festivals-Britain now has more than 300, compared with just three back in1983-as evidence of a new cultural "seriousness." Others believe the communal experience of festival-going provides a useful antidote to the solitary pastimes-many of them electronic-of 21st-century life.
But festival frenzy can be too much of a good thing. A report published last year for the Edinburgh International Festival warned that the rising tally of festivals would rapidly increase the competition for audiences. The workaday port of Rotterdam is now home to a year-round series of festivals in part to keep up with its classier neighbor, Amsterdam. In an age of cheap air travel, the opera lover with a free weekend can head for Riga as easily as Salzburg.
And there's a finite supply of sponsors and public money, not to mention performers. Already there's grumbling over rising fees for the biggest names.
{{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}"Festivals used to belong to the public," says Getz. "Now they are almost always created for strategic reasons." Inevitably, that brings the risk of losing distinctive appeal. "This 'festivalization' is creating a kind of homogeneity problem that festivals were created to solve," said Janice Price, boss of Luminato, Toronto's Festival of Arts and Creativity.
{{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}Cultural festivals are emerging as the new must-have for postindustrial cities keen to recast their images. Redeveloping the rundown waterfront or calling in big-name architects is only the start. "Big, flashy iconic buildings are not enough," says Fran Thoms, head of Cultural Strategy at Manchester City Council in Britain. "You need to fill the space between the buildings-and that's where festivals come in."
If all else fails, cities can follow the example of little Leavenworth, Washington, and completely recreate themselves as a festival center. When Leavenworth's logging industry collapsed, the settlement was remodeled to resemble a Bavarian village capable of hosting a range of cultural events. Result: 2 and a half million visitors a year. And a reputation as a don't-miss stop on the festival circuit.
A. Critics argue that the whole purpose of the festival is changing.
B. All the world loves a party, it seems-especially one that pays its own way.
C. Still, the benefits are simply too good to pass up.
D. Cultural festivals helped to rebuild the economy in Leavenworth, Washington.
E. To the optimists, those surging numbers suggest a welcome change in public tastes.
F. The economic and social benefits are altering the purpose of festivals.
G. High in the mountains of southern France, the sleepy town of Aurillac has few obvious charms to attract the outsider.