INTERVIEW
Jérôme Tréhorel recognizes it, he saw only "small bits" of his own festival. Director of Vieilles Charrues, the Breton "wandered on duty" for four days, "to see if everything was fine and take the energy of the public". Balance sheet? 270,000 visitors and more than 7,000 volunteers, says the manager at Europe 1 at the end of the weekend. At the microphone of Emilie Mazoyer, it takes stock of the 2019 edition on Europe 1.
>>> Relive the Vieilles Charrues Festival, of which Europe 1 was a partner, on our Instagram page
"Culture must be accessible to all"
"Even if we start the festival a little tired, because all teams work hard for months, see the public happy, it's the best gift," smiles Jerome Tréhorel. "We are on a sector apart, culture, which must be accessible to all," he says. "We need to take some care, provisions for the artists to circulate, that the public can meet them, that's what we try to do."
In concrete terms, the festival, which operates on an associative model based on 80% of tickets receipts, has maintained prices at 44 euros per day for five years. "Organizing a meeting between artists and an audience, that's what must be our first motivation," insists the director. "It's ours with old plows, it's the price but also the eclecticism of the programming."
A cost of programming "a little on the rise"
To keep this rate, one of the "tracks" envisaged by Jérôme Tréhorel and his team is to leave part of the festival facilities on the site all year. "We do not generate additional revenue and the cost of programming is always changing a little higher," says the director.
Sustainability of the infrastructure would "climb faster, cheaper and continue 'the Plows adventure' for another 20, 30 or 40 years," he likes to imagine.