Festival Curators as Gatekeepers of Creativity. The Decision Architecture of Artistic Programming

This chapter analyzes the role of festival curators as gatekeepers of creativity and examines the structural factors shaping artistic programming decisions. Moving beyond an understanding of festivals as mere platforms for the dissemination of artistic proposals, it conceptualizes them as drivers and mediators of creativity for professionals, audiences, and their wider communities. Festivals can function as laboratories of creativity and innovation, as well as spaces in which cultural agency is negotiated within an increasingly complex environment. By redistributing financial and symbolic risk and by creating temporal, spatial, and relational conditions for experimentation, festivals can foster professional creativity. At the same time, they can enhance audience creativity by expanding interpretative capacities and, in some cases, redistributing decision-making power. The chapter also develops a conceptual model linking programming strategies to a “decision architecture,” in which explicit criteria – such as institutional mission, available resources, funders’ interests, existing artistic offerings, and media-shaped audience expectations – are interpreted through the professional experience, education, esthetic judgment and ambition of the artistic director or curator. Ultimately, the chapter contributes to broader debates on cultural intermediation and governance, highlighting the importance of coherent programming architectures in sustaining both artistic experimentation and meaningful participation within contemporary creative ecosystems.

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.1015208