Cultural activities on the stage, Slovenia, 2020

The covid-19 pandemic severely hampered cultural activity on stage in 2020

Almost 98% of cultural institutions with stage activity reported about the impact of the pandemic crisis in 2020; at the same time, around 71% also said that the situation encouraged other forms of activity. In addition, the vast majority of these institutions (around 86%) had fewer tours of own performances in 2020 than planned; only 7 institutions reported the increase of tours with their own events. The number of tours in 2020 was 3,617, representing only close to 47% of the tours in 2019.

Around 69% of cultural centres, theatres and music institutions further reported that they had hired fewer external collaborators in 2020, and more than 28% that the corona crisis had no impact on the number of their external associates involved in performing stage activities; at 4 cultural institutions, the number of collaborators increased. The number of external associates of all cultural institutions with stage activity decreased from 13,319 in 2019 to 9,168 in 2020.



Almost 4,000 e-events 

In 2019, cultural institutions performed 11,222 events (premieres and repeats) on their stages: half of the events were the result of their own production and co-production and the remaining were hosted events. As expected, most  (75%) events were performed in houses of culture and cultural centres, 24% in theatres and both operas, whereas music institutions, which mostly had their own performances elsewhere, produced the remaining one percent of all events. More than half of all performances were own productions of the cultural institutions.

This year was the first time we asked cultural institutions about the number of e-events prepared for the virtual space. Our data show that the total production of virtual events in 2020 was around 35% of the production of performances on the stage in the cultural institutions themselves. In other words: in addition to the 11,222 events offered in the premises of cultural centres, theatres and music institutions, 3,974 e-events for the virtual space were prepared as well.

Among all events, the largest number of events were film and video projections (27.9%), followed by drama and other theatre works (i.e. drama and other theatre works, puppet and experimental theatre performances) which include dramatic and other theatrical works, puppet shows and experimental theatre performances (27.6%).



1.49 million visitors

In 2020 there were 1,492,240 visitors to the performances, and each performance averaged with 133 visitors.

Some cultural institutions offered also free-of-charge events to visitors, namely 26% or 2,906 in 2020, mostly in houses of culture. With paid events, however, the institutions earned around EUR 5.3 million; the average ticket price for a performance was EUR 9.80: in houses of culture EUR 9.40, in theatres EUR 9.90 and in music institutions EUR 16.20.

Festivals

In 2020, cultural institutions organized 174 festivals, which featured 2,129 events. The majority of them were music and dance festivals (70), 26 were theatre festivals and 20 film festivals, while the remaining 58 festivals – i.e. half of all festival performances – were classified by cultural institutions as "other". Houses of culture and cultural centres prepared the majority of festivals (139).

Staff in cultural institutions
 
In 2020, these institutions employed 2,627 persons and there were 9.168 external associates as well.  Compared to 2019, the number of employees increased by 9 people, while the number of external collaborators decreased by more than 31%.

Among external associates the largest share were the self-employed in culture (26%) followed by voluntary, unpaid workers (22%) and by associates with contracts for copyright work (21%).

Access for the physically, visually and hearing impaired

Among cultural institutions that had their own premises for performing cultural activities, 57% had access arranged for physically impaired persons, and 35% had it partly arranged. The access of visually and hearing impaired persons was arranged only in 15% of these institutions, and partly arranged in 31%; these persons were completely ignored in the remaining 54% of cultural institutions.


Tables with the latest data are available in the SiStat Database.