We asked our readers to pitch in to a debate about “the perfect permit system”. Below are some of the responses. If you’d like to add your voice to this list, please add your comment here. Thanks!
Gordon Thompson
The most important thing here is that there is no need for permits. Attention to buskers is a waste of tax payers’ money. Buskers do not take from the city, they give their hearts and souls. Busking is a short term thing that some artist and musicians do in a lifetime. 99% of the buskers never make it past year 3 of the trade. So why keep track of them – there is NO benefit to this.
Marc Stokes
If we can have the police leave buskers alone, it would save everyone time, money and frustration. A permit that allowed for amplification and later hours in louder parts of the city would be a huge asset. Having a permit that was free, but had some form of audition I think would be great. The audition process should be for nothing more than to check if the performer can keep rhythms and pitch. The perfect permit would allow me to play in the same spot for 90 mins with 15 minutes on either side for setup and take down. Permits should be able to be altered by everyone who has a permit via a vote.
Ting-Ting Gronberg
If the permit contains time and spot the conflicts will be less. I hate the buskers push everyone else out. We need a better permit, a permit without an age limit. As long as the parents are along with the kids, why can’t the kids perform?
Garry Glw
Its hard to be a busker. The root of busker is buscar, which means to search in Spanish, implies a kind of wandering musician, or perhaps a spiritual soulful quest. The buskers I know in Europe often go from town to town. Generation and incubation needs freedom.
Permits are about stasis, social control, splitting the pie, putting names and classifications on a badge. In Europe, buskers work their own problems out themselves. Yes, there are the same problems of keeping the spot, but that’s not something that requires one to refer to the state to work the problem out. State interference is wrong because it assumes the busking issue is about money and property rights, but its much more than that.
It’s the city’s job to protect its current tax base first, pay lip service to art later. They have no qualms about crushing the income of a handful of marginals — especially in Vancouver, which is mainly soulless suburban sprawl conceived by capitalists, maintained by a constant flow of immigrants.
Catherine Davis
20 years ago I was in favour of a licensing permit for buskers. Sometimes I found myself blackballed by other buskers (they would line up their cases so I would not get a chance to play at a particular spot). Often panhandlers, bylaws and The Nanaimo Port Authority harassed me while trying to play on the street. I thought a permit would give legitimacy to the craft. I was wrong.
Since Nanaimo put the first bylaw in place in 1997, busking has become very difficult in Nanaimo. I now feel that bylaws cause more problems for buskers than panhandlers do. Most buskers have a good sense of what is traditionally good busking practise. Now that anyone can get a permit for $25.00 the standard of musicianship has gone down. Citizens complain and colour all buskers with the same brush.
I don’t resent paying for my Translink licence in any way. I am always able to play in a safe, warm place, and I am never harassed by anyone. I feel respected by the public and my peers. In my opinion if one must have permits, this is the best model. It is a contract honoured by 2 parties.
I also do not mind the Granville downtown permit, as it costs no money and the buskers are of good quality. We are also given space at special events.
I have no problem with a badge, as long as it does not have my name or picture on it. This protects me from crazies, and lets the particular authority keep track of who is who on the street, for my protection. Buskers are providing a service and other than on private property should not have to pay a fee. Simple reality rules such as “don’t obstruct traffic, and stay within the noise bylaw” should be more than adequate.
Nanaimo has perhaps the most onerous set of bylaws in Canada. There are fines of up to $10,000.00. There are 28 infractions. Up until 2 months ago you had to play on a yellow spot on an even day, a blue spot on an odd day and you had to start on the even hour. Even after a recent review there are only 2 covered spots in the whole city. pdf
Joe Mangrum
In USA it is unconstitutional to require permits…although most municipalities if not challenged would like to believe otherwise. Like most local police they want their cut. No permits, just common sense. No banging on drums in the middle of residence communities at midnight. Keep it simple…we all can agree on that!
Napalm Dragon
Things that went wrong in Vancouver.
1: No Juggling of Dangerous Objects (complete overkill)
2: With a lottery for spots, Street Performers with acts that need space had to give it up to a single musician, that could perform in tighter quarters (Granville Island)
3: Some changes to the area at English Bay, killed it.
Now, World Class performers don’t even bother with Vancouver anymore. The one upside is that the permit was only $25 for a year. Easily affordable for even the worst performers.
A very important note: The City NEVER screened the performers. No one had to audition for the permit. Auditions are a VERY BAD idea, especially for traveling performers who cannot be there for these auditions. If a performer sucks, they make no money and don’t bother risking the permit fee. Or they do, then regret it.
The one useful feature about the permit, was that abusive people would be held accountable. Also, panhandlers couldn’t bully the Street Performers and Buskers.
Ata Özev
It’s easier to busk without a permit than to find the perfect one : P
Fremantle Fairground
Buskers do not need permits!! They are bound by the same laws as every other person. Death before Audition!
Okay. So what works instead? Guidelines and self governed guilds of buskers can keep permit-happy people…well…happy.
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
It is cynical and would be ruthless to discount a system which already is run well by buskers. Guidelines exist already.
STREET GUIDELINES
1. All performers should be good to each other working on the premise that most things can be resolved well. You belong to a large group of artists and dysfunctional eccentrics and you can’t choose your family. Collaboration beats competition.
2. Performers should behave well towards the public, including stall holders, rangers, police and council officials.
3. Language guidelines will vary where you are performing. However, “Fuck” and “Cunt” are not usually OK in Australia, and in Canada “Bastard” can be a problem. Racism and sexism is not okay anywhere and should not be tolerated.
4. Performers should be responsible for their own public liability insurance.
5. Artists should have a fire blanket or extinguisher if they use fire. Artists should get well acquainted with working with fire and fire safety before performing with fire.
6. Fuel should be in a sealed container.
7. A rope boundary can assist the performer and audience to delineate a safer working area.
8. If you use knives or sticks be sensible and don’t wave them around like a 9 year old. When you are not using them, cover them and put them away where you can still see them.
9. If you use a sound system music and headset mike then don’t turn it up so loud that people won’t want to stand near you.
10. All performers are bound by the same state and local laws as everyone else.
11. Time slots for working should be negotiated amicably with other performers.
12. Form a guild if you need to for your pitch and cut and paste guidelines to suit. Present a united front and go well xx
Jimmy Stash
I avoid them, mostly because here in Adelaide, they only operate between 10 am & 10 pm, So the council can control its retail strip, when its open! I don’t busk permit zones, until after 10 pm. Easy!
Nath Kell
God damn parasitical bureaucrats, wallowing in their banality and grasping with soft white fingers for more power to justify their beige existence. if a worldwide permit worked I would love that! But no bureaucrat will accept a carte blanche from a lowly street artist. I say stick to defending our basic rights we as humans have agreed upon (universal dec. human rights) and unify to fight the pathetic middlemen who try to stop us performing the world over.
It is easier to criticise than create, so please don’t think I’m shooting y’all down. I like what your trying to do in creating more opportunity for people to perform. I’m just very concerned that municipal governments and private area managements will take the worldwide permit system and use it to create even more red tape than currently exists, or cite its letter to the law and find minute infractions that will inevitably occur to ban circle shows per area or case by case. Do what you have to do but remember there is no law that stops us in 90% of countries, yet we are uniformly alone in combatting people that stop us for any number of bogus reasons, this system may just give these people more leverage to stop shows. I would like to see a worldwide guild or even better union that fights for our rights when needed. what say ya? peace, Nath
Vassilis Triantafyllidis
interesting movement…I believe it is difficult to come to such solution as the performer moves depending to where there possible people traffic and some potential to get some donations. That means he/she can go anywhere. Such permit might be restrictive. I believe this is only viable via verbal negotiation with permit owners.
Human rights though must be at the front of this system of a global recognition. It is the only way to defend your existence.
A better understanding of street performance would be in a book that a child reads @ school in my opinion. This way the next generation will be more aware and open to such cultural involvement.
It would also be nice to have a non-mandatory permit website company license/registration system, that can choose a performer if they wish all over the world. this way you will unite this culture and possibly provide an exchange platform. Also will list companies that show interest for i.e. a greek performer moving to the USA for a week and seeks specific sites/customers. You could also list some fees to have a sort of defacto package.
As far as the permit, as a definition, to my ear sounds nothing. why you need it? The street performer, most of the times, I believe, negotiates depending on the situation and the permit might add standard rules to something that cannot be fixed in a sentence I think.
Ken Fanning
Street theatre should disturb and take over, and not be permitted. It is free art. Anyone who believes he/she is a street artist should have right to express themselves on the street.
AMillion BaZillion
Street performers are the diffuse revolution. Revolution is always a return to one’s original freedom granted by mothers to their children just after birth when they are cut free. The best permit system would be a little dried piece of umbylical cord remnant that you could show to people who show you their badges or name tags or whatever as they demand to be obeyed.
In all seriousness, permitting systems are fundamentally flawed. if the rule of law exists in a place already, as it does everywhere buskers work, then that ought to be a sufficient. the word busker and the busker community and definition and all that are afterthoughts of what is an archaic human social instinct to perform. People have been watching people do things forever. Permits serve the permitter. we are all already by nature permitted to do whatever we want for each other.
Asking what specific protocols would be included in the perfect permit, is a question built on a false limb. It assumes that permitting is legitimate. Permits are: a) redundant in societies governed by laws and b) irrelevant between performers and their audiences…. that is a genuine sentiment, which I think you’ll find is a common one. and if you’re advocating a perfect permit, I believe you’re misrepresenting the issue… the case in favour of permits I hear rattling around between performers sometimes is that it keeps sketch-bags off of pitches. so does letting them perform. It just takes half an hour longer. Art is freedom.
Gareth The Mighty
I have found that permits only serve to restrict us……although there are a few nutters out there who are not very sensitive about what they do on the street, but they will probably be breaking a local bylaw and therefore be controlled accordingly. I will repeat what dynamike said: PERMITS SERVE THE PERMITTER.
Eden Cheung
buying a permit gives power to someone who has none over you. In Ottawa we made a point of telling people who were only interested in working after the powers-that-be left to NOT buy a permit.
Richard Hartnell
The problem with unions is that there’s always an amateur willing to work for free.
Bob Boyle
If you live in slavery long enough, you lose touch with freedom and start to welcome positive proposals within your slavery as if they were presents, forgetting that you have every right to be totally free. As FF says ‘we are already permitted’…
Tangi Ropars
We should be free to play music and perform on the street when we want and where we want.
I meet some older buskers who’ve been all over the world without any paper, just their music it was not a problem before. Nowadays, many places ask a permit and kill the essence of art, performing when you feel it. How can people stop artist who are sharing their soul, their emotions, energy, trough their art, and accepting anything in return.
Michael Stiven Orbegozo Albarracin
in my country there are no opportunities, or laws for the jugglers. A cultural mind is not very good seen by society. I want to see it as an art and a cultural expression, which is as valued as the other arts.
Mario Morris
Permits is the beginning of the end, an infringement of freedom. The Streets belong to every one. No one power should rule it. This defeats the heart of street performing as far I am concerned. The beauty of it, to be a free man/woman to go as one pleases. Gee I cant stand it when you get into town and its need to get a permit time.
TPG
The permit system… Oi.
So, I think that the permit system is okay. But it should be free to get one. No tryouts. First come first serve lineup. 1 hour limit if people are waiting. Amps ok but not loud enough to disturb other acts or the people who live and work in the area. Fire is ok too if you are not an idiot about it. Other performers should police this. Also not to block off pedestrian traffic choose a spot that fits your crowd. People should not have to walk into the street to get around your audience. Maybe just at the end its ok.
I know many people do not like the permit systems. But it does help to make people work together and not just to have the breakdancers go back to back.
Deadly
I have been Busking for almost 30 years now; both as a musician and street performer, worldwide. The perfect buskers permit did exist, many years ago, it was no permit! I have watched many a buskers pitch destroyed over the years by permit systems. Permit or no permit; legitimate or illegitimate, at the end of the day you can still have a permit revoked or pitch taken off of you at the whim of the authorities involved. eg. I pay two different authorities to play on the one pitch (yes double dipping) and still I may turn up and there is a stall or charity or some other event organised on the pitch by one of the aforementioned authorities. Go figure.
GioSafari
It doesn’t really matter to me whether there is a good, fair, or just permit system. Once busking becomes institutionalised, we are simply tools of the state, we amount to little more than imperial Rome’s bread and circuses. Street artists are subversive not only because of the text, context, and/or subtext of their work, but because of the very medium. Institutionalising busking (and submitting to such systems) means taking the brush, guitar, and juggling clubs out of OUR hands and putting them instead in the hands of the state. I would never get “the best permit,” even if it did exist. Why must I be permitted to express myself?!
Finally, I understand that not all artists live in so-called ‘free’ countries like the US, where I live. Perhaps in other countries there are real consequences to sharing one’s life, love, and art on the streets. Wherever that’s the case, an artist has worse problems than a lame permit system. They ought to be fighting ever harder to create art and culture that values liberty, peace, justice, and responsibility so that their art is not just ‘permitted’ by governments but rather DEMANDED by the people. Peace friends.
Yogi Laser
I think the permit is okay, and that street performers should have the right to perform any where in the world.
Judith Lanigan
I think an internationally recognised standard permit which involves safety standards, a code of practise, and a clearly stated Duty Of Care is an EXCELLENT idea. Street theatre and busking shows may be about political action and stuff for some people, but for a lot of us it is about entertaining people, earning a living and using our unusual skills as part of the world not against the world. Safety standards are about making sure innocent bystanders don’t get hurt by careless safety. For example, in Australia it is illegal to use fire in some places because a busker was careless with his gear and and a member of the audience got burnt.
It is the actions of buskers and street performers that have led to councils and organisations requiring public liability insurance and permits. It’s a reality. That means that even those of us who are professional, have to obey that system and be limited by it. It means we cant just catch a plane to a decent pitch and do some shows because we have to go through a permit system each time.
An international standard permit would ease this. We can set our safety standards. Its not about what time should shows stop. That is covered by the Duty of Care.
Arif
I’m in favour. The idea isn’t that it’s set up to restrict – if it was internally managed and edited, then why would it? Unfortunately we live in a world where these things are necessary. Instead of seeing it as a set of rules, it should more be looked at as a sign that we are standing together and supporting each other. If we ARE the permitter, then who else is it supposed to serve? No-one said it had to be paid for or enforced by anything other than the agreement of a group of people. From the outside it looks like a permit but from the inside you can call it a membership, whatever. And no, that doesn’t mean exclusivity either. I, personally, would love something to “unite behind” as Nick puts it and I’m trying to make something like that happen in London. It’s a slow process because, as we know, street performers are, inherently, a group of individuals. We don’t have to be though.
The sad fact remains, that in certain places in the present day, control is needed to maintain fairness and a good working environment for people to do shows and to have the space to learn to do better shows. It’s idealistic to think otherwise. It’d be great if the law of the land were sufficient – it isn’t. And relying on that only demonstrates one thing – that we can’t work things out for ourselves.
Jeff
To me, there are many busking communities that attain the ideal of freedom independently and sovereign of whatever the political system may be. That is, when there is not a permit system, the busking community comes together and works cooperatively. It is very similar to the “anarcho-syndicalism” that Noam Chomsky promotes. Not only does it allow maximum autonomy but it can at times create a support system greater than the sum of its parts, even if it’s only knowing there’s always a couch.
Yes, there may be places where douchebag buskers can make that ideal hard to attain but it is up to the autonomous busking community to fix that wherever it occurs. It requires people coming together in self determination (something which all people deserve the chance to experience) and conquering the situation with their higher conscious. But once you have the government stepping in to try to fix it, it may be fixed for a short while but it will quickly devolve into something much worse and then the busking community is HELPLESS to do anything about it because governments don’t give up control voluntarily and there aren’t many voters concerned about buskers.
Also, without a permit system, people who stay up late at night need not get up at the crack of dawn to draw a number =P
If a busking community decides to have their own voluntary number drawing system to create a structured system around which they can cooperate, that’s up to them. They can quit if they don’t like it or change it to meet their needs. But if the government does it instead it can not be reversed and there is much potential for abuse of buskers’ rights.
It seems it would be much better to have to face the occasional unpredictable problem with finding a pitch (real life) than to forever have to submit oneself to the government’s regulations and force (rigid and artificial).
Also, having pitches regulated already by the government, means that the busking community would not have to come together in cooperation and a great sense of community would quickly be lost. Much of the spontaneous nature of life itself which busking often embodies might also be lost as well. God forbid that day.