Festival grants for needy youths

The music festival summer has begun in Belgium, a ritual above all for school and university students. However high ticket prices make it difficult for immigrant youths and those from poorer families to attend the open air concerts, writes the newspaper De Morgen: "Festivals have now become more important than Christmas and Easter put together as occasions for fraternisation. Except that the big festivals are not accessible to all of the country's youths. ... The question arises whether this problem can, or should, be solved through subsidies. The difficulty is that these would also be accessible to youths from wealthy homes. ... A better, cheaper and more honest solution would be a system like that for education. Why should someone who receives an educational grant not have the right to a festival grant? If everyone has a right to education, we must also make it possible for everyone to take part in this major ritual at the end of the school year."

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