The Yabloko faction in the St.Petersburg parliament on the plans of the authorities to regulate performances of street musicians

Press Release, 5.10.2022

Photo: Alexander Shishlov / Photo by the Yabloko Press service

The Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg considered the initiative of Governor Alexander Beglov on the regulation of performances by street musicians. The Governor proposed that street performers must submit a notice to the executive authorities and receive approval from officials to hold their street concerts.

Alexander Shishlov, head of the Yabloko faction, drew the attention of St.Petersburg MPs to the fact that street artists would actually have to obtain permissions from officials to hold a concert, rather than giving a notification. A similar thing happened in St. Petersburg with attempts to coordinate the holding of public events.

“The main shortcoming of the draft law is actually a permission rather than a notification based order for performances by street artists, and at the same time, there is no an open and public register of submitted applications for performances by musicians. Such a construction will inevitably lead to the same thing that have been happening in St. Petersburg for many years at submitting notifications for holding public events, when there were always grounds for refusal for “unfavorable” notifications due to the fact that supposedly someone else had previously filed a notification for the same place and time. The very attempt to introduce organisation of street performances into a legal framework is commendable,” Alexander Shishlov said.

In addition, Shishlov drew attention to the positive experience of street performances in Moscow, which the authors of the St.Petersburg draft law did not take into account. In Moscow, one can submit a notification on the website of the project “Street Artist” by the Moscow Mayor’s Office, which displays all 88 venues for concerts in the city. At the same time, everyone can see which sites are free and which are occupied.

“I propose not to hurry with the adoption of this bill, which in the current version represents just another prohibitive bureaucratic mechanism. I propose to carefully study the Moscow experience and develop a law worthy of the cultural capital,” Shishlov added.

ALEXANDER SHISHLOV

is head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, a member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, and Chairman of the Yabloko branch in St.Petersburg