NEWS

Yesterday, Lyon hosted a meeting of representatives from 38 European cities, convened by EUROCITIES, the network of major European cities. The purpose of this meeting was to launch a working group that is to focus on Brand Management and Attractiveness in the major cities of Europe.   The participants addressed topics such as urban marketing, the creation of a brand for a city (like the ONLYLYON program), economic governance models and the difficulty of changing the image of a city. Around the table were representatives from cities such as Manchester, Tampere, Lublin, Katowice, Nantes and Gothenburg.   This working group will be followed by other groups of the same kind throughout 2010, and the conclusions of these groups will be published in a report on good practices in local area marketing, which will be presented on 3 and 5 November 2010 in Saragossa, at the General Assembly of Eurocities.

The eighth edition of the Nuits Sonores Festival, a festival devoted entirely to independent music and digital entertainment will be held around Ascension Day from Wednesday 12 to Sunday 16 May, as is its custom. 2010 will be the 8th edition of this festival, which has encountered growing success with each year. The 2009 event welcomed 67, 500 festival goers. Just like in previous years, the festival will present a discovery of Lyon through events in forty or so different venues ranging from concert halls to industrial wastelands, museums, galleries, cinemas, squares and streets, as well as bars and clubs etc. The complete program will be revealed on February 24th, in the meantime here are a few initial announcements: > LES NUITS / Wednesday 12, Friday 14 and Saturday 15 May 2010 / Marché Gare For the second year running, Les Trois Nuits, the festival's flagship events, will take place at the Marché Gare site at Confluent; the staging and set up, however, will be dramatically different from 2009.

2010 is shaping up to be another great year for culture in Lyon. Among many events on the program are the second edition of the Greater Lyon Film Festival, breathtaking exhibitions at the Musée des Beaux Arts (Fine Arts Museum) and an unprecedented look back at the art of Ben at the Musée d'Art Contemporain (Lyon's Contemporary Art Museum)!   At Lyon's Fine Art Museum... > Bram and Geer van Velde Exhibition from 16 April to 19 July > A century of landscape artists, an amateur's selection Exhibition-portfolio from 17 June to 27 September > Pierre-Louis Cretey, a visionary between Lyon and Rome Exhibition from 22 October to 24 January 2011    At Lyon's Contemporary Art Museum...   > The Ben Retrospective From 3 March to 11 July 2010. Over 3000 sq. m -that's the entire space at Lyon's CAM- over 1000 of his works retrace fifty years of the artist Ben's creations.  The return of the Greater Lyon Film Festival...   > Greater Lyon Film Festival 2010 From 4 to 10 October 2010 (back to edition 2009)   Also...   > The 2010 Nuits Sonores Music and Sound Festival , from 12 to 16 May (back to 2009 edition)   > The 2010 Fourvière Nights , from 4 June to 31 July 2010   > The 2010 Biennial Dance Festival , from 9 September to 2 October 2010.   > The 2010 Light Festival , around 8 December 2010 (see 2009 edition in pictures)

To kick off 2010 in style, we asked Bernard Lancelot, Corporate Communication Director of Renault Trucks, and a convinced and convincing ONLYLYON Ambassador, to tell us how he feels about Lyon and his role as an Ambassador.   > Bernard Lancelot, you are an ONLYLYON Ambassador. How have you come to be so fond of Lyon?   Originally, I'm from Normandy, and I lived in Paris for a few years. When I came to Lyon for professional reasons, I fell in love with it. It's surprising and different, and it truly feels like a European-scale metropolis.   As soon as I moved here at the beginning of the 2000s, I tried to get to know this city and its surroundings better. I used every possible means: walking, guided tours, urban hiking tours, bike riding and public transit, going every which way.    > Was it love at first sight?   I extensively revisited everything that had appealed to me or amazed me during my short stays here: the Madonna statuettes on the facades of historic buildings, the wonderful painted walls, the traboule passageways, the hills, the religious edifices (churches, basilicas and cathedral), the arches and siphons of aqueducts, the theaters, amphitheaters and odeons, plus the squares, water displays, 15th and 16th century facades of Old Lyon and 19th century facades of the Peninsula, all which have been so beautifully illuminated for such a long time. And what luck to be able to experience these popular events, such as the Dance Biennial and the Festival of Lights! The Célestins, the Auditorium, the Opera, the TNP, the Museums of Fine Art, Contemporary Art, Gadagne, Textiles and Miniatures. Not to mention all the sports going on, with the OL, the ASVEL, the LOU Rugby, boule lyonnaise and renowned skaters.   Other sites I enjoy on a regular basis: the Tête d'Or Park, the riverbanks, Gerland, the Parc des Hauteurs, and more! The traditional bouchon restaurants and their grumpy waiters, the restaurants, sidewalk cafes, taverns, and I could go on and on! This city is full of advantages - I had to discover them quickly to feel at home in my new living environment. Because you can only appreciate what you know, and on the other hand, you fear the unknown.

In 2009, the Lyon Convention Center invested heavily, with the aim of adapting to the needs of its clients with respect to new technologies. The major challenge in this singular process in the field of business travel was to bring all the information flows (data, video, telephony, sound, light, technical management of the building, access control, signage) into the computer network.   Optical Fiber   All the different areas of the Lyon Convention Center can now be interconnected, thanks to the single-line optical fiber network. In the space of two years, over 25 km of optical fiber have been laid in the building! This system makes it possible to broadcast the flows of video, image, data and light control in real time, from one end of the building to the other.   Wi-Fi   Wi-Fi technology is present throughout the site and can handle up to 4,000 simultaneous connections. The connection speed is as fast as that of a wired connection.   In November 2008, for the European ICT 2008 convention (the European conference for Information and Communication Technologies), the Lyon Convention Center connected in gigabits to the European scientific network, GEANT.

After Andy Warhol in 2005 and Keith Haring in 2008, in 2010 the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) of Lyon will pay homage to the work of Ben Vautier, a major artist of the 20th century known for his performances, installations and paintings. It will be the largest retrospective ever dedicated to the artist.   The exhibition will take place from 3 March through 11 July 2010. In a surface area of 3,000 sq. meters, i.e. the entire space of the MAC of Lyon, over 1,000 works will retrace fifty years of creation, from the very first productions in Nice to the most recent, including appropriations, performances, paintings and installations. All the themes that Ben explored in the series that earned him fame are brought together for the very first time: Bananas, Ego, Gestures, Ethnicity, Sex, Truth, etc. This unprecedented show also presents new videos and works created especially for the occasion.   By returning Ben's works to their historical context, this retrospective will enable visitors to deepen their understanding of a world that, up until now, was often only perceived in its most media-centric aspect.   The exhibition is curated by Jon Hendricks, an artist and consultant curator for the Fluxus Gilbert and Lila Silverman collection at the MoMA in New York and Yoko Ono's agent.