The Nuits Sonores, the Biennale and the Lyon street food festival will be able to exploit 3.4 hectares on the former SNCF workshops of La Mulatière, on the southern border of the city. The former wasteland occupied by these festivals has been transformed into a hangar for trams, despite campaign promises from environmentalists.
“This project ticks all the boxes of the strategy we have undertaken,” says Cédric Van Styvendael, vice-president in charge of Culture. ‘A strong signal of broadening the public in a reversal of the deadly budget cuts that culture sometimes experiences,’ says Laurent Bayle, president of the Contemporary Art Biennales. The festival organizers say it’s ‘our DNA to move’ to the new site, even if part of it is still occupied by the SNCf. The site will be used for the daytime programming of the electro festival, as well as the street food event.