Lille reaps benefits of Capital of Culture
LILLE is counting the cost but even more so the gains of its year as European Capital of Culture. The city's main attractions had 10 times the usual number of visitors while double the annual number of tourists stayed at least one night.
Most of all, people from the region enjoyed the huge range of events staged in Lille but also in the dozens of surrounding towns in France and Belgium.
Olivier Celarie, who worked on the project for almost two years, said they were still computing the figures. "All the numbers look very good. We saw a lot of visitors and everyone from here took part, too."
The biggest attractions were the opening Great White Ball and street circus closing ceremonies. They were designed as major carnival events to involve as many as possible. Several thousand took part. "They were amazing. Everybody got into the spirit of it."
Over the first six months, he estimates 7.5 million people took part in the events and 1.5m tickets were sold for exhibitions, concerts and theatre. Schoolchildren and their teachers proved to be great supporters of the events. There were 900 projects involving 39,000 children from 700 schools.
Students from 1,200 schools were among those who visited the various events and special exhibitions.
Lille, once a thriving heavy industrial city based on local coalfields, has had to reinvent itself and create new jobs to replace those lost when the old industries closed. It has done so very successfully, and part of this transformation was a major clean-up of the city.
The Chambre de Commerce et D'Industrie is fully involved in the rejuvenation of the city of 212,500 people.
The participation of local business was evident from advertising and websites.
About 16% or €12m of the city's €73 million budget came from private partnership sponsorship, mostly from the more than 70 international, national and regional companies that became involved as partners of Lille 2004. As businesses were doing their end of year accounts, the consensus appeared to be that it was well worth the investment. Hotels had an increase of at least a third in bed nights. Samuel Calau of the Carlton Hotel says the City of Culture made a big difference.
"Most knew Lille was the City of Culture and many came specially because of that. Some did not know anything about it. One group of English people just learned about it when they went to the tourist office. But they stayed a few days extra then," he said.
In a town full of beautiful Dutch-style architecture, the Carlton had an eye-catching attraction - a full scale, red and gold Chinese pagoda. They erected it on the city centre square specially because the theme of one weekend's events was China.
Across town in the Youth Hostel, manager Vincent Hirel, said that at first he was surprised at the amount of interest aroused by the City of Culture events.
"We got a lot of requests from groups coming for the events," he said.
The level of interest was reflected in the 6,000 people who turned out for the closing ceremony.
"It was really crowded. The town was very vibrant and there was a big festival atmosphere. It was very good," said Mr Hirel.
Brasseries like Le Buzz were very pleased with the number of foreign visitors. Their traditional food - hare with prunes, beef in beer and moules with chips - was very popular.
"Most people were from Belgium, Holland and Germany but we had a lot from Britain, too, and from far away places like China," said the manager.
The tourist office said Belgian overnight visitors more than doubled - Brussels is just 40 minutes away by train, while Dutch and Germany tourists increased by about a third.
Lille is on the Eurostar route and less than two hours from London. The train authorities reported a 25% increase in traffic to the city. The increase was particularly marked during the weekends.
More than 70 tour operators high-lighted trips and visits to Lille in their brochures for the year, and the interest from the media was a major factor in the increase in tourism numbers too.
Olivier Celarie said they were unable to keep up with the amount of publicity they got during the year.
They did know there were at least 1,000 radio and television reports and at least 3,000 journalists wrote up thousands of articles for newspapers and magazines all over the world.
It helped having the involvement of so many towns and cities in the region which has a population of over 1.7 million - compared to 1.1 million in Munster. Their events came in under the Lille 2004 umbrella and visitors to the city were able to get shuttle transport to them. The organisers said it also helped that the city has a tradition of hosting cultural events with its art gallery second only to that of the Louvre in France. Touring opera, ballet and stage productions almost always find their way to the refurbished Opera house or one of the theatres in the city.
The old town is a fascinating mixture of its Dutch and French past - it was part of the Spanish-Dutch empire for a few hundred years before returning to France 300 years ago. Beer and moules or mussels are as plentiful as fois gras and wine - it is full of boutique shops, cafes, big French department stores, beer halls and brasseries.
The capital of French Flanders, its famous citizens range from artists including Rubens and Watteau to Charles de Gaulle.
However, it did not just concentrate on aspects of high culture. Its Metamorphoses project highlighted and transformed mundane Lille sights.
Every weekend featured a party, Les Heures Bleues, from Friday evening to Monday sunrise. Themes varied from the sublime to the ridiculous but citizens supported it in force.
Would they do it all over again? Olivier laughs nervously "we must have a holiday, maybe after that."
7.5 million people took part in the first six months of events
1.5 million tickets were sold for exhibitions, concerts and theatre in the same period.
39,000 school children involved in 900 projects
212,500 people - population of Lille; compared to over 220,000 in the greater Cork area
73 million - euros, the budget in Lille; compared to approximately €20m in Cork
6,000 - people turned out for the closing ceremony.
25 - percentage increase in train traffic to the city.
1,000 - approximate number of radio and television reports on Lille.
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