THE GOLDEN THREAD: CULTURE AND SPORT IN PARIS AND LOS ANGELES
Insights: Takeaways from the recent Paris and Los Angeles Leadership Exchange
As part of our Leadership Exchange Programme supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, cultural leaders from Los Angeles and Paris shared plans for their cultural programme as hosts of Olympics Games Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028. Their objective: how to increase equity and inclusion through arts and street culture.
World Cities Culture Forum’s Ceire Carey shares her takeaways from the exchange.
Every four years, international attention is focused for 16 days on a city during the Olympic Games. Running a Cultural Olympiad is a unique opportunity to showcase a city’s culture and engage residents and tourists during that time. With years of careful planning, it can have a huge impact on the city and its surrounding region.
Following Paris’ visit to Los Angeles to learn about their street culture and their hopes as hosts of the Olympic Games in 2028, cultural leaders from Los Angeles visited Paris to learn more about the cultural programme for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and how they could collaborate and build on their plans.
For both Paris and Los Angeles, the Cultural Olympiads are a chance to increase cultural participation and equity, ensuring that all citizens across class, race and gender can feel part of the Olympic Games. Both cities are actively engaging citizens to shape the cultural programme that will bring their cities to life.
“There are two aspects of the work of the Olympics – heritage and legacy. Heritage is what you inherit from the previous generations and Olympic Games. Legacy is what we can build for our citizens and the next Olympic host city.”
Los Angeles County leader
Breaking barriers down between art and sport
At first glance, art and sport have little in common. But in fact, their aims are similar. Both want to encourage citizens to participate, and improve their wellbeing and quality of life.
Our city leaders attended a hip-hop performance, choreographed by artist in residence Valentine Nagata-Ramos, at La Place, one of the few cultural venues dedicated to the promotion of hip hop culture in France). “Breaking”, a style of dance that originated in the US in the 1970s, is being introduced as an Olympic sport in 2024. Olympic hosts are allowed to propose new sports that are popular in their country. That’s why Paris chose to honour its groundbreaking ‘b-boy’ and ‘b-girl’ breakdance communities. Through the exchange, Los Angeles and Paris are learning about each other’s thriving street dance culture and how this can be supported and showcased during their Cultural Olympiads .
Paris is also planning two more cultural projects that combine art and sport. One involves 15 artists writing and working with runners, the other combines tennis and theatre.
Celebrating French heritage and curating French legacy
In 2023, the City of Paris is allocating €178.29 million of its operating budget to cultural and heritage funding, with an additional investment budget of €91.85 million. This recognises the significant role the arts play in making the French capital one of the top cultural destinations in the world.
Over two centuries (since 1816,) the city has built up an important public collection of 23,000 artworks. This collection cannot be sold and belongs to the public for future generations. 12,000 of the artworks are displayed in public spaces such as schools, town halls, public housing, nursing homes and community centres.
Now the city is working with 50 schools so that young people help choose the artworks for this public collection. This is giving power to these young citizens as curators of the collection! Read more about this initiative here.
It will be fascinating to see how Los Angeles takes the torch following Paris’ cultural initiatives as part of their Olympiad programming in the next few years.
About the Leadership Exchange Programme
Backed by Bloomberg Philanthropies since 2017, the Leadership Exchange Programme run by World Cities Culture Forum supports city leaders to address urgent city challenges by working with their peers around the world. We have helped cities to grow in confidence and ambition and accelerate learning, to lead new projects and policies. Paris’ and Los Angeles’ exchange is the fourth and final from our second round (2022-2023), including Lisbon and Montreal focusing on the development of cultural quarters; London and New York on protecting cultural spaces at risk; and Warsaw and Lagos on delivering major art biennales.
Images Courtesy © World Cities Culture Forum
