Frédette Lampre

Les Machines de Lille is a cultural facility

to support the urban regeneration program of the city, to make Nantes more attractive both for inhabitants and visitors.

The cultural facility includes the great elephant, who is walking every day on the old dock Esplanade, and next to it, the carousel of the SeaWorld, with a living testimony to Jules Verne, who was born and grew up in Nantes.

Why these machines are so special?

The machines are movement.

The machines are not just art, not just entertainment.

They tell stories, but also they bring motion and emotion together in every person from spaces and times.

Our machines are poetic figures.

and poetry has no business plan.

But even if our shows are free, they generate great benefits for shops, cafes, restaurants and huge free media coverage for cities.

In Liverpool, one day, a giant spider appeared magically on a building in front of the main train station.

Hundreds of thousands of people discovered the new face of Liverpool, and this image went around the world.

Some cities with the machine wished to improve their image, like Ottawa, Calais or Liverpool.

Others chose urban planning issues

like Nantes or Toulouse.

Toulouse is in the south of France, and we presented to the mayor of Toulouse in 2013 the Minotaur.

Toulouse is the home of Airbus, like Seattle is the home for Boeing, and we presented to the leader of aeronautics in Europe an old and antique figure.

Crazy.

Toulouse is an ancient city where myths and stories of bulls are central.

And this city is like a labyrinth.