Nuit Blanche

In 1989, the Helsinki Festival established its Night of the Arts,[2] "when every gallery, museum and bookshop is open until midnight or later and the whole city becomes one giant performance and carnival venue".

[3] A year later, the mayor of Nantes, Jean-Marc Ayrault's program included renovating the central city and establishing a "contemporary patrimony", which led arts programmer Jean Blaise to create a late-night cultural festival, "Les Allumées" ("Things Alight").

In 2001, when Bertrand Delanoë became Mayor of Paris, his deputy, Christophe Girard,[6] invited Blaise to create an event there, and the Nuit Blanche was born.

"The first night-time trail through the streets of Paris and its contemporary-art scene took place on 5 October 2002, and the opportunity for anyone to explore artistic creation for a night has come back every year since.

"[8] The idea of a night-time festival of the arts has spread around the world, with events in over 120 cities,[citation needed] including Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax, Winnipeg and Saskatoon in Canada, and several European capitals (Paris, Brussels, Rome, Madrid, Riga, Bucharest and Valletta) which have chosen to pool their efforts as "Nuits Blanches Europe".