Move Over, Paris — The Circle Lands in Lyon

In April 2022, The Circle travelled to Lyon, where the media scene lives in the shadow of the French capital, Paris. Yet a lot of exciting projects are taking shape in the city, where The Circle partner Arty Farty runs a media incubator at Hôtel71.

Justin Vicat-Blanc, Clara Grisot and Hugo Fauriel (just seen) during the recording of a podcast discussion about The Circle in Lyon.

Nine media professionals with different backgrounds took part in the Circle’s two-week design Sprint, which focused on mapping the local media context, ideating a new project that addresses the local media scene’s needs, and developing a business model. Local partners including INA, Sans Tête, Rue89Lyon and international music magazine Resident Advisor brought valuable inputs throughout.

Since then, a core team of 6 has been working on a project that seeks to challenge the dominant role played by Paris in the French media landscape. “A lot of what is happening is dependent on the capital and the Lyon cultural scene seems to suffer from this,” explains Justin Vicat-Blanc, video-maker and co-founder of audiovisual production company Les Dialogueurs. “This prevents people in Lyon from building a strong, independent and authentic cultural scene.”

Deborah Ozil, who founded the documentary podcast T’as de beaux lieux, agrees. She believes that independent media present an opportunity to change that. “Traditional media are not able to deliver the info in the way the audience is waiting for it,” she explains, adding that “the emergence of social media has allowed more voices to rise and specific topics to emerge in society.” In particular, “for the past few years, a lot of rich billionaires have been buying media and this is definitely orienting cultural, political and ideological mindsets. This is a dangerous point for our democracy.”

Deborah Ozil (left), Louise Mutabazi (middle) and Laetitia Chabannes during The Ciricle’s Lyon design sprint.

The Lyon team are developing a series of pop-up events that meet 2 needs. “First, it gathers media makers of Lyon together, which could help create a community and solidify the local media scene,” Justin explains. “Second, it brings the people working in the media industry directly in contact with the local population, allowing local stories to be shared and local problems to be heard.” This connection between local communities and media-makers would be a way to overcome the “strong distrust of the media by the population,” which is partly due to people feeling disconnected from what is reported on in the news. 

“A lot of people and especially the youngest generation are not reading much about what’s going on locally, around them,” Deborah explains. “For two main reasons: the emergence of social networks and the poor or uninteresting quality of local information.” Hence the need to reinvent the way local information is created and relayed. “With more embodied stories, out of the ordinary. We also want to create real encounters between people and occupy the street and public spaces,” Deborah adds.

Regarding the cross-border scope of their project, both hub members see some overlap with the other teams in the network. “Having the opportunity to spread an independent, cross-border network is a way to make bridges for investigations that could make sense around Europe,” Deborah explains. The Lyon team feel affinity with the Porto hub, who is also focusing on telling authentic, local stories as a way to challenge the centrality of the capital and make media more relevant for local audiences. “Collaborations may come to life later in the project,” Justin concludes.

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