Val d’Arly to Host First Mountain Street Art Festival  

Val d’Arly is to host its first ever Mountain Street Art Festival in collaboration with the Papajosette art gallery from March 3-7, 2024. The event will connect six ski resorts belonging to Espace Diamant in the French Alps: Crest-Voland Cohennoz, Flumet, Notre-Dame de Bellecombe, Praz-sur-Arly and Les Saisies/Hauteluce, Hauteluce.

Featuring 30 artists, including retired Freestyle World Ski Champion Thomas Kreif, SARO, Niki Zsuriova, and two Art Gallery’s by Papajosette in Notre Dame de Bellecombe and Crest-Voland, the week-long festival will include live performances, art sculptures, giant frescoes, light projections, conferences and workshops, ending with a fireworks’ display on March 7.

Bringing together a fun, family-friendly vibe and combining skiing and art, each resort will host a different event, from the opening party at Crest-Voland/Cohennoz, to frescoes and sculptures on display in Flumet/St Nicolas la Chapelle to art projections and freeride skiing in La Giettaz en Aravis, culminating with the fireworks and light show in Notre Dame de Bellecombe.

Espace Diamant celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2025 reminiscent of when Les Saisies joined forces with the other resorts in Espace Val d’Arly: Praz-sur-Arly, Flumet, Crest-Voland Cohennoz, and Notre-Dame-de-Bellecombe. The province has approximately 200km of ski slopes.

On launching the Mountain Street Art Festival, Stanislas Tochitch, director of Val d’Arly’s tourist office, said many ski resorts are already pre-empting shorter ski seasons due to climate change, and as well as a 10% rise in summer holidays, the ski resorts are offering alternative winter activities to draw tourists in, such as snowshoe hikes, ski bob, Husky dog sledding and Escaladventure treetop adventure course. 

This year alone, Espace Diamant was excited to welcome three new restaurants; a converted farmhouse Le Toi du Monde, in Flumet, which has a Green Michelin star and live music every weekend, Bergerie la Palette mountain bar/restaurant and newly renovated Hôtel Le Mont Bisanne, both in Crest Voland, as well as long-term favourite La Ferme de Victorine, in Notre-Dame-de-Bellecombe, with dairy cows literally inside the establishment.

Tochitch said the future of winter ski resorts is set to change with weather forecasting using AI (artificial-intelligence). For example, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) recently announced it is developing a new forecasting system based on machine learning,  the AIFS. 

“Traditionally, weather forecasts are worked out using the laws of physics. The AIFS, on the other hand, establishes a weather forecast on the basis of past developments of the weather. A suitable representation of past weather is for example provided by the ERA5 reanalysis,” said Mariana Clare, a scientist at the ECMWF.

For more information about Val d’Arly Street Art Festival visit www.valdarly-montblanc.com; or contact Val d’Arly tourist office