The year 2010 is an exceptional one for the Printemps de septembre - in Toulouse, and in a number of ways. It marks the twentieth edition of this festival inaugurated in Cahors in 1991: ten years in Cahors, ten years in Toulouse, with always the same desire for innovation and maximum public accessibility, the same concern to evolve and develop with keeping faith with our founding principles.

Two exceptional programmes have been organised to celebrate this birthday: in Cahors, the exhibition La Part des ombres, inaugurated by an evening that will revive the late-night Nocturnes of those early days, will pay homage to our institutional partners; and in Reims, Domaine Pommery is presenting a selection of artistic highlights from the last two decades, some of which are quite spectacular.

In Toulouse, the 2010 festival is entitled A Form for Every Kind of Action. Its theme is performance, a practice that is powerfully present in today's art but that has never been presented on this kind of scale before. Under the artistic direction of Eric Mangion, in association with Isabelle Gaudefroy, this Printemps invites visitors to savour the living presence of art in all the usual spaces but also around the city itself. The "Late-Night Radio", which was such a success last year, will once again be broadcasting from the Ecole des beaux-arts.

As its now its custom, the festival has worked in close collaboration with its partners in the city and around the region - galleries, local cultural centres, art centres and Museums - to ensure that this festive energy which makes art unique circulates as far and wide as possible.

Marie-Thérèse Perrin

President and founder