Paris is paying tribute to the influence of Portland on alternative culture.

The six-day Keep Portland Weird festival got under way on April 24 at the Gaite Lyrique and its features might appeal to those with a penchant for things out of the ordinary.

Long considered the champion of alternative culture, Portland is synonymous with underground music, independent labels, environmental activism and farmers’ markets.

Furthermore, Portland’s inhabitants’ affinity for riding bikes has resulted in the League of American Bicyclists heaping praise on the city.

The city’s notoriety has increased in the past year or so with the emergence of cult TV show Portlandia, which has received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Keep Portland Weird features five nights of live music from the likes of Stephen Malkmus and Tara Jane O’Neil, while there is also a plethora of other attractions to keep visitors occupied.

These include screenings, discussions and broadcasts of Experimental Half-Hour, a bi-weekly television programme which features musical performances from Portland bands and other acts from farther afield.

Those food lovers attending the homage to the Pacific Northwest city might want to sample some of its culinary delights, with locally produced, organic and vegetarian cuisine on the menu.

Festival-goers travelling from the UK or other nearby countries might want to commemorate their visit to the event by purchasing a special vinyl album featuring songs by treasured Portland underground heroes such as Elliott Smith.

Do not despair if you are unable to visit the Gaite Lyrique while the festival is in full swing, for additional concerts and art installations will be held at the Centre Pompidou, the Centre Pompidou-Metz and the Lieu Unique in Nantes.

This is not the first time Paris has honoured different cultures from around the world, with the way of life of Istanbul and Berlin featured in recent festivals in the city.

The complete London 2012 Festival line-up has been confirmed.

Stephen Fry and comedian Tim Minchin were the last names to join the 12-week Olympic arts celebration, which gets underway on June 21 and finishes on September 9.

Many of the 12,000 events will be held in London, but other events will be hosted in different parts of Britain too. The events range from major spectacles to much smaller celebrations.

Details of the extravaganza were unveiled at a launch event at the Tower of London this week, during which festival director Ruth Mackenzie said the festival would ‘showcase the best in international culture when the eyes of the world are on us this summer’.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who also attended the launch event, was keen to emphasis the diverse events that will take place, ‘from Beethoven to Jay-Z; from Shakespeare to Mike Leigh; from Stephen Fry to Wallace and Gromit’. He also revealed that the UK’s art institutions would be in ‘the global spotlight as really never before’.

Some 10 million free tickets will be made available to those people wishing to attend any one of the 12,000 events. Among the most popular gigs is likely to be Playing the Games, a two-week ‘comedic commentary’ on the Games at London’s Criterion Theatre, curated by Stephen Fry.

Speaking to the BBC, Ms Mackenzie said: ‘It’s going to be pretty wild. Stephen has been a huge fan of this Olympics from the bid onwards.’

Meanwhile, Julie Walters, who appears in the BBC’s Shakespeare season and the National Theatre’s The Last of the Haussmans, revealed that she was ‘utterly thrilled’ to be part of the festivities.

However, the actress revealed that it came as a bit of a shock, adding: ‘I didn’t realise I was until a only a couple of weeks ago!’

Festival director John Cooper told C21: ‘We’re looking towards London again; we’re not planning on going to a new place every year.

‘We talked to a lot of American filmmakers and asked what the next frontier is, what do they need? It seemed like a lot of them weren’t getting outside the American borders so well, so we wanted to find a way, under the Sundance banner, to get films outside the US borders.’

The festival proved popular with many critics, with The Times’ Kate Muir saying it had been ‘a success’ and The Independent’s Kaleem Aftab writing that the film and music event had ‘proved a hit’.

Placebo and the siblings Rufus and Martha Wainwright’s performances were also warmly received, and a lot of the screenings were reportedly sold out.

‘Whatever the final verdict on the Sundance London film festival, at least it’s been a vehicle for unearthing new British film-making talent,’ The Telegraph’s David Gritten commented, applauding the fact the festival recognised emerging talents with a short film award.

The four-day event took place at London’s O2 Arena and featured a total of 27 films, many of them American dramas and documentaries.

Celebrities such as Paul Simon and Minnie Driver were among the guests, while Prince Charles personally introduced the documentary Harmony, which presents his views on the environment.

He told the audience: ‘All we wanted to do with this film is to show people that there is, perhaps, another way of looking at things now.’

Other film highlights included the US documentary The Queen Of Versailles and Under African Skies, a film about Paul Simon’s Graceland album.

Sundance London is the UK version of the Sundance film festival in Utah, the United States’ largest festival of independent cinema which was launched with the help of Robert Redford in 1978.

The store is located in a new shopping centre in Majadahonda, and people planning holidays to Madrid may well fancy a short excursion to the centre to pick up a few bargains during their break.

However, they’ll have to set aside some time to get around the store – as it covers some 32,000 sq ft over two floors.

It is the 26th Primark outlet to be opened in Spain and the seventh in Madrid alone. Primark’s clothing range is proving particularly popular across Europe, as it now has 236 outlets across the continent.

The latest addition to that list was opened in Majadahonda by Spanish fashion entrepreneur Covadonga O’Shea. A descendant of an Irish family which left the Emerald Isle in the 17th century for the warmer climate of Malaga, Ms O’Shea founded Isem, Spain’s first fashion business school, back in 2001.

Primark chief executive Paul Marchant said: ‘We are honoured to have someone of Irish descent open our store given Primark’s roots in Ireland.’

Primark director Breege O’Donoghue added: ‘When we open in a new country, we like to look for educational establishments to make a link and as she is the president of a fashion business college, we called her up and as a result built a good relationship with her in Spain. Two of her MBA students worked in our Dublin office last year.’

The firm’s Spanish invasion is not finished there, for Primark plans to open another seven shops in the country later this year. At present, it employs 3.500 people in the country and its sales growth continues to buck retail trends.

Meanwhile, Primark is not the only company to boost its presence in Madrid recently. Apple opened its third store in the city last week, taking the total number of outlets in Spain to six.

The Apple store is located in the north-west of the city in the Centro Comercial Gran Plaza 2 shopping centre. Its opening hours are from 10am to 10pm Monday to Saturday, but it does not open on Sundays.

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