The arrival in 2010 of a major international public art exhibition on the Emscher Island, a 34 km-long slither of land between the Emscher river and the Rhine-Herne Canal in the Ruhr area of Northern Germany, was a clear sign of the continued transformation of what had previously been a no-go area. The industrialization of the Emscher valley had not precluded the return of nature or of culture.