Petition is addressed to: Toustes

On Thursday 25th January 2024, La Générale collective learned that it must leave the former conservatory of the 14th arrondissement. To date, the City Council of the 14th arrondissement and the Cultural Department of the City of Paris have not offered a concrete prospect of another venue.

In 2025, La Générale will be twenty years old.

Twenty years of artistic, political and social encounters within Paris. Twenty years of hosting residencies, concerts, shows, experiments, seminars, exhibitions, general assemblies, festivals and fundraising evenings.

At twenty, we're still young, but old enough to hold onto a few principles, like: resisting commercial logics, hosting artists free of charge - except for a token membership to our organisation - following and supporting them throughout their career, not gentrifying the neighbourhood we belong to, striving to not exclude anyone, remaining as independent as possible from private sponsorship, on learning and remaining open to everything such as militant responses and long-term research.

In short: exercising our right to the city, as an organisation established under the 1901 law*, determined to be and to remain our own voice as a group of citizens, in direct contact with the institutions of the City of Paris.

We refuse that Paris is becoming a fortress in which collectives are only allowed to "temporarily occupy vacant buildings" in order to limit squatting.

We want real, cultural, social and urban policies. Our experiments and our solidarity are not a window-display that can be changed with each season.

We want the city to produce living Commons rather than capital and representation.

The Culture Department (Direction des Affaires Culturelles) and the Paris City Council (Mairie de Paris) must commit to providing a location where we can continue our work and strengthen our ties with the people who have made La Générale what it is for the past twenty years. Both must commit to respect the recommendation No 142. voted on the 24th of May 2024, which guarantees La Générale the support of the Paris Council (Conseil de Paris) to secure a new location.

We call on everyone who recognises themselves in our determination and everyone who knows La Générale to support us by signing this petition and to join us for our "Right to the City" series, where we host French and European organisations and collectives to reflect together on the future and the defence of the city as a common space.

We all have a right to the city, and we will not leave it. La Générale is here to stay.

* in France, the "Loi 1901" is the foundational law for citizens to create non-profit-making organisations.
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All updates here: https://www.lagenerale.fr/fr/en-lutte