AN ESTABLISHMENT FAR MORE AMBITIOUS THAN NGO BARBARA, AND INFINITELY MORE OPEN
Did it lead the City to see the area's potential?
Web site photo
The Paris 360 Music Factory
32 rue Myrha
The web site explains the immediate mission.
"Popular cultural site"
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Bankers' replies to loan requests :
(In 2008)
- "We'll lend money for a six-story office building, but for a music center, it would be mad!"
-- Podcast, So Sweet Planet
- "We can't assure your security against those drugged-out hoodlums."
-- The police, same source
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Yet a decade later Saïd Assadi, a refugee from the Khomeiny regime and organizer of trans-cultural concerts founded "The 360" in La Goutte d'Or.
He had no experience of administration or of talking to bankers, but finally persuaded a bank specialized in ethical investments. Other banks and the City, which contributes 15%, followed.
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Its main mission is music...
...but it proposes events in many domains, so long as they are principled and notable:
During Paris Fashion Week in February 2022 it presented designers from the African diaspora and emphasized sustainable production.
Other events have included dance, stand-up comedy, workshops for children, performances by residents, readings... a few appear below.
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Pharaonic projects fail when the population rejects them, as happened to the 13th's Olympiades Towers. But Monsieur Assadi integrates the establishment into the neighborhood by a sidewalk terrace and...
- A salon whose huge windows look out onto the street:
During the "Fete de la Musique," the night for music throughout the city
Neighbors watch the dancers in the background.
- Providing culture of another kind:
- A bar
Photos from 2022
Bartender Abou and a client
- A restaurant whose excellent ethnic cuisine is made on the spot, at prices that are no higher than elsewhere.
Meknet from Ethiopia and Raphael from Senegal, an outstanding chef who lives nearby.
- Free events, such as...
An afternoon of Haitian music and literature led by Charles Sadrac, a Haitian poet who lives in the neighborhood.
Music by Espoir Lumineux, an association of student engineers that installed solar panels in a school of Burkina Faso.
Talk by Dominique Vidal, a former editor of the highly respected Le Monde diplomatique and writer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Attention to local energies includes...
- Monsieur Assadi attending the couturiers' meeting described above, where he spoke of openness to residents' projects and of his wish to collaborate with the area's couturiers.
- Evoking the Sapeur movement, which a shop of La Goutte d'Or had introduced to Paris...
The exhibit accompanying Ethical Fashion Days and a client at the shop shown below
That shop ("Connivences")
...and is seen in the streets:
In front of the shop, a landmark that unfortunately closed with covid.
- Monsieur Assadi is personally accessible. One often sees him on the terrace, and can easily speak with him.
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Residents respect the 360:
- An irrefutable sign of approval: no cigarette butts in the plant containers
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Monsieur Assidi comes from a culture where illiterate taxi drivers recite 11th-century poetry, which is passed down orally.
He says of modern Western culture, "You see yourself in the mirror, and realize you're getting fat from standardized food. But that you're also getting stupid from standardized culture doesn't show."
In promoting not-packaged arts, he makes his contribution to France.
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