Alternative Initiatives, Cultural Intermediaries and Urban Regeneration: the Case of La Friche (Marseille)

This paper discusses the role played by the cultural regeneration of a tobacco factory known as La Friche in the urban renaissance of Marseille. It builds an analytical framework to decrypt the extent to which the network and strategy building, the mobilization capacity and the project-making ability was developed in the two main episodes of governance by the cultural intermediaries Systeme Friche Theatre (the collective in charge of the cultural initiative). This led to the rise of La Friche as one of the key cultural facilities in Marseille within the project Euromediterranee and in the successful application to the 2013 European Capital of Culture schemes highlighting the sustainable development of this initiative initially supposed to be temporary.