La Station — Gare des Mines, built on a former coal station at Porte d’Aubervilliers, has been a hub for alternative music, visual & sound arts, and social initiatives since 2016. It hosts concerts, club nights, and collaborations with independent labels, festivals, and LGBTQIA+ collectives. Its underground studios support artists in residence, while Station Station, its webradio, explores aesthetic and societal issues through interviews, documentaries, and workshops.

Run by Collectif MU, La Station develops immersive sound projects and visual arts site specific residencies. It also fosters community engagement through initiatives like Coucou Crew, which welcomes and supports young refugees, and Le Jardin de La Station, which promotes urban farming and biodiversity awareness. La Bricole offers DIY design solutions and upcycling workshops.

IZOLYATSIA is a platform for cultural initiatives founded in 2010 in Donetsk, Ukraine, to transform an old insulation materials factory into a contemporary hub for arts, culture, creative industries, and social innovation. Between 2010 and 2014, the factory became a thriving cultural centre, featuring exhibition spaces, a cinema, a digital fabrication lab, a library, and a canteen. IZOLYATSIA hosted international residencies and large-scale projects with artists like Daniel Buren, Cai Guo-Qiang, Kader Attia, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, alongside music, educational programmes, and craft fairs. The team also experimented with environmental regeneration through innovative reuse of polluted industrial land.

In 2014, following the Russian occupation of Donetsk, IZOLYATSIA’s premises were seized and repurposed as an illegal prison. The organisation relocated to Kyiv, establishing a creative hub at the Kyiv Shipyard. This new space housed artist studios, exhibition halls—featuring Shirin Neshat, Grayson Perry, and others—and a major events venue. By 2019, IZOLYATSIA was promoting cultural decentralisation via its Gurtobus mobile centre, reaching remote communities. In 2020, it opened a new office in Soledar, near the contact line with occupied territories, to demonstrate cultural revitalisation in a small town.

In 2022, a major EU-supported project in Soledar was disrupted by Russia’s full-scale invasion. IZOLYATSIA lost its Kyiv site, and Soledar was devastated in one of the war’s fiercest battles. Forced to relocate multiple times due to the war, IZOLYATSIA adapted by developing mobile solutions and today, IZOLYATSIA focuses on supporting emerging Ukrainian organisations through capacity-building, subgranting, and international cultural exchange, while continuing its own projects in Ukraine and abroad.

​​NGBG, based in Malmö, Sweden, is a cultural association formed by creative tenants in a transforming industrial area. Originating from the NGBG Gatufest – Malmö’s street festival – it organized the event between 2019 and 2024 with support from local government, landlords, and factory owners.

The association championed the Kulturljudzonen (Cultural Sound Zone), a special zoning framework that permits cultural activities like concerts to exceed standard sound limits. This enabled coexistence between cultural spaces and industry, protecting Malmö’s grassroots scene from conflicts over noise and traffic.

From 2021 to 2024, NGBG was based in a former farmhouse owned by a chemical factory, where it facilitated access to cultural production by offering space, tools, and networks. Events included workshops in film, music, literature, stand-up, and more. The association supported inclusive, sustainable urban development and provided a vital platform for non-commercial culture.

In late 2024, NGBG lost institutional support due to pressure from a commercial competitor, zoning disputes, and trademark issues. Civil servants and landlords cut ties, transferring the space to a nightclub consortium and festival control to a landlords’ association. Malmö’s public housing company, MKB, also blocked NGBG from relocating nearby.

Despite losing its base, NGBG remains active. It continues to advocate for grassroots culture, using mobile and digital means to promote public access to underused spaces and keep alternative cultural life visible in Malmö.

Urban Spree is a cultural and artistic space in Berlin, located within the former RAW Gelände railway complex in the Friedrichshain district, near Warschauer Straße station. Before becoming a hotspot for Berlin’s underground scene, this area was a train repair workshop called Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk (RAW), which operated from the late 19th century and remained active during the time of East Germany (GDR). After the Berlin Wall fell and the city started changing, the area was abandoned and eventually turned into a hub for artists, musicians, and alternative collectives who brought it back to life.

Urban Spree is a multifaceted cultural space that combines a gallery for contemporary urban art, an artist workshop, a live music club, a beer garden, and a bookstore specializing in urban art. Its art gallery hosts exhibitions featuring international street artists, while its outdoor walls serve as a canvas for ever-changing murals and graffiti. The venue’s live music space welcomes both local and international artists, spanning genres from electronic to punk and experimental sounds.

Beyond art and music, the beer garden is a place to hang out, enjoy craft beers, and soak in the creative atmosphere. The bookstore is a hidden gem for art lovers, offering a carefully curated selection of books on street art, photography, and underground culture. On top of exhibitions and concerts, Urban Spree regularly hosts festivals, markets, and workshops, making it a go-to spot for those looking for something authentic and off the mainstream path.

CDA (Cultural Development Association) is a non-profit citizens’ organization founded in 1995, with the goal to rebuild the cultural landscape torn apart by war and political apathy. In 2000, CDA opened its cultural venue, club Močvara, in an abandoned factory building, with a diverse program including concerts, exhibits, plays, literature, film and workshops. CDAs’ activities include the organisation of cultural events, development of cultural and artistic creation, work with and for young people, non-formal education in the areas the association acts in.

CDA’s mission is to encourage the creation of various artistic programs and the development and visibility of alternative and non-institutional culture, to actively involve young people in cultural and civil initiatives and to develop new models of cultural activity outside the existing institutions. CDA places great emphasis on the development of non-formal education in culture and works with young people in order to maximize their involvement in the independent cultural scene.

Trans Europe Halles (TEH) has been at the forefront of sustainable urban transformation through arts, culture and community engagement since 1983. Based in Lund, Sweden, it is one of the largest European cultural networks, with 160+ members in more than 40 countries.

TEH’s mission is to support, defend, uplift our members who convert abandoned buildings across Europe into vibrant centres for arts and culture. By doing so, we transform our communities, our neighbourhoods and our cities.

Our members hold diverse and extensive expertise in the sustainable renovation and retrofitting of buildings, as well as inclusive participatory approaches that engage local communities into actions with a strong social impact.

Founded in 2011 in France , Labex ICCA (Cultural Industries & Artistic Creation) brings together interdisciplinary research teams from several universities in domains as diverse as sociology, economics, law, communication, education and design. ICCA is also a forum promoting dialogue with professional networks and industrial actors in culture and arts.

As a strong partner of this consortium, it provides analysis, expertise and forecasting and has been collaborating with Collectif MU since the opening of La Station - Gare des Mines on relevant research projects focused on the sustainability of ACPs and tensions it reveals. Researchers of two core research units of Labex ICCA are involved in Alter-Places project: ACT/Sorbonne Paris Nord University and IRMÉCCEN/Sorbonne Nouvelle University.

Peer-driven, locally focused, internationally informed, the DIY Space Project (DSP) was launched as an initiative of Long Winter Music & Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada, as a direct intervention in support of the preservation and stimulation of self-organized culture.

The inaugural program engaged three Toronto DIY collectives seeking space with a cross-sector advisory group, international research and exchange, and advocacy opportunities. Advisory groups included leaders from research, culture, urban planning, real estate, and government. Representatives attended Trans Europe Halle’s 2022 conference, and participated in a tour of DIY spaces and policies in Prague, Amsterdam, and Berlin where they experienced new models, engaged in different contexts and challenges.

The first DSP cohort included Hearth Gallery (a contemporary art presenter originally operating out of a garage), Our Women’s Voices (a platform for exchange between marginalized female voices), and R.I.S.E. (a cultural accelerator and connector for musicians, dancers, and hip hop and spoken word artists in Scarborough, Toronto). DSP founder Amy Gottung continues to work with DIY collectives across the country (in Vancouver, Halifax, and Montreal, as well as Toronto) to build capacity and opportunities for this vital subset of the sector.