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Live from an abandoned military fortress, we welcome you to our crowdfunding campaign. We are Dom and Thomas, two passionate guys who together with many friends and volunteers have brought Recup Paris to life. Our mission is to Recover, Revive and Repeat. Recover materials and urban spaces, revive and transform these and repeat this process in order to increase our impact on a sustainable world.

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We are based at Fort d’Aubervilliers, an abandoned military fortress just outside of Paris. This year, we have started reviving several derelict spaces and have built a community of creative people with whom we can transform this historical site into a sustainability driven creative and cultural hotspot.

In our spaces at the Fort, we make limited series of art from recovered waste materials. We also host public events and organise 'Fort experiences' to share this magical place with others.

We want to bring this project as close to you as possible and allow you and others to become part of this growing community that has a positive impact on people, communities and the environment. The art we make and the activities we organise at Fort d’Aubervilliers are an important way of financing this project.

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Recup Paris operates at the intersection of art and sustainability and establishes linkages between these fields. We believe that culture, creativity and the arts are carriers of ideas and shape the way we see the world. They are capable of influencing our futures and help us imagine new and alternative responses to some of the world's most pressing problems.

Our ambition is to regenerate disused urban areas and inject a dream and new life into these places. We are inspired by cities like Amsterdam, Berlin, London and New York where derelict areas have been revived to become hotspots for culture and creativity. Paris is the city of the arts and has an extremely rich cultural sector, yet the city is facing its own particular challenges in terms of sustainability and urban regeneration. There is a real need in Paris for sustainability and rebuilding communities.

Recup Paris is based at Fort d’Aubervilliers, an old military fortress built in 1843 and covering an area of 36 hectares.

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At this unique heritage site we have renovated our first space (an old bunker, no.3 of a total of 24 bunkers), to be used as our atelier and headquarters. Step-by-step and learning as we went along, we worked every day for six months to redevelop the space. We used almost exclusively abandoned materials that we found on-site. This allowed us to prove our own concept: creating beautiful and useful spaces from recovered materials.

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In our workshop, we have created our first art series based on recovered postal stamps, accompanied by hand crafted frames from reclaimed wood and organised a variety of social events including art exhibitions, workshops, themed parties and urban exploration tours.

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We would like to finish the renovation of a second bordering bunker and the cleaning up of other areas of the Fort. These will become multi functional event spaces for us to host an increasing variety of activities including art expositions, music and theater performances, photo - and video shootings, team building events and workshops. In order to do that, we will need to expand our team to host these events as well as involve architects, experts and creative talents to take the next steps towards reviving the Fort.

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Our objective is to transform Fort d’Aubervilliers into a breeding-ground for artists, creatives and local businesses who work on solutions for a sustainable world and for the organisation of public events. A place for creativity, opportunity and entrepreneurial spirit.

More specifically, together with partners including the site-owner, Grand Paris Amenagement, the municipality of Aubervilliers, the region of Île-de-France and current residents of the Fort, we are investigating the transformation of a larger heritage building and its adjacent outdoor space into an open space for hosting public events (the ‘event zone’). This will be combined with several sub-spaces that will serve as ateliers, meeting and co-working spaces. The guiding themes for all activities and programming are sustainability and creativity. Over the last few months we have established key relations with the different stakeholders and Recup Paris is the preferred partner for planning and animating these activities.

Events that are currently being considered include:

- Recurring festivals revolving around arts & crafts, music, theater and film;

- Expositions for local and visiting artists;

- Workshops, team-building events and educational activities;

- Markets for locally produced goods and flea markets.

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Hello, we are Dom and Thomas, the co-founders of Recup Paris.

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To a certain extent, the process of Recover, Revive and Repeat has happened with us privately. We both have spent our professional careers in the field of sustainability and climate change. After telling others what to do and how, we increasingly wanted to act sustainably and be change makers in the field. The urge to have a more direct and tangible impact grew each day. So when we discovered the fort, we gave up our day jobs and from that point on we knew that this was the place to combine our expertise on sustainability, our curiosity for art and our passion for the revival of urban spaces.

Since the launch of Recup Paris, we have added a whole list of skills to our CV including masonry, welding, glass cutting, plumbing, electricity, wood craft, French diplomacy and bureaucracy, framing, stamp sorting, stamp sticking, cartography, story telling, waste scouting, location and material sourcing to name a few.

In the near future, we would like to add talented people to our team and grow our community; creative individuals that share our vision and want to make a real difference.

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We have many people we need to thank for our journey so far. Without you all, none of this would have been possible. Thank you.

Grand Paris Amenagement (special thanks to Guillaume Clermont, Chloé Duval-Zack and Juliette Beziat). Our neighbour Michel and his loyal dog Manouche, Jean Michel Pradel-Fraysse, Laurence Favory, Pippa Boothman, Alex Wood, Ednyfed Tappy, Marieke Winkel, Jan Faassen, Rebecca Daniels, Arnaud Borges, Bernard Viret, Audrey Rocher, Melanie Dorey, Les Vernissages de Madame Lupin, Alexandre Lombard, Guillaume Valli, Guillaume Fummi, Ghislain Joliot, Holly Foxtrot, Tyler Bryant, Marina Crea, P'tit Building, Gauthier Rakotonirina, Rozena Crossman, the Colombian crew, our loyal security guards at the fort (Béchir, Wague, Adama and Milos in particular), the countless volunteers (too many to name all but you know who you are) and last but not least our parents Jeannette Tappy and Bert and Marijke Winkel.

Faire revivre un Fort militaire abandonné

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