Mix’Art Myrys: the town hall of Toulouse wants to recover the land for a school
The town hall of Toulouse is going to buy the Mix’Art Myrys building at Ponts-Jumeaux from the Métropole to build a school. The opposition goes back to the crenel to defend the collective of artists.
This time, Mix’Art Myrys rue Ferdinand-Lassalle, at Pont-Jumeaux, it’s over. On January 20, 2021, by signing an administrative closure for security reasons, Toulouse Métropole, owner of the site, pushed the collective of self-managed artists out. And closed, with the vast building, one of the long pages in the history of the Mix’Art movement started here in 2005.
This Thursday, March 10, the Métropole, which became the owner in 2018, will resell to the town hall, for the same amount of €2.1 million as when buying, the vast plot of 9,700 m2. The deliberation of this transfer will be voted by the office of the Metropolis. The town hall, specifies the text, wishes to build here a school group deemed “essential to meet the needs of the school basin”, as everywhere else in Toulouse.
No plan B
Yesterday, in an open letter addressed to Jean-Luc Moudenc, president of the Metropolis, the two opposition groups Alternative for a Citizen Metropolis and the environmental group, opposed this sale, resuming the fight in favor of Mix’ Art. For opposition politicians, the responsibility for the eviction of Myrys lies with the Metropolis “which has not kept its commitments”. And today, the sale is, in their eyes, “totally premature” because an action by the collective to counter the Metropolis to bring the premises up to standard is still pending.
The two groups, if they do not say no to a school project, ask the town hall “to invest in other more suitable places”. Above all, the opposition goes back to the niche to “demand that a lasting solution be offered to the collective”. A collective that had had to several times after closing.
Solicited here, the town hall did not return to the showdown with Mix’Art Myrys. Shortly after the ax of January 2021, which in fact settled a long dispute, the elected officials in charge of culture in the Metropolis, Gérard André and Nicole Yardeni, had drawn up a statement of divorce, taking into account the sums spent for fifteen years in favor of Mix’Art and rejecting the responsibility for the failure on the collective. It was the deputy mayor in charge of school affairs, Marion Lalane de Laubadère, who argued for the need for a school there. “Given the needs, we need land now to open a school in 2026.” And for her, there is “no plan B” in the area. In October, Mix’Art unveiled the study of an installation project in Ramonville.