Le Shakirail

You are standing near Le Shakirail, a site that tells the industrial story of the eighteenth arrondissement in a way few other places can. Before it became a hub for artists, these two buildings served as a functional training center and a changing room for railway workers employed by the French national railway company, the SNCF. The name itself nods to this iron heritage, combining the French word for rail with a play on the local geography. In two thousand eleven, the creative collective Curry Vavart took over these disused structures to prevent them from sitting vacant. They transformed the former locker rooms and training halls into a multi-disciplinary workspace where people could practice everything from metal sculpting to analog photography. Beyond the art studios, the site includes two thousand square meters of outdoor space officially recognized as a garden by the city of Paris. This green area is not just for scenery, as it hosts beehives and provides a space for community gardening workshops. By repurposing these remnants of the railway era, the collective created a site that functions today as a resource center for both emerging artists and the surrounding neighborhood.