Maison Khôra
The Circle of the Khôra

THE ASSOCIATION

Maison Khôra — a non-profit association under the French law of 1901, serving the public interest.

1

The form

Maison Khôra is an artistic, cultural and educational association founded in Marseille. It is the institutional structure that carries the collective's projects and gives them a clear frame: statutes, an administrative board, a governance distinguishing the operational from the creative, a held ethic, and a permanence that outlasts the person of its founder.

The house carries two anchorages: Marseille and Paris. Marseille — in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, the bay where it was born — for the source and the experiment; Paris for resonance and diffusion. From one anchorage to the other, a single axis, and a reach extended across the whole national territory.

2

The purpose

The purpose of the association, within an approach serving the public interest and of an artistic, cultural, educational and social character, is to help put the embodied experience of presence, beauty and human connection back at the heart of life in the city. To this end, it carries out in particular the following activities:

  1. 1.Artistic creation, content creation and dissemination
    Works and content (performance, live arts, text, image, sound, video, hybrid formats) making inner experience, encounter and human connection perceptible.
  2. 2.Philosophical transmission and popular education
    Educational programmes, in person and online; artistic and cultural education for all audiences, and in particular for young people and those furthest from cultural provision.
  3. 3.Facilitation of spaces of direct experience
    Laboratories, workshops, retreats, immersive events and hybrid formats.
  4. 4.Running communities and welcoming spaces
    Community spaces, mixed or single-gender by choice, including the House of Sappho; contribution to the fight against discrimination, to the inclusion of LGBTQI+ people and to social cohesion.
  5. 5.Training and dissemination of facilitation practices
    Transmission of somatic, relational and emergent facilitation practices to professionals in the cultural, educational, social, care and health fields; a culture of care and of consent.
  6. 6.Research, partnership and representation
    Applied research on practices of presence and their effects on social connection; partnerships with public institutions, with local and regional authorities and their dedicated services, and with cultural, social, educational and academic actors.
  7. 7.Ethics, transparency and prevention of undue influence
    See the framework below.
3

The ethical framework — what the house forbids itself

This ethic is not a statement of intent: it appears in the association's stated purpose, among the activities it undertakes to carry out.

An explicit positioning
Maison Khôra situates its activities outside the fields of wellness, personal development and psychotherapy — to which it does not belong, and for which it never substitutes itself. Its practice is artistic, philosophical and somatic. It promises neither healing, nor transformation, nor salvation.
A non-dogmatic approach
No doctrine is taught, no adherence asked, no loyalty expected. What is transmitted is the means to seek, never what one ought to believe.
Free, informed and revocable consent
Nothing is compulsory; every proposal is explained before it is lived; each person remains at every moment the sole authority over what they live, and may take part, observe or withdraw without expectation and without judgement.
Three firm exclusions
Proscribed from every practice of the house are: any logic of graded initiation conditional on disproportionate financial or personal commitments; the withholding of knowledge for the benefit of whoever holds it; and any form of undue mental influence.
Structural transparency
Statutes, a governance distinguishing the operational from the creative, and an explicit method, written and transmissible — designed precisely so that the house depends on no one person, its founder included.
Active prevention
With its audiences as with its partners, the house carries out work of awareness-raising and prevention regarding the risks of drift, undue influence and capture in the field of practices of presence and care — in liaison, where appropriate, with the competent public institutions. The house's facilitators are trained accordingly: somatic, relational and emergent facilitation, mindfulness, and trauma-informed practice attentive to emotional safety, to consent and to each person's rhythm.
4

Partnerships

The house seeks lasting partnerships: artistic and cultural education for young audiences and those furthest from cultural provision; work with Equality, Diversity and LGBTQI+ services; training professionals in the practices of facilitation, consent and care; applied research on the effects of these practices on social connection. On the Marseille–Paris axis, the house is rooting its Parisian anchorage: it is looking there for a host venue with which to build over time.

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