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The Coopérative de Mai
The Coopérative de Mai (surnamed « La Coopé ») is a concert hall located in Clermont-Ferrand (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes).

It has been launched the 7th of Mars 2000 with the Rita Mitsouko.



History
The Coopérative de Mai building is the political will of the city of Clermont-Ferrand since 1998. Didier Veillaut, ex-director of the Plan in Ris-orangis and actual director of the cooperative, is recruited as a project manager in the beginning of 1999. He follows the building work and the arrangement of the project since the beginning of the 2000s, date on which the association Pop’Art is chosen to handle the place, as part of a public service delegation.

The building housing the Coopérative de Mai and the congress center Polydome is on the site which was before occupied by the old Michelin cooperative, a huge store designed for the workers.

Dressing room
The Coopérative de Mai is made of two concert hall:

•	The Club (the “Petite Coopé”), which can welcome 464 whose about fifty can gain access to the mezzanine. The scenic area the Club is 0,02 square miles.

•	The Grande Salle which have an accommodation capacity of 1500 places. It can especially have a capacity of 800 places when it is in a “seated section”. The stage area size is 0,13 square miles.



Program
The hall welcome about 130 concert a year and has already received a number of French and international artists such as Elliot Smith, The National, Patti Smith, Marianne Faithfull, Morrissey, Belle and Sebastian, Tindersticks, Dream Theater, The Hives, Divine Comedy, Thirty Seconds to Mars, The White Stripes, Noir Désir, Muse, Louane, Indochine, Justice, Jain, Fakear, Møme, Nekfeu, Asaf Avidan, -M-, Kid Francescoli…

As important as it is, the diffusion activity is for the Coopérative de Mai the submerged part of the iceberg. Each year, numerous artists choose the hall as a privileged spot for creation and residence.

Promotion of the local scene and cultural action
The Cooperative de Mai also give a helping hand to the local scene, by programing numerous regional artists by being at the initiative of a lot of unifying projects. It has, for instance, co-produced Jim Yamouridis album and produced a compilation tape of some local groups (MC1 Compilation tape Back in Clermont-Ferrand). It also produced a vinyl album with covers of Velvet Undergroup for the 40 years of the famous album. It is about to help some new labels in their professional structuration through the intermediary of the “Pépinière de Mai”. The Coopérative de Mai finally led numerous missions of cultural actions in favor of education, awareness of the publics, project support, accompanying of the initiatives around actual music and artistic activity not including the musical field (expositions, multimedia, music in jail, school, university…).