Tiers QG, the headquarters of Le Tiers Programme (Third Programme), was the first space Manifesta 13 opened to public almost a year before the official opening of the biennial in Marseille.

Proposed by the Education team, Le Tiers Programme is a mediation initiative between the main curatorial programme and the citizens of Marseille. At the core of the programme is the notion of voicing the unheard, including multiple histories and unrepresented narratives of the city’s common heritage, giving an insight into what Marseille is today and where its complexities come from. It studies remarkable histories of local resistance and community cooperation across the city, investigating “universal” cultural canons, in which not everybody recognises themselves.

Originally thought as a non-institutional venue for Invisible Archives project and its public programme, it has been developed as a space where archives exhibitions become a starting point for encounters between people who made Marseille’s histories of resilience and those who are interested in them. The space anchored in Belsunce neighbourhood in a former snack close to the train station. Entering and passing through the exhibition hall, the visitors found themselves in the agora meeting space with a kitchen and an access to a big back garden. The meeting space has often been used independently by associations and the garden hosted numerous social gatherings. The welcoming team of Tiers QG did a great work in co-creating the identity of the space and community around it, its functioning and programme, that went far beyond the Invisible Archives project.

After Manifesta 13, Tiers QG has been taken over by some members of education team and our collaborators from the neighbourhood with the idea to build a sustainable cultural space addressing the neighbourhood needs and realities under the name Twali. Partly following the Invisible Archives process, this space in the making aims to bring inhabitants, neighbours, stakeholders and audiences together to explore and reflect on the different narratives coexisting in Belsunce.