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About us

Support.

Help each other.

Encourage.

L’Atelier La Coulée is a non-profit solidarity cooperative whose mission is to support, accompany and encourage artists, artisans and visual arts students in the greater Montreal area. We offer access to a shared workshop specialized in artistic and artisanal metalwork, more specifically dedicated to lost wax casting. It is a place for artistic creation, meeting and sharing between different communities.

Justice.

Autonomy.

Inclusion.

L'Atelier La Coulée aspires to become a space that allows the different groups under-represented in the field, including women, youth, people of color, 2SLGBTQAI+, to develop their potential in an egalitarian work and learning climate, free from the discriminatory behaviors that are still too often omnipresent in the manual fields.

La Coulée's goal is to create and support democratic, accessible and open organizational practices to make the workshop a good place to work together.

Our Aspirations

  • Fulfill a need for a collective workshop space dedicated to metalwork (foundry and welding).
  • To create a safe working and learning environment, free from discriminatory behavior.
  • Transmit this expertise and enhance the value of these artisanal production techniques.
  • To deepen techniques in an autonomous and artisanal way.
  • Create a creative and stimulating environment based on self-help and collaboration.
  • Reduce and pool equipment as well as production costs.

Our Story

With the reopening of the foundry at Concordia University in the fall of 2012, many of us have been introduced to the age-old techniques of lost wax bronze and aluminum casting. This training proved to be a real "coup-de-coeur" for us, both for the process and for the materials. As an integral part of the process, we were also charmed by the collaborative work we did: working side by side, giving each other advice, helping each other in the design and execution of our projects, and lifting 40 pounds of molten bronze together!

Since the lost wax casting process requires a wide range of tools and complementary techniques, including welding, it became obvious to set up a complete workshop to work with metal in all its forms.

It is from this lovely encounter with bronze and the desire to share it with as many people as possible that L'Atelier La Coulée's project was born.

Our team

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Jesse Whitfield Pratt

Jesse Whitfield Pratt

Jesse Whitfield Pratt

Responsable d’atelier & formateur

Jesse Whitfield Pratt est un artisan du métal. Il compte plus de 10 années d’expérience en tant que travailleur spécialisé dans la forge, la soudure et l’assemblage des métaux. - EN

See the Profile
Jesse Whitfield Pratt

Bâtiment 7

L'Atelier La Coulée is located in Bâtiment 7 at Pointe-Saint-Charles, in an industrial building that was reappropriated by the neighborhood community after a great and beautiful popular struggle. Bâtiment 7 opened the first phase of its development, centered on a Pole of Practices that aims to respond to the artistic, cultural, social and political needs expressed by the neighborhood's population, while ensuring the accessibility of the place to all, with a strong bias for the marginalized and impoverished.

L'Atelier La Coulée has other technical workshops nearby, such as the Cycle 7 bicycle repair shop and the associative garage for auto mechanics, workshops in various disciplines (digital printing, wood, silkscreen printing, ceramics, darkroom, painting, and drawing), in addition to a microbrewery, Les Sans-Taverne, a games-coop arcade by and for young people, Press Start, and a solidarity neighborhood grocery store, Le Détour.

See the Bâtiment 7 website