Datama backs PaQ'la Lune: culture as a way of building neighbourhoods together

At Datama, we spend our days explaining numbers. Finding the "why" behind a variation, making legible what looked opaque. But some things never show up on a dashboard: a child laughing at a show staged at the foot of their building, the pride of a resident stepping on stage for the first time, the way a neighbourhood tells its own story. It is for those things that we decided to commit, through patronage, alongside PaQ'la Lune.

Who is PaQ'la Lune?

PaQ'la Lune is a Nantes-based popular-education association, founded in 1999. Originally a professional theatre company, it reshaped its project to place cultural mediation at the heart of its work: taking culture out of the venues traditionally reserved for it and bringing it to where people actually live.

Its motto fits in three words: "Faire Culture·s Ensemble" — making culture(s) together. In practice, it means every resident — young or old — can become an actor in the cultural life of their area, through artistic practice and co-creation. The association works in around fifteen working-class neighbourhoods across the Pays de la Loire and Brittany regions, and builds partnerships nationally.

Based in Nantes Nord since 2014, PaQ'la Lune runs a range of actions that go well beyond staging shows:

• Social & cultural activities at the foot of housing blocks and in public spaces;
• Artistic practice: amateur theatre workshops for children, teenagers and adults, during and outside school hours;
• Live performance that is accessible to all, free and local;
• Artist support, professionalisation and cooperation.

In summer, that looks like the afternoon in the photo above: a whole day of free activities by the paddling pool — building little boats, a reading corner with the municipal library, creative workshops and, to close, a dance performance. Nothing showy, everything essential: families meeting, children creating, a neighbourhood coming alive.

Why Datama is getting involved

Datama is a Nantes company. We are growing on this territory, and we believe a company is not just a sum of customers and lines of code: it is also a neighbour, with a responsibility towards the place where it was born.

Patronage is how we turn that conviction into action. We chose PaQ'la Lune because its project resonates with our values:

• Proximity. Just as we work to make data accessible to the people who make decisions, PaQ'la Lune makes culture accessible to those too often kept away from it. In both cases, it is about putting a powerful tool into everyone's hands.
• The collective. "Doing it together" is not a slogan for us: it is how we build a product, a team, a neighbourhood. Shared culture creates social ties where they are most lacking.
• Local roots. Supporting a local player means investing in the human fabric that makes a city rich. Nantes gives us a lot; giving a little back is only natural.

Our commitment is meant to be lasting and concrete. Beyond financial support, we want to offer what we know how to do — our skills, our energy, our network — to help the association structure itself, measure its impact and take its work with residents even further.

Doing it together, each with our own means

There is a certain coherence in Datama — whose job is to give meaning to numbers — supporting an association whose job is to give meaning to living together. Both tell the same story from another angle: what truly matters is not always visible at first glance, but deserves to be explained, shared and grown.

We are proud to begin this journey alongside PaQ'la Lune, and eager to see what "making cultures together" will mean, month after month, on the ground.

To discover the association, support its work or become a volunteer, visit paqlalune.fr.