“Unintended patterns emerging from a declining creative hub: three critical moments of organizationality”. EGOS (European group of organization studies), ST 63, Athènes, 3-5 juillet 2025

How do creative hubs renew themselves in the long run? Over recent decades, creative hubs have emerged all over the world, following the rise of creative cities and the clustering of creative industry workers. Yet, little is known about the organizational conditions enabling (or unexpectedly impeding) their regeneration. This paper addresses this gap through a case study of La Friche la Belle de Mai, a prominent creative hub in a deprived urban area of France. Borrowing the concept of ‘organizationality,'from the Management and Organisation Studies' field, a concept which encompasses the three dimensions of 1) interconnected decision-making, 2) collective actorhood, and 3) collective identity , our study, based on field observations and 31 interviews, offers key insights. We identify three critical episodes of organizationality as part of the unintended patterns and unexpected regeneration dynamics of a creative hub: dys-organization, peri-organization, and mis-organization. La Friche, a few years ago in a state of exhaustion was actively seeking regeneration, providing valuable lessons for other hubs facing similar challenges. This article highlights how creative hubs can evolve and regenerate, contributing to a broader understanding of their lifecycle and regeneration dynamics.