Center of Creative Industries "FABRICA"

The creative cluster uniting artists’ workshops, creative industries and production was opened in 2005 under the leadership of Asi Filippova on the territory of the Moscow technical paper factory “October”. The goal of the project was to create a comfortable space for work and creativity in Moscow, as well as to show experimental non-commercial art projects and support contemporary authors.

At the Factory there are workshops for artists, art residences, music studios, design and architecture bureaus, theater and animation groups, publishing houses and printing companies. In the factory spaces today are the cult publishing house Ad Marginem, the laboratory of experimental printing PIRANEZI LAB under the guidance of artist and graphic artist Alexei Veselovsky, the theater company Liquid Theatre (twice winner of the Golden Mask award), "Big festival of cartoons", the MSK Eastside Gallery, the Animation workshop, the pavilions of the Moscow Film School and many others.

Social projects are actively developing on the territory of the Factory. The Enter and Allow project was created in 2014 and is dedicated to the long-term research of the Bauman district in which the Factory is located and to overcoming the fragmentation of the urban environment. The initiative group of the project seeks to create an open platform where dialogue within the district with participants, socio-cultural, artistic, everyday and other processes are possible. Also on the Factory there is a museum "Enter and allow", which is a comprehensive exhibition, the focus of which is the local history of the factory area. For centuries, bread has been baked here, tapestries have been weaved, paper, lamps and buttons made, and the project’s participants want to preserve the memory of these places through the stories of people: residents, former factory workers and the objects and buildings with which they are associated. The permanent exhibition of the museum, including the exhibition “Gender / Scissors / Paper”, which is dedicated to children’s paper work of the Soviet period, is the assemblage point of the project, on the basis of which meetings, family workshops, walks and exhibitions are held.

The history of the Center for Creative Industries began in 2005 with the opening of a special project of the First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art - No comment. Since then, exhibitions and festivals have become an important part of factory life. In addition, the Factory is one of the pioneers of the Artist in Residence program in Russia, an open workshop that provides foreign artists with the opportunity to conduct research in Moscow, show an exhibition, get acquainted with Russian contemporary art and its figures. Since the opening of the program in 2008, more than 70 authors from Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the USA, Germany, Korea, Finland, Brazil, etc. have participated.

Since its inception, the Factory has paid great attention to supporting contemporary Russian artists. In 2014, the project “Factory workshops” was opened by Asei Filippova and Natalia Obelchak. It allows artists to get a place to work and show exhibitions. In 2015, CTI Factory in partnership with E.K.ArtBureau presented a new, sessional part of the program. For the first time, authors over the age of 35 were invited to participate, that is, those who are formally out of the age of “young artist” and who find it difficult to find support in the Russian context of contemporary art. The winners of the competition receive a workshop for ten months and budget support for the announced projects, presenting the final result of work in the exhibition halls of the Factory.

In 2008, the Center for Creative Industries (CTI) "Factory" became part of the international network of independent cultural centers Trans Europe Halls.