About - TUMO Paris

The Forum des images opened France’s first TUMO Center for Creative Technologies for 12 to 18-year-olds.
TUMO Paris is an innovative and free extracurricular educational program developed in close collaboration with TUMO Yerevan in Armenia, and with strong support from Paris City Hall.

TUMO Paris is giving you access to new creative image and digital technologies. Come and join us after school at this new site within the Forum des images, in the Les Halles neighborhood of in Paris, to learn and develop your skills across eight distinct areas of creative technology: Filmmaking, Animation, Game Development, Music, Drawing, Graphic Design, 3D Modeling and Programming. Learn how to create and hack the world in a specially dedicated space!

Year-round, specialized educators/coaches will guide you through a personalized course, with globally-recognized professionals hosting a range of workshops that offer creative and technological activities.

The TUMO learning program began in Armenia where over 14,000 students now regularly attend centers across the country. Now TUMO is expanding on a global scale, into Paris, Moscow, Beirut and Tirana, along with other cities to be announced next year.

Sam & Sylva Simonian

Founders of TUMO

Born and raised in Beirut, the Simonians moved to the United States as teenagers. Sam enrolled in the engineering program of the University of Texas at Arlington and went on to co-found Inet, a leading telecommunications company. The Simonians have always noted the significant contributions Armenian organizations made to their education and success over the years, and have made it a personal endeavor to extend that gift to the current generation of bright and motivated Armenians. TUMO is their greatest step in that direction yet.

Marie Lou Papazian

CEO, Simonian Educational Foundation

As TUMO’s founding CEO, Marie Lou Papazian developed the center’s educational program and led the design and construction of its flagship facility. Prior to TUMO, Marie Lou led the Education for Development Foundation linking Armenian students to their global peers through online educational activities. Previously, she was lead construction manager on prominent high-rise buildings in New York City. Marie Lou holds a Master’s Degree in Computing in Education from the Teachers College at Columbia University, as well as degrees in engineering and construction management.

Claude Farge

General Director of the Forum des images / Director of TUMO Paris

For the past two decades, Claude Farge has been an expert in digital creation and video gaming, as well as director of publishing and transmedia at Universcience. Previously, he worked as producer and director at Ubisoft and at La Réunion des Musées Nationaux, and was in charge of a master’s program at Les Gobelins school. In 2018, he was appointed General Director of the Forum des images, and launched the first French TUMO center in Paris, in partnership with TUMO Armenia. “My ambition is to explore new ways of storytelling that have emerged from the digital revolution, by allowing our young audiences to take charge of new media and create their own stories,” he says.
In addition, he is an artist in his own right, whose work is regularly exhibited.