What's next? Round table on Public Engagement

Among other guests, participants in the round table will include Susana Moliner, in her capacity as a cultural creator and producer who works with communities, Maé Durant, who will represent the alternative architecture firm Pezestudio, Xosé Ramil, representing the community garden Esta es una Plaza (This is a Square), Jacobo García, a member of the neighbourhood space El Campo de Cebada (The Barley Field) and Patricia Leal Laredo, representing PEZarquitectos. The discussion will have an open format, with the aim of building a collective narrative that will enable better understanding of the current status of the urban social fabric and its role with respect to active participation in the taking of decisions that affect the community.

Admission is free and open to all, until full capacity is reached

[streaming video]

 The discussion planned for this session is based on  Botanic Concrete, a project launched by Viviana Checchia at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow (CCA) which aims to involve residents from the Garnethill area in the urban renewal process that the neighbourhood is currently undergoing. The aim of the initiative is to enable the community to create a citizens’ lab. Working creatively and with an alternative approach, it attempts to discover what the community wants from its neighbourhood and what it thinks about local issues. To achieve this, the participation of members of the community (people of all cultural backgrounds, ages and social strata) is essential in order to create a truly democratic understanding of people's needs and wishes.

What’s next? With this question, Viviana Checchia forges connections between her own research process and similar initiatives that have emerged in Madrid in recent years. After a period of intense creativity, there is an urgent need to stop and ask ourselves as a group where all of this is heading. In view of this, Viviana Checchia calls on various citizens’ initiatives that operate within Madrid’s social fabric to collectively rethink the strategies of civic empowerment that we should be using in our current context. It’s a unique opportunity to reflect on the cities of the future through the lens of self-managed, community property. 

The project being developed by Viviana Checchia, currently in the research and development phase, was made possible by the ECF grant awarded by the Idea Camp collaborative work platform for the 2015/16 period, via a residency at Medialab-Prado. 

With the participation of: