This weekend, a seminar will take place in Calaf with the aim of analyzing “the capacity for urban and social transformation in small and medium-sized cities based on participation, social creativity, and artistic practices.” To this end, “artists, experts in transformation processes in small and medium-sized cities, and active projects in local environmentss” will be brought together. iD Barrio|Calaf. Social creativity, collective action, and artistic practices , which is the title they have given the seminar, aims to raise a debate about the capacity of art to “be an innovation factor in the city’s transformation processes” and to know “if it is capable of making latent social creativity emerge and deploying it through collective actions.”
The
Idensitat
call has been developing projects in Calaf for ten years that aim to connect the territory in its physical and social dimension with art. It so happens that the population has received one of the grants from the
Llei de Barris
, which seems like an opportune moment to address some of the issues raised by the seminar’s organizers around what they have called “Realities and fictions about participation“: ” Are small and medium-sized cities prepared to incorporate participation in different areas of decision-making? How does art relate to urban and social transformation processes? What role and function do participation processes have? How can social creativity be activated in a given environment? How can creative processes be deployed that have an impact on a local environment in the medium and long term? How can one be part of collective action areas through creative processes? Is the transformation of the city open to projects? What is the relationship between cultural policies and territorial planning? Can local contexts be part of the global cultural discourse? “
These are questions that, in one way or another, we ask ourselves, because in practice we find ourselves involved in completely similar problems. As it will be completely impossible for us to attend the seminar, we hope that the people of Idensitat will work hard to disseminate what happens there, so that we can participate, even retroactively, in the debate.