PRESENTATION
The seminar will introduce a series of groups and cultural, educational and social projects that combine pedagogical work and interventions in public space, overstepping the traditional limits of education.
A number of the groups, networks and projects that have emerged in recent decades work in these fields, in arts centres and social centres, while others have set up alternative spaces or networks, all of which boast a wide diversity of practices and forms of organisation.
Collective Pedagogies unfolds in the spheres of education, art and activism and intends to transform specific social problems (such as those derived from the mismanagement or the high cost of basic social services, gentrification or the shortage of public or green spaces in cities, limited energy resources and ecological disasters, etc.) by means of sustainable development, citizen participation and visual culture, setting up interdisciplinary work groups that include teachers and students alongside artists, architects, landscape architects and town planners, promoting long-term dialogical and collaborative learning.
Spatial politics embraces alternative practices that suggest a more comprehensive, participative and interdisciplinary use of public spaces, combining town planning and architecture with other fields of knowledge (art, pedagogy, sociology, ethnography and community work).
In this sense, the practices covered by the seminar emerge as spaces that generate an ongoing cultural negotiation.
The prospect of cultural negotiation will help us analyse and discuss the different formats and media to which the national and international projects and groups taking part in the seminar resort to: how they are articulated, how their various fields of knowledge operate, how they relate to and collaborate with other organisations and institutions and how they adapt and generate new networks for collective action and the production of knowledge. Instead of neutralising or denying a critical stance before institutions or official knowledge they consider other ways of working and activating the subversive power of criticism, experimenting new practices -pedagogical and political- that affect institutional activity and modify forms of institutional collaboration.
Cultural Negotiations consists of three public introductory and debate sessions and an internal workshop, all of which are structured into three thematic areas that act as tension lines or approaches to the practices of the groups taking part in the seminar.
SEMINAR-WORKSHOP
Wednesday_2nd December 2009
Critical Pedagogies and Collaborative Cultures in Action
The different educational and self-organisational models of the invited groups will be the first focal point of debate of the seminar. We shall analyse and discuss the lines of work and learning models that must be developed in order to create extended and continuous collaborative periods with other people or groups. These models of collaborative action will be studied as pedagogical spaces in which knowledge, tools, strategies and practice models are exchanged through learning communities.
· 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Workshop: Critical internal work sessions with local interlocutors and international participants.
· 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Presentations and debate: Loraine Leeson, The Center for Urban Pedagogy (Damon Rich) and Artibarri (Aida Sánchez de Serdio).
Thursday_3rd December 2009
Group Emergences and Networks
The second day of the seminar will de devoted to discussing the condition of group practices as emergences before specific situations, in which they set up independent spaces of constructive criticism and action. This line of debate will analyse the mechanisms that transform these practices into connected works which give rise to other ways of understanding cultural production and knowledge. Thus, after calling into question the official disciplines and fields in which the discourses of cultural production and knowledge inherited from modernism are inscribed, we shall proceed to examine how such discourses may be transcended productively, i.e., what opportunities are feasible in each specific context.
· 10:00 a.m. - 14:00 p.m.
Workshop: Critical internal work sessions with local interlocutors and international participants.
· 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Presentations and debate: atelier d'architecture autogérée (Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu), Ala Plástica (Alejandro Meitin) and Fernando García Dory.
Friday_4th December 2009
Ecology and Sustainability of Projects
The ecology of each project will be the focus of the third and last day of the seminar, which will discuss the means and resources groups have at their disposal, and the forms of management they employ to make them efficient and sustainable in their specific field of action. The circulation and distribution of group work in the various contexts will be problematised, and the challenge of assuming future nodes and multipliers of projects in the places where we act will be met, bearing in mind that political intervention should aim at their sustainability.
10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Workshop: Critical internal work sessions with local interlocutors and international participants.
6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Presentations and debate: Learning Site (Rikke Luther), AREA (Daniel Tucker) and Sitesize (Elvira Pujol and Joan Vila-Puig).
PARTICIPANTS
Presentations
Fernando García-Dory
An artist and agro-ecologist, Fernando García-Dory is a founding member of Plataforma Rural and has promoted several agro-ecological and cooperative initiatives and actions, both in Europe and in America and Asia such as the agro-ecological projects organised in Madrid (Under the Asphalt Lies the Market Garden, 1999-2000), Ecuador (Agrolife, Indigenous Movement of Chimborazo, 2002-2003), India (Namdu Project and Amrita Bhoomi Seed Bank, 2005-2006), in which he combines artistic languages with biological processes and new scientific contributions, as well as developing social self-organisation strategies linked to the agriculture in our days. Alongside Red Pastor, he has worked on various projects and interventions with shepherds, including a worldwide meeting of nomads, a school for shepherds and the recent creation of a state network for shepherds. www.bionte.org
Loraine Leeson
An artist committed to urban regeneration since late 1970, Loraine Leeson has combined art, pedagogies and the media in her works in the public sphere. She is also co-founder of the Docklands Community Poster Project, an artistic cooperative that fought against the gentrification of the London docklands area for over ten years using different cultural media: community posters in public places, group actions such as activist gatherings at the Houses of Parliament and informative exhibitions known as Roadshows held all over England. At present she is Director of cSPACE at the University of East London, where she is Guest Researcher. www.cspace.org.uk
Ala Plástica (Alejandro Meitin)
A non-governmental organisation active since 1991 in the vicinity of Río de la Plata (Argentina), its projects are based on art, social networks and human, ecological and social regeneration. Its members and collaborators come from a range of fields, and as a result the configuration of the group varies according to their degree of involvement in each project. Ala Plástica brings together a complex weft of interventions that simultaneously articulate work in the fields of ecology, sustainability, the recovery of native cultures, networking, participative production of knowledge and recovery of local economies and social frameworks starting from models of rhizomatic expansion and participative research. Among its actions we should mention Bio-regional Initiative, at Estuario de la Plata, a programme of interventions and sustainable development put into practice through what are known as ‘exercises’, such as Reeds - Emerging Spaces (1995), Spillage (1995) and Fibres (2006), among others. www.alaplastica.org.ar
AREA (Daniel Tucker)
Established in 2005, AREA (Art, Research, Education and Activism) is a publishing project and a space for researching and discussing creative and cultural practices of resistance in Chicago. AREA strives to set up an independent work network, uniting organisations and individuals committed to social justice. The nine six-monthly reviews they have published as AREAChicago have examined food politics, the meaning of community, justice and its institutions, the relationship between pedagogies and social movements, and the effects of the financial crisis on the city’s cultural and political practices. As well as its publishing project AREA organises workshops and collaborates with local Chicago and international groups. www.areachicago.org
atelier d'architecture autogérée (Constantin Petcou y Doina Petrescu)
atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa) is a group/forum of architects, neighbours and interdisciplinary groups based in Paris whose actions intend to explore urban mutations and emerging politics in contemporary cities. They develop ‘urban tactics’ designed to stimulate citizen participation in, and management of, underused spaces and accompany micro-processes that will favour openings in standardised urban contexts making cities more ecological and democratic. aaa has set up several self-managed garden and community market-garden projects in La Chapelle (Paris). www.urbantactics.org
Artibarri (Aida Sánchez de Serdio)
This Catalan network of creative initiatives for social change was founded in 2004 as a matrix of organisations that work in the socio-cultural field and consider art a useful tool for social transformation and community development. Artibarri is a driving force for communication, dialogue, learning, recognition and collaboration between those who have a shared interest in community art projects. It is also a resource centre for promoting art in community development and for encouraging cultural democracy in society. Its activities include several Artibarri Courses on art, community participation and intervention (2005, 2006 and 2007) and research projects such as “Arte y desarrollo comunitario” (2004), published in Procesos creativos transformadores (2009). www.artibarri.org
The Center for Urban Pedagogy (Damon Rich)
This non-profit organisation founded in Brooklyn (New York) developed out of KYGL, an informal group of five people who worked voluntarily in areas such as environmental construction, public space, art, architecture and pedagogies. Damon Rich and Rosten Woo shaped The Center for Urban Pedagogy as a working structure equipped with an extensive network of collaborators. Its activity is based on critical use of the city as curriculum, ethnographic work with new media, mapping and sociological and urban analysis, and promoting the visibility of groups and institutional collaborations in different networks. Its projects include Garbage Problems (2007), Making Policy Public (2008) and the series of programmes for community television entitled Public Housing Television (2004).
http://anothercupdevelopment.org
Learning Site (Rikke Luther)
Learning Site is an interdisciplinary group working in the field of design, collaborative learning and sustainable town planning based in Copenhagen. Its specific interventions are made through critical re-examination of economic, social and environmental factors, and the conditions of production and distribution of knowledge, and it proposes multiple solutions and modes of collaborative work. Learning Site is also a place for dialogue and exchange between different people and fields of research, developing tools, publications such as the Learning Books series (2005, 2008) and workshops and interventions such as Collecting Systems, Moriya, Japan and Mexico DF (2004, 2005), Underground Mushroom Gardens, Singapore (2006) or Pedagogical Island, Copenhagen (2007). www.learningsite.info
Sitesize (Elvira Pujol y Joan Vila-Puig)
This platform for art projects set up in 2002 develops specific works in the field of cultural mediation in Barcelona’s metropolitan district. Focused mainly on independent cultural production and the research of new territorial and landscape geographies, Sitesize takes visual culture, territorial representation and community development as the basis for actions that shape, identify and transform places and social dynamics. Its projects include SIT Manresa (2008) and Metropolitan Narratives_Permanent Classroom at the Catalan Pavilion of the Venice Biennale (2009). www.sitesize.net
Interlocutors taking part in the internal work sessions
Montserrat Cortadellas - Terrasa
An artist and a pedagogical consultant, Montserrat Cortadellas has developed a number of projects on visual culture and pedagogical ventures involving different groups and analytical-critical creative processes set in immediate reality. www.comissariat.cat/mcb
Alg-a - Vigo
A community of free art and action that works as an open network of artists and groups that shape it according to their initiatives, processes and actions. Its main objective is to preserve a free and collaborative environment for collective learning and research-production. www.alg-a.org
Amaste - Bilbao
An office of ideas specialised in articulating relational and participative mediation processes and devices that stimulate the imagination, fostering active reflection and a critical spirit in spheres such as social innovation, youth culture, the arts, entrepreneurism, media literacy and territorial development. www.amaste.com
Edupar - Granada
Edupar is a team of social educators involved in supporting, accompanying, advising and shaping processes for transformative social participation. Holding the belief that things are not as they are, but are built collectively, educational processes are a prerequisite for the construction of new models of social and political organisation. www.edupar.es
Donestech - Barcelona
This group of social researchers consigns new technologies to the creation of digital contents, audiovisual production, communication and network construction. www.donestech.net
Espacio Tangente - Burgos
As a centre for contemporary creation based on the principles of self-management, independence, transparency and commitment, Espacio Tangente has sought a gradual increase of public participation, both as regards its organisation and its programming, in order to preserve an open and dynamic project able to efficiently bring together, connect and promote the artistic and cultural expressions of its surroundings. www.espaciotangente.net
Espai en Blanc - Barcelona
This group is committed to making thought once again compelling. Since the year 2002 Espai en Blanc has been driven by the intention of taking theory beyond the spaces officially reserved for it, thereby transforming it into a practical tool for artistic intervention. www.espaienblanc.net
Laboratorio Urbano - Madrid
Laboratorio Urbano is a group that experiences the city as a territory for decision-making, an expression of multiple realities, a place where inequalities and conflicts are materialised through processes of urban construction.
http://nodo50.org/laboratoriourbano
laFundició - Esplugues
The work of this cooperative stands at the crossroads between artistic practice and education, both of which are seen as controversial activities. Its main activity is focused on providing educational services to organisations and producing collaborative projects of continuity with different groups and institutions. www.lafundicio.net
Las lindes - Madrid
A project dedicated to researching, debating, recording and visibilising educational thinking related to critical pedagogies and cultural practices, Las lindes is made up of Marta de Gonzalo, Pablo Martínez, Publio Pérez Prieto, Cristina Vega and Virginia Villaplana. It is also a militant research group, whose members consider education a cultural and social project, and therefore a group initiative, for a future still unresolved that we may venture to imagine. www.ca2m.org/las_lindes
Ludotek - Madrid
This is a laboratory that attempts to conceive and engender both art and politics from childhood, i.e., to conceive childhood from the spheres of art and politics, or to conceive politics from the spheres of childhood and art. www.ludotek.net
Neokinok - Barcelona
Audiovisual creation and experimental television are the areas of interest of this group coordinated by Daniel Miracle, which since 1998 has developed various artistic projects centred on audiovisual work, art, culture and education. www.neokinok.tv
Sinapsis - Barcelona
This office produces artistic projects, research, consultancies and educational and mediation processes. By means of collaborative methodologies it articulates relations between the art sphere and specific non-artistic contexts. www.ressonanciamanresa.wordpress.com/sinapsis
ULEX - Málaga
The Free and Experimental University (ULEX) emerged as a space for formation, debate, research and creation at a time when the university had become a sad mechanism of the labour market. It was founded in 2007 on occasion of the occupation of Málaga’s Casa Invisible.. www.ulexmalaga.blogspot.com
Universidad Nómada - red estatal
This is a commons institution, a network made up of social centres, offices for the production of rights and centres of situated knowledge. Its methodologies are co-research and the production of extra-disciplinary knowledge, and its objective is commonfare.
www.universidadnomada.net
Zemos98 - Sevilla
This research team is devoted to developing open and collaborative multidisciplinary projects. It has so far published the books Creación e inteligencia colectiva (2005), La televisión no lo filma (2006), Panel de control (2007) and Código fuente: la remezcla (2009) and will soon bring out Educación expandida. www.zemos98.org
Transductores. Pedagogías colectivas y políticas espaciales 
