CAMINA - Journal 3 - Civic curators - Social Laboratories for Cultural Participation in Almeria

The third Journal of the project “Community Awakening for Multicultural Integrative Narrative of Almería – CAMINA” analyses the activities progress from February 2023 to March 2024. The content is based on project documents and online meetings with MUA and delivery partners.

This journal focuses on the activity called “Civic Curators” that are collaborative laboratories to co-design and implement cultural projects in Almeria, embracing the values of cultural integration and solidarity promoted by CAMINA

The chapter 1 focuses on the civic curators-social laboratories for culture, summarising the participative methodology and the laboratory development.

The chapter 2 provides an overview of the cultural events realised by the civic curators in Almeria, sharing activities and pictures.

The chapter 3 concentrates the attention on the challenges encountered by CAMINA offering a comment on seven typical challenges for the implementation of innovation projects that the UIA Initiative has identified.

The “civic curator” is an innovative concept promoted by CAMINA, that has been involving cultural users, local associations and citizens to co-design the novel Cultural Programme of Almeria through participatory planning workshops and collaborative culture initiatives. The Civic curators - social laboratories for culture have been active between March 2023 and February 2024.

To select the members of the civic curators, the Municipality of Almeria launched a call for participants on the 15th November 2022. Twenty-two Local Associations applied to take part at the social laboratories to co-design and implement the novel cultural programme in Almeria, twelve local organisations (applied as a consortium and sometime involving also individual artists) were selected and grouped in six civic curators.

As already shared in the Journal 2 and in a project article, the Municipality of Almeria together with the delivery partners did a huge effort to innovate the public procurement to launch a call aimed at engaging cultural organisations and individuals to co-design the cultural programme of Almeria through a participative methodology. 

The civic curators have co-designed cultural activities, that have been realised in the three “cultural nodes” and their urban surroundings located in the three target neighbourhoods: the Katiuska cinema in La Chanca-Pescaderia, the Museum Doña Pakyta in the Centre and the Mesón Gitano in Almedina.

The Novel Collective Narrative of Almería’s Cultural Landscape, developed by CAMINA in the first project stage, guided the work of the civic curators, as a visioning scenario of Almeria Citizens .

Three art forms have been delivered by the civic curators representing the three Narrative concepts matched with the cultural nodes mission:

• Performative art – Cultural node 1 – Mesón Gitano – walking into the past;
• Fine art – Cultural node 2 – Museum Doña Pakyta – walking into the present,
• Audio-visual art – Cultural node 3 – Katiuska cinema – walking into the future.

The partnership developed this activity as follows:

• Eptisa, delivery partner, has been in charge of coordinating and facilitating the civic curator’s activity, guiding the achievement of the project milestone, supporting the timing respect, the logistics and civic curators needs to realise their project. Eptisa has been responsible of reporting the work in progress to the Municipality of Almeria as activity coordinator;
• the University of Almeria (UAL) has had the responsibility of monitoring the innovative process setted up for the civic curators as well as supervising the project’s objectives and the social impact of CAMINA

Each civic curator has a delivery partner as a laboratory coordinator:

• Fundación de Arte Ibañez Cosentino, that promotes fine arts exhibition, is the responsible of civic curator 1 (LCC1);
• Junta de Andalucia - department of Alcazaba Cultural Heritage (Conjunto monumental de la Alcazaba de Almería ) is the responsible of civic curator 2 (LCC2);
• EMMA, Municipal School for Music and Arts , is the responsible of civic curator 3 (LCC3);
• KUVER, audio-video producer and musical events organiser, is the responsible of civic curator 4 (LCC4);
• Diputación de Almería is the responsible of civic curator 5 (LCC5);
• Junta de Andalucia - Andalusian Center of Photography has the responsibility of civic curator 6 (LCC6).

Between September 2023 and February 2024, several cultural events have been organised in Almeria, thanks to the work of civic curators.

To promote the rich calendar of events, the CAMINA website was activated together with the project social media.

Thousands of people participated in dance, music and theatre performances, urban walks, talks, exhibitions, artistic and photography workshops. School students were involved in video-making activities and laboratory experiences.

Many people had the opportunity to visit the neighbourhoods of La Chanca-Pescaderia,  Almedina  and the centre of Almeria, learning about the potential of these places and the importance of their heritage. Through the cultural activities spread around the three neighbourhoods and the cultural nodes, CAMINA achieved to attract people in places considered marginalised and deprived, places where people do not use to go due to fear or simple misinformation. CAMINA has triggered a process of de-stigmatisation of the targeted neighbourhoods, fostering the social inclusion of the people living there.

The huge participation in the CAMINA cultural events demonstrated the power of cultural participation and the important role of culture as a sound tool for inclusion and social cohesion.

“CAMINA seeks to generate social cohesion by breaking the social barriers that still remain in Almería and connecting people socially and economically segregated through cultural participative projects and interventions in urban space”

Cristina Martín Heras, project coordinator for Eptisa, delivery partner

The six civic curators shared their events, laboratory, exhibitions developed through the participatory methodology of CAMINA.

Following, an overview of the cultural events realised by each civic curator-social laboratory for culture 

The Fundación de Arte Ibañez Cosentino, an organisation promoting fine arts exhibitions, has been the responsible of the civic curator 1, collaborating with the local association called “Yo soy el Otro”.

The activities were implemented in the Museum “Museum Doña Pakyta” and in the neighbourhood of La Chanca-Pescadería and Almedina by organising exhibitions in the Museum and open-air activities like guided visits to temporary exhibitions, workshops for children, families and all citizens.

Among others, they organised:

• Three temporary exhibitions in the Museum Doña Pakyta (in the museum area refurbished by CAMINA): “La Chanca in the imagination”,“La Chanca de  Pérez Siquier” and “La Chanca en el Imaginario II Miradas Cruzadas” (follow-up on Journal 2) and open-air activities like guided visits and workshops;
• Active engagement of families and students from La Chanca-Pescaderia through the cooperation with schools and Museums;
• Urban walks, called “Mujeres Camino”, organised by a community of artist women around La Chanca-Pescaderia neighbourhood and other Almeria sites;
• Three talks with artists and experts: 1. How is to be an artist in Almeria and survive, 2. Art and inclusion, 3. Memories of Arts in La Chanca;
• Three sessions of artistic laboratories: 1. arabic writing, 2. mapping and plastic workshop 3. Co-creation of a collective murales(street arts).

Moreover the civic curator 1 developed a webpage https://almerife.com/ to map cultural organisations, artists, cultural experts, practitioners of Almeria to empower collaboration and participation between cultural stakeholders. 

Junta de Andalucia - Department of Alcazaba Cultural Heritage , responsible for the civic curator 2, worked with the “Asociación Socio-cultural La Guajira”, “Clasijazz” organisation and the artist Julio Bejar to develop the following activities:

• Different types of music performances
• Street performance and first concert of the chorale foundation;
• “Audio Barrio project”: a Sound Route inspired by people’s story life with 16 audio tracks corresponding to 16 stops to play and listen;
• Baazar Andalusí, as a recreation of a XI century and 3 different type of concerts about Mediterranean music.
• Light and music festival Al-Andaluz.

EMMA, Municipal School for Music and Arts, responsible for the civic curator 3, collaborated with the associations “INDANZA” and “A toda Vela”.

The activities developed by civic curator 3 are:

• Dance performance with video mapping installation about Indaliano movement;
• Dance performance “Sed, la magia del agua” to represent the importance of the water worldwide and especially in Almeria, a territory where the production of vegetable, exported in all Europe, is the main source of income;
• Theatre performance realised outdoor/rooftop of the cultural node Meson Gitano inspired by Almeria history;
• “CAMINA Urbano”: urban performative exhibition  that involved several dance performers of hip hop, freestyle, etc.

EMMA launched also a casting activity for theatre, dance and music beginners to engage Almeria citizens.

KUVER, audio-video producer and musical events organiser, as a responsible of Civic curator 4, coordinated the work done with the associations  “Amigos de la Alcazaba de Almería”, “Federación Provincial de Peñas Flamencas de Almería” and “Federación Almeriense e Teatro Aficionado (FEALTA)”. They implemented the following activities:

• Theatre, dance and music performance inspired by the main milestone of Almeria history from the population perspective “Almería a través de la historia”;
• Short-film- documentary about the Ancient Almeria named “Las Tres Medinas”.

Diputación de Almería is the responsible of the civic curator 5. The delivery partner collaborated with the association “La Oficina Producciones Culturales” and the professionals Evaristo Martínez and Francisco Luis Aguilar. The cultural activities developed by the civic curator 5 are:

• Training on Cinema and video- making for school students (CINEMA LAB I);
• Photography for cinema and urban art training for school students (CINEMA LAB II);
• A documentary film about the whole Civic Curator process and activities, with students testimonials.
• Set up of an Archive (physical and online) of images collection of people live in La Chanca Pescaderia neighbourhood involved in the cinema industry and movies;
• Route with six urban street art performances (poster of actors/actress from the Archive) in La Chanca-Pescaderia neighbourhood.

Junta de Andalucia - Andalusian Center of Photography (CAF) is the responsible of the civic curator 6 that was developed with the Grupo Indalo Foto association.

The activities implemented are:

• A training for citizens  on photography using their mobile devices and facilitated by a professional photographer.
• Photography competition for training participants and Almeria citizen
• A photography exhibition in the Art Schools of Almeria.
• An exhibition of photography in walls and facades in all the three targeted districts and in the scaffolds of the rehabilitation works at defence wall of Alcazaba complex. The selected photos put in the exhibition have been taken by training participants and by the professional photographer Jose Maria Mellado.