ECOLOGICAL CULTURAL CENTRE
The Cultural Ecological Center is a citizen space for co-creation and sustainable artistic experimentation. This project was born from the regeneration of a disused municipal plot by the community of the Las Planes and Sant Josep neighborhoods in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. At the end of 2020 we began construction of the center. This space is designed with the network of local actors and is built through self-construction with volunteers and local agents.
We carry out the following cultural programs: community festivals, extracurricular activities, artistic residencies, a digital fabrication laboratory and now we are building a community garden.
We develop most of our activities in the Ecological Cultural Center, created from 2019 to 2022 in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat from the regeneration of a municipal plot, through self-construction with the collaboration of the neighborhood and a network of local actors.
The group of people who will receive a direct impact will be all those people participating in the activities, whether in participation circles, volunteering, community, educational or cultural activities of the project. This group of people is made up, on the one hand, of stable groups of collaborating local agents such as educational centers, entities in the fields of health, leisure or social integration, and individual people who participate directly in the project.
Since 2019, the project has been growing in the different programs it offers, as well as the number of people involved. In 2022, the project carried out a total of 400 total activities, including all the programs it develops. In the case of the community and volunteer program, it generates the gross of the activities with 260 total activities or sessions with a median participation of 20 people per session / activity and 200 participants for each day / community event.
PARTICIPATION
In 2019 we began the regeneration of the municipal site of the Pont de Matacavalls Park in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat with the support of the community and the neighborhood network. Initially, we carried out participatory processes to find out what needs the community identified that had to be resolved in the neighborhood, as well as what uses they wanted the lot to have. At the end of 2020 we began the construction process of the center, which ends at the end of 2022. We are currently building an 800m2 community garden to finish
PROCESSES
In relation to the cultural programs that are carried out in the space; There is our annual residency program, “Art and Sustainability”, which brings together 5-7 artists to co-create projects with the community. The Community Festivals include artistic activities such as graffiti, music and gardening workshops. The Floridalab is the Fab Lab/maker space, from where we promote digital manufacturing to apply it to urban greenery, promoting training in new technologies for environmental projects with 3D printing and Arduino. In addition, we carry out extracurricular activities for children aged 7-12; visual arts, architecture for children and horticulture. Finally, the community garden as a self-managed space for research and experimentation in permaculture and food sovereignty.
FURNITURE
We consider the project as a “do tank” as opposed to “think tanks” and are moving towards a greater commitment to practice, recognizing that practice often comes before theory and seeking to influence through practical demonstrations rather of publications. In this way we can innovate and offer improvements that create participation infrastructures that make use of the information, available knowledge and decision-making as active communities.
