Artefacting Public Art + Research Practice

PROJECT LIVE PAGE CLICK HERE

PROJECT CONCEPT & VISION: THE COOPERATIVE CULTURES LABORATORY

Envisioned outside of the Colony, the laboratory will be a dynamic flexible space run by artist facilitators and members of Nueva Patria collective. The laboratory’s objectives will be to support the building of creative practices and initiatives that can bring about social transformation in other Colonies as well as amplify the project in Patria Nueva. It will be a dynamic space, with general office hours, programmed in accord with the needs and concerns of participants. Specifically, programming will support individuals with cultural initiatives in their own neighborhoods, and help capacitate them to better manage and impulse cultural change in their neighborhoods. It will also be a place to bring people together in discussion and research, to build relations and partnerships through which knowledge, motivation, ideas and cooperation are a commons to draw from.

Envisioned functions of the space:

1) To encourage and activate the imagination of the public
2) Provoke discussion & assembly
3) Support and capacitate individuals in skills and abilities
4) Create opportunities for participants
5) Build relationships, cooperations & network
6) Incubate projects and actions
7) Inspire and animate
8) Provide legitimacy and solidarity to independent cultural actions
9) Disseminate activity and diagnose complexities and problematics

Goals

1) Support the creation and multiplication of independently determined cultural & community initiatives
2) Effectively enable citizens to understand and realize their potential as creative communities
3) Bring to life a laboratory of diverse socio-cultural practices and reflection that serves as a source of motivation and exemplify a range of community possibilities
4) Help germinate dynamic cooperatives of the social, cultural & economic nature
5) Work closely with individuals to develop their interests and capacities over the long term
6) Create opportunities for learning, life and creative advancement
7) Challenge political repression in communities and a tourist-based model for cultural development

Long-term impact

a. By setting up what we hope to become a permanent space for learning and creating, we hope this space establishes itself as an integral part of the neighborhood fabric.

b. We plan to present our programme and project on different political and cultural platforms to confront the issue of tourist-centered cultural development, by offering an alternative, and by tracking/presenting the individual and community results of collaborative projects catalyzed through the space.

c. Nueva Patria and the Laboratory will diversify its outreach by offering an array of programs that allow people of all different classes and profiles into the laboratory. We will diversify our outreach by connecting with wide audience, built up through contact with a range of interventions and cooperations driven by the collective and visiting/residency artist-facilitators.