Both rural periurban areas, affected by social devaluation, and peripheral urban environments, threatened by diverse factors of vulnerability, are seen as irrelevant territories in the common imagination that attributes solely to central urban spaces a value of economic, social and cultural progress. We seek to connect these two neglected spaces in order to broaden the over-simplifying and sterile urban-centric vision and to open an unprecedented path in interregional rural-urban cooperation.

Between rural areas of Asturias and educational centers of the Vallecas district, Madrid (Spain).

In peri-urban rural environment of Central Asturias area, challenge is related to depopulation, substitution of an economic model based on industrial monoculture by a service monoculture and population concentration in urban centers. While in the peripheral urban environment of the Vallecas district, the challenge lies in the inequality in the redistribution of resources between districts of the city of Madrid, which increases the vulnerability of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Both territories share a problem caused by a centralization of culture in urban centers. This causes a gap in access to culture that leads to serious territorial inequalities, social devaluation, loss of knowledge and irrelevance in the representative decision-making spaces of the inhabitants of these areas.

Through specific work with hórreos and paneras, multifunctional buildings of rural tradition located along the Spanish Cantabrian coast -understood as living heritage with a relational character, container of individual memories and, simultaneously, a common and representative object of collective meanings- the project wants to mobilize a wide diverse network of people.
From rural older adults, voices especially neglected in processes of civic innovation; to younger generations, to enable them, from rural environments on one hand, to give value to their territory of origin as an alternative for the future, and from the city on the other hand, to broaden the urban-centered vision ignorant with the layers of knowledge that are hidden under the simplifying understanding of the countryside.

Phase1: Applied research articulated around a multidisciplinary action program. Through a collaboration between creators from different areas and local agents from rural areas concerned, the different knowledge displayed around hórreos and paneras will be interrogated: ethnobotany, iconography, architecture, food …
Phase2: Formalization of a kit of pedagogical actions. For the development of educational projects applied in educational centers of urban nature that will rely on the composition of knowledge collected in rural environment with knowledge of urban territory. Projects accomplished will be, in turn, presented within the framework of a meeting that will take place in PACA gathering participants from rural population and educators involved in developing the project in urban areas.

It will have contributed to break the polarized idea of rural-urban through the development of a common imaginary built collectively from different knowledge, agents and disciplines.
Rural-urban communication channels will have been restored so that peasant culture will no longer be understood as obsolete, and will be valued as a container of key knowledge to rework urban way of life and ways of producing the city.
Collaboration networks will have been activated for the development of cultural and citizen initiatives scattered throughout the territory, outside the hegemonic centers of cultural production, which will favor a horizontal relationship of exchange and mutual support, fostering new spaces for meeting and social relations from which community and collective will be encouraged.

The project promotes the creation of alliances between these two devalued territories, both vulnerable and threatened by various imbalance factors that seriously jeopardize the citizenship rights of the people who inhabit them, regarding their legitimacy to be taken into account in the drafting of territorial development policies.
We propose to activate spaces that allow a re-reading of informal and non-regulated knowledge of peasant origin with the aim of recovering its transforming potential for a more participatory and environmentally responsible model of city construction, directly involving the people who possess this knowledge and putting them in relation to inhabitants of disadvantaged peripheral urban areas through educational actions of an experimental nature.

There is a personal connection to the proposal on the part of all partners, as our biographies are crossed by a rural-urban migration and a feeling of devaluation of our places of origin.
The proposal is linked to the vision of Grigri Projects concerning the promotion of community processes of a transdisciplinary, collaborative and situated nature as the basis for the creation of networks between agents from diverse territories.
Likewise, the idea is aligned with PACA’s mission based on activation of artistic experiences that favor a relationship with community, territory and its history, so that practice, research and artistic experimentation, generate new ways of interpretation and knowledge of the territory in which they operate, through cultural, environmental and social values.

Project coordination: 5.000 €
Design and communication: 4.500 €
Travel, allowance and accommodation: 1.800 €
Mediation and research: 6.000 €
Audiovisual documentation: 3.000 €
Applied research through a multidisciplinary action program: 18.500 €
Pedagogical proposal development and implementation: 8.000 €
Educational digital platform development: 2.000 €
Project evaluation and continuity proposal: 1.200 €

Own contributions (space rental and expenses): 8.000€

It would be very valuable for us to receive the insight of the community in relation to the proposed work methodology, the difficulties that can be perceived in relation to the territories that are put in relation and, finally, regarding possible aspects that may need to be emphasized.