Socially engaged art
13 May, 2022
Concomitentes launches the ‘Art for Sustainability’ call to address social and environmental challenges
Born in 2018 under the auspices of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, Concomitentes promotes the creation of works of art and mediates between the civil society that commissions them and the artists who produce them. With four active processes – concomitances – in different parts of the country, the association has just launched its first public call ‘Art for sustainability‘, open until June 10, 2022, with the aim of promoting a fifth participatory process to commission a work of art that responds to the needs of the community and its context.
The cultural production company Concomitentes has been activating citizen participation processes for four years that address the problems, needs or concerns of a group through art. His proposal is based on the methodology developed in 1990 by the Belgian artist François Hers through which groups of citizens, mediators and artists work together in the consolidation of an artistic commission in the creation of works of art connected to everyday life and that respond to a specific need of their social environment. The protocol promoted by Hers was the cornerstone of Nouveaux Commanditaires, the initiative that the Foundation wanted to replicate in Spain due to its great potential for social and cultural impact in view of the results experienced in France and other European countries.
“Concomitants processes go far beyond the artwork itself. They open spaces for reflection and participation through which citizens explore the possibilities of art to address problems present in their daily lives and their collective imagination. At the same time, his entourage reads these commissions as a social and political commitment, and also feels appealed to a deep democratic reflection.”
Isabelle Le Galo, director for Spain of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation
Art to solve real
problemsAlways from the perspective of proposing a solution to a need of the community and its environment through artistic practices, Concomitentes is currently working on four very different projects spread throughout the national territory. Although each concomitance is unique since they are based on different contexts and needs, they all share common characteristics: they have a citizen group with an idea or theme relevant to their community, a mediator who accompanies the process and the participation of artists to materialize the desire of that community.
Diversorium. Living arts and spaces for coexistence
This concomitance, led by Verónica Valentini in Barcelona, seeks to create a space for meeting and mixing through the party in which people from all walks of life come together, exploring and overcoming the cultural and social meaning of difference. The starting point of this project is the desire expressed by two activists, Antonio Centeno and María Oliver, to generate a space for meeting and partying where people with functional diversity “dance” together with the different invisible communities of the city . The concomitance proposed to hold three meetings in the Sala Apolo nightclub and one in the public space during the popular festivals of Poble Nou in collaboration with the Can Felipa civic center. Due to the development of the pandemic, so far only one has been held, in which it started with a first part of exchange at a discursive level followed by a cabaret/party/dance that generated a mixture and coexistence between all types of bodies and that helped to break down prejudices.
Paediatric ICU
Caring for sick children in a hospital environment is an emotional stress for patients and their families that requires specialized accompaniment in emotional care by the professionals who work in that environment. This concomitance, mediated by Felipe G. Gil, has documented those everyday situations in which patients and relatives of the Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria Hospital in Tenerife, where the project takes place, are subjected to strong emotional stress, in order to identify the type of artistic process that gives the best response to each one. As a result of this process of analysis and research, it has been determined to create a physical object of a narrative nature and a podcast in which health professionals and family members participate, in order to provide information to better manage the emotions and feelings of hospitalized children.
UCM Fine Arts Library
The library of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid is more than a university library, and its staff works to make it conceived as a distinct space within the campus, associated with exchange, enjoyment and rest. Based on this identified potential, the user community set out to find formulas so that the library can be experienced in a different way. Thus, the mediator Julia Morandeira accompanies the library staff to rethink this space, in order to reflect on the future of knowledge production, the university institution and artistic research. The commission resulting from this concomitance will be the production of an artistic installation in a central place of the faculty in order to transfer the spirit of the library to other areas of the campus and which will be carried out by the Colombian artist Iván Argote during the summer of 2022.
Legacy Care
Fran Quiroga works with several neighbourhood groups in Betanzos (A Coruña) to recover the Parque del Pasatiempo, part of the legacy that the García Naveira brothers promoted in the region after their return from Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century, and which is in a state of semi-abandonment. The challenge addressed by this project is to develop a historical reading of this heritage that resignifies the memory, the identity of a people and the present. The concomitance proposes to value this leisure space through contemporary philanthropic work and an approach to participatory action research with which to give shape to citizen desire, making an artistic work that represents leisure and play as a form of learning and that is located in the new part of the park.
Find out more about this concomitance
‘Art for sustainability’, an open call for the next concomitance
Based on these four experiences that have been developed in recent years, the Concomitentes association wants to continue promoting this type of citizen participation processes in other parts of the country, which is why it has recently launched the ‘Art for sustainability‘ call, its first public call to launch a new concomitance.
‘Art for Sustainability’ is aimed at professionals in the cultural sector who have the ability to mediate between citizen and artistic groups, assuming the role of mediator of the process. This figure, the main link between the project and Concomitants, may be a cultural agent that operates independently or through a cultural or collective association. In addition, they must already be in contact with that citizen group with whom they will develop the proposal and who have a claim, idea or desire to improve their community through an artistic project.
Those groups or citizen initiatives that want to apply for the call but do not have a mediator to accompany their project, can participate in the call independently, presenting their idea and context. If selected, Concomitants will help them in the search for a mediator who fits the needs and objectives of the project.
Rules of the "Art for Sustainability" call
13 May. 2022 · PDF 2 MB
The projects that opt for this call must delve into social demands, environmental challenges or community desires, in addition to being newly created initiatives, unprecedented and specifically proposed for the call, being executed through the protocol and the ways of doing things of Concomitants. The call is endowed with a budget of € 30,000 to cover the production costs of the work as well as the fees of the mediator and the artist selected in the mediation process.
Proposals may be submitted through the online form available on the Concomitentes website until 10 June 2022 and may be accompanied by a dossier that provides further information on the initiative and the agents involved, which must not exceed 3,000 words and 10 pages in any case.
“ Art for Sustainability” Call – Concomitants
- Until June 10, 2022
- Aimed at a mediator who, together with a citizen group, contributes to responding to a pressing problem in their environment through a participatory process that results in an artistic proposal
- €30,000 for the financing of the initiative for 12 months
- More information on the Concomitants website
Image credits: courtesy of Concomitentes.
