Two exceptional juries for our 2019 calls

On March 5, and until May 16, we opened our 2019 calls for projects, with which we support innovative initiatives with a social impact in the field of Sustainable Food (SA) and Citizen Art (CA). The Food Program focused on projects related to our theme “Shared Workshops for a Sustainable Food System“, an initiative complementary to all other efforts deployed to accelerate the transition to sustainable food. For its part, the Art program focused on initiatives related to our theme “Composing knowledge to understand contemporary challenges“ to promote projects based on collaboration between artists, researchers and citizens.

A rigorous selection and evaluation process

The selection of the projects of both calls has been carried out in a rigorous pre-selection and evaluation process of several months that includes 5 steps: 1) Submission of applications; 2) Pre-selection of submitted projects, examined by a group composed of members of the Foundation and external consultants; 3) Instruction: evaluation of the strength of the organization and the project by an external consultant; 4) Selection: meeting between the members of the Jury of the call who send their recommendations to the Board of Trustees of the Foundation. 5) Final validation for support by the Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

Among the criteria for selecting projects are the relevance of their approach, their ambition and power, quality and capacity for transdisciplinary team collaboration, co-financing, quality of the project design or social and environmental impact (see all the criteria here).

A total of 152 CA initiatives and 23 AS initiatives were submitted, of which a total of 12 projects have been selected. The selection of the projects will be publicly announced on this website at the beginning of October.

Juries for a demanding selection

The selection of initiatives has been articulated through two juries, one for each call, whose members have been selected for their trajectory and recognition in their field, as well as for their diversity, both in terms of gender, experience and specialization.

The jury of “Shared Workshops for a sustainable food system“ was made up of Dionisio Ortiz, professor in the Department of Economics and Social Sciences of the Polytechnic University of Valencia; Gloria Guzmán, director and professor of the Master’s Degree in Ecological Agriculture and Livestock (UPO-UNIA) and professor of the Master’s Degree in Agroecology (UNIA-UPO-UCO); Jorge Cavero, director of CERAI; Esther Avila, an official of the Junta de Andalucía, responsible for the Organic Production program of the province of Cádiz; Enric Navarro, businessman, producer and marketer, Terra i Xufa and Mirene Begiristain, professor and permanent labour researcher at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of the Basque Country. The jury verified that the selected initiatives met the technical, economic, business, social, environmental and governance requirements demanded by the call and by the foundation and selected the best set of projects, within the framework of the budget allocated to the call, to nurture a systemic change in our society.

For Mirene Begiristian, participating in this call as a jury has been “another opportunity to take a little time and reflect on specific projects on issues that are currently key challenges and that we are investigating, to highlight: governance, the long-term economic sustainability of the projects, the leap in scale in commercialization and the feminist perspective“.

For her part, Esther Avila highlights the interest of all the projects and the need for “all of them to have a real productive base behind them“. In his opinion, it is necessary that “they are suitably advised to present projects in accordance with the requirements of the line in question“.

In the case of the jury of “Composing knowledge to understand contemporary challenges“, the projects have been assessed, bearing in mind the relevance of the approach and the rigor in the formulation of the challenge, as well as the ambition and power of the project, as well as the quality and capacity for collaboration of the transdisciplinary team. The jury was made up of: Tere Badía, Secretary General of Culture Action Europe; Chus Martínez, director of the Art Institute of the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel; Pau Alsina: PhD in Philosophy, director of the art, science and technology magazine Artnodes, promoted by the Open University of Catalonia; Jesús Carrillo, art historian, professor of History of Contemporary Art at the Autonomous University of Madrid; Josep Perelló, associate professor of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Barcelona and creator of OpenSystemsUB; and Mónica Bello, curator and art historian and director of Arts at CERN.

According to Pau Alsina, “it is remarkable to be able to observe the degree of commitment and involvement of the projects, as well as the affection and sense with which they are made, their coherence and solidity armed from the conviction of their work and function in the contexts in which they are applied”.  

For his part, Chus Martínez highlights “the general will for a change within art and culture that is committed to a different approach to nature and territory” while Jesús Carrillo highlights the maturity of the projects, “the trajectory and degree of sophistication of this type of practice in the last decade. From the projects one can recognize the great intelligence achieved about the way in which issues of a social nature can be addressed from the imagination and artistic practice.”

In conclusion, beyond the maturity of many projects, there is still much to be done, as Dionisio Ortiz comments, they must be equipped: “with management, communication, evaluation and governance tools that guarantee the viability of the initiatives. It is precisely this second aspect where the Foundation, not only through the call itself, but, more importantly, in the process of accompaniment, has the capacity to contribute.”

We invite you to download the detailed file on the profile of the members of the juries below and to discover the projects selected in both calls on our website at the beginning of October.