ORGANISATION

Artehazia Cultural Innovation, Arts and Society Association.

CHALLENGE

Gazte-Hiria / Young City is a project that seeks to convert young people into the drivers and agents of social change. It is carried out under the title “Gazte-Hiria / Young City: project to train young people as social agents for expanded action”.

RESULT

One of the results of Gazte Hiria was defining eight areas in which young people believed that they could be drivers and agents of change. A challenge was established for each area (indicating what, why, for whom and how) and this led to a second result: an artistic work called “El Bucle” (The Loop), a play in which all the issues worked on were made visible. 

All the areas of action that were identified shared a common element: the need for young people to live in a society in which diversity (of all kinds) is normalised in order to “denormalise” attitudes, forms and behaviours that set the standard for “coexistence” today. These challenges include: respect and diversity, mental health and loneliness in young people, abuse in families by very demanding parents, street violence, sexual diversity, bullying and the vindication of graffiti as an artistic expression. The play was entirely produced by the teenagers and young people who participated in the process: script, sets, choreography, music, props, lights and sound, etc.

This project won the 2021 Elkarlan prize from the Basque Government and the Social Innovation prize from the Alava Provincial Council. 

The name “El Bucle” comes from the fact that those who participated in the project indicated that, whenever they believe that a certain problem has been overcome, they come across something similar again shortly thereafter. 

PROCESS

The project carried out by the Artehazia Cultural Innovation, Arts and Society Association involved working with more than 80 people between the ages of 13 and 25. Eight working groups were formed that covered all areas of Vitoria-Gasteiz, with the aim of making these groups as diverse as possible, which means that they were made up of girls and boys of different ages, personal origin, family background, religion, race and ethnicity, culture, and so on. We did not want to conduct a project in which only people with specific social problems and integration problems were involved, but also others who were in leisure time groups or youth associations. 

Based on this premise and the structure of the groups, the project was divided into two phases in which we worked with the applied creativity methodology of Artehazia and the methodological resources of Conexiones improbables. The members of these groups defined a number of areas and challenges during the first phase and the second phase was about shaping an artistic work. In order to do this, we had a person who also works with art-based creativity methodologies with whom it was decided to stage a play with four crosscutting roles: aggressor, victim, witness and society. 

“El Bucle” was performed on 2 December in the theatre of the Aldabe Civic Centre in Vitoria-Gasteiz. 

The project had the collaboration of the IRSEAraba Institute for Social Inclusion and Conexiones improbables, in addition to the support of the ”la Caixa” Foundation, as part of its programme of Interculturality and Social Action Calls.

IMPROBABLE COLLABORATOR

Virginia Gómez, Social Educator at IRSEAraba. Álex Carrascosa.