Concomitentes celebrates five years

Today the project has seven mediation processes, two of which have been completed.

The story is as intense as it is exciting. Five years ago, Concomitentes started up in Spain to activate four pilot projects in Madrid with the UCM Fine Arts Library, a project to reconfigure the uses of this space and adapt it to its new needs, thanks to the work of the mediator Julia Morandeira and the university community; Diversorium, The project, which with Veronica Valentini generates spaces of enjoyment and inclusion in the city of Barcelona, without letting go of the guidance of the Office for Independent Living (OVI); Legacy Care, The project, which rethinks the heritage of Betanzos (Galicia), with the mediator Fran Quiroga; and, in Tenerife, Felipe G. Gil, who, with Paediatric ICU, The aim of the project is to help to manage the emotional support of paediatric patients through art and culture, by a group of nurses from the Hospital Universitario Nuestra Señora de Candelaria.

With these seeds, with these desires of citizens from urban and rural, university or health, but above all, social and human contexts, mediation began to water the conversations, to strengthen listening, to make these initial needs grow, and also to make them more complex, to culminate in a way of generating the agency of communities through art. Responses that, although they do not provide an absolute solution, have helped to make art by creating art and, conversely, to make society by creating art.

Because one cannot be understood without the other. Thus, we saw last year how Diversorium brought the whole of Barcelona to its feet, opening the Bam Festival. in the Mercé festivities or how UCI Paediatrics presented its three artworks - an illustrated story, a podcast, and a mobile library - last June in Madrid. In the Bellas Artes library, Iván Argote is in full production and the work will see the light before the end of 2023. In Betanzos, the process is still underway, and the artist Carme Nogueira finalises the installation of a work that rethinks the territory and weaves new links with the community.

Along the way, as in everything else, the seeds germinated and the processes multiplied. While in 2021, Concomitentes launched its first book, ‘Mutations in public space’to rethink the reconfiguration of the places where we live in the aftermath of the pandemic; in 2022, the ‘Living Waters’In April, Concomitentes launched its first public call for proposals, and the selected project was ‘...', with the Cantabrian community of Llanos de Penagos, together with the mediators Sören Meschede and Alejandro Alonso; and, in April, Concomitentes launched its first public call for proposals, and the selected project was '...'.‘Solar Narratives’in León, together with the Plataforma para la Defensa de la Sobarriba as commissioners, and Alfredo Escapa as mediator. Today both projects are in the process of selecting their artist and are starting the artistic production to inaugurate the work next spring.

2022 ended the year with two more surprises: in November, Concomitentes became one of the beneficiaries of the call for proposals for Grants for European Cooperation Projects (2022) within the European Commission's Creative Europe Programme 2021-2027, with the project ‘Art Living Lab for Sustainability’, which promotes stable alliances between European actors to facilitate innovation ecosystems and achieve artistic solutions based on nature, activating three projects in Galicia, with ‘Art Living Lab for Sustainability'.‘Common Land’France and Belgium. In addition, Concomitentes held its first public conferences in October at the Botanical Garden in Madrid, with the Sustainability Governance Day.

And the road continues, with the deadline for the submission of projects for the second public call for proposals having closed just a week ago, Youth Art for Sustainability, which will bring an eighth Concomitentes project in Spain, to be announced in mid-October.

Steps, new challenges, cycles that are opening, inaugurations with a still unknown impact for the communities, and always giving thanks to those who are accompanying us to make it possible: The Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, as founding patron and main strategic ally of the project; to which the Santander Foundation, the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union and the CajaCanarias Foundation, among others, have been added. 

To them, to the donors, to the tenacious mediators who are the heart of Concomitentes, to the large network of collaborators, to the more than 3,000 beneficiaries, to those who simply follow and support the project with their voice, thank you!

Here's to another five years of making art together.