Goodbye 2023... and happy 2024!
We look back on the main milestones of 2023 and thank all of you who have joined us.
AND WE COME TO THE END OF 2023...
Although the year has flown by, in these twelve months at Concomitentes, a non-profit organisation that produces works of art based on social demands, we have continued to grow, overcoming challenges, and today, looking back far enough, but only to gain momentum, we share some of the main milestones that have made up the stones of this road we are walking together...
... a sustained path in the mediation, as the cornerstone of our practice; the citizen participation, The listening and negotiation, but, above all, with the art and the culture as a flagship to meet the sustainable challenges of our society.
And why not: Let's start the year dancing in Cerezales
Collective creation is at the heart of what we do: Society and nature are full of mechanisms that teach ways of how to live together. Under this premise, we kicked off 2023 with a party at the Cerezales Foundation (León) around ‘How to make together’, an event that emphasised the power of creating together.
The first steps of the European project were taken
The project ‘Art Living Lab for Sustainability‘funded by the Creative Europe programme, began in the Montes de Couso (Pontevedra, Galicia) with ‘Tierra Común’ (Common Land): a mediation process to respond to the wishes of the community members and which, since the end of this year, counts on the artist Asunción Molinos Gordo for the production of a contemporary work based on nature.
Five candles for half a decade of Concomitentes
The story of Concomitentes began in 2018 in Madrid, Barcelona, Betanzos (Galicia) and Tenerife. The challenge, to respond to citizen desires through art and culture. Watering conversations, making processes more complex, in short, boosting citizen agency while creating art. Today, five years later, Concomitentes has two of these initial projects completed, another five in artistic production and one just started in 2023.
Concomitentes arrives in Extremadura with ‘Non plus ultra’.’
The second edition of the public call ‘Youth Art for Sustainability‘selected the eighth Concomitentes project: ‘Non plus ultra’ which brings together a group of young people from the south of Badajoz to think about (and reverse) the links, rites and imaginaries of a fascist nature that impose a single way of relating to the land. Under the guidance of the mediator, Jose Iglesias García-Arenal, the mediation has taken its first steps at the end of this year and will culminate in 2025.
We also think about the power of cultural mediation in a European perspective.
With mediation at the heart of Concomitentes' practice, 2023 saw the launch of the cultural mediation platform in Europe: In Between, presented at a public event on 30 November at the Teatro Central in Seville, The aim is to position this practice as a fundamental pillar in cultural public policies, as well as to create collective thinking as a way of strengthening living democracies.
The Concomitents' Board of Trustees is born to do more and do it better
Seven leading women in the world of art, culture and social innovation at national and European level: this year, governance and decision-making were also placed at the centre of the project's strategy with the appointment of the board of trustees. A body that has become the driving force of the association and which has recently been joined by Selina Blasco, lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the UCM.
... AND 2024 ARRIVES LOADED
And (in addition) to this year full of meetings and citizens' wishes, there is still another new year ahead that is full of new milestones: five inaugurations of works with the culmination of the participatory art projects Biblioteca Bellas Artes UCM, Legado Cuidado, Aguas Vivas, Narrativas Solares and Tierra Común.
The start of two more participatory artistic processes; and the launch of the third edition of the public call for the launch of a third project to address a sustainable challenge in the national territory.
They will also be the launches of the publication ‘Dancing Diversity’ which will bring together the lessons learned from the Diversorium project, which seeks to create a meeting and celebration space in society for people with functional diversity; and from the publication ‘Sustainability Governance’ with signatures by Yayo Herrero, Michael Marder and Elisa Aaltola.
The first edition of the school for mediators will also be held, ‘Mediation Academy’, We will be providing more information about it in the near future.
Thank you for this year and, above all, for continuing to make art together and especially to our founding patron, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, which once again supports us.
