Talks on water and the community

Alejandro Alonso Sören Meschede

Conversations with María Montesino, David Prieto and Diego Cicero.

«Creating community» and «Strengthening the people's relationship with water». These are the two main desires of Llanos that we detected during the working sessions of the last months. Therefore, in our interest to find out more about these issues, we invited María Montesino, David Prieto and Diego Cicero to share their extensive experience in these areas.

On Friday 17 June we talked to María Montesino in the village square about her practice as a sociologist and livestock farmer. María is part of The Collective Nettle and is an agroecological producer at Dehesa La Lejuca, a high mountain livestock farm in the Campoo valley in Cantabria. We talked with María about possible ways of building community and how to encourage others in the village to join in the concomitance.

On Saturday 18th we hosted a double session inside the church. Diego Cicero, president of the Ria Association, which is dedicated to the recovery and creation of sustainable habitats and infrastructures in Cantabria, presented us with an example of how an associative movement has developed a new solution to the problem of pollution of aquatic ecosystems.

We closed the day with a vermouth and the intervention of David Prieto, sociologist and member of INLAND. Campo Adentro, a cultural collective that works with and through the rural world, and who spoke to us about the value of artistic work in participatory processes such as that of Llanos.

See the full photo gallery of the event here.