The value of alternative formats of legitimising processes
At what point and in what way should we stop to analyse what has been achieved and enrich the participatory mediation processes with expert and external insights?
Participatory processes that bring voices together, generate encounters in social environments and provide answers to collective problems are a challenge in themselves. The dynamic of mediation that Concomitentes works on seeks this balance between art and society, a path that is as arduous as it is exciting and that poses the question: When and how to stop and analyse what has been achieved and enrich the processes with expert and external insights? How can we ask other questions? In short, how can we question ourselves and expose ourselves to new issues in order to improve, evolve or simply force ourselves to look beyond our immediate reality? The key work of mediation requires productive exchanges, in addition to those generated by citizen participation, in order to find answers, or more questions, in the professional environment that legitimise both progress and the challenges that lie ahead.
But, How can a cultural project be legitimised through the problematisation of external viewpoints? In what format, in what way, and at what time? In the course of almost three years of existence, and in order to answer these questions, we at Concomitentes have proposed the format of the Annual laboratory, which in 2020 held its first in-person edition, and in 2021 was reconfigured into an online meeting of two working days, in which a panel of experts made up of professionals belonging to the Spanish cultural breeding ground, protagonists of different foundations and cultural institutions of reference were summoned. The dynamics of these two sessions covered the reality of each of the four pilot projects currently active, through twenty minutes of presentation by the mediator and the commissioners, - how was 2020? where are they at? what are the next steps? - and forty minutes for debate and evaluation by the attendees. With this proposed structure, we managed to find an effective, useful and productive way, possible for the current reality in which we work, to not only present the progress achieved so far, but also to have the opportunity to raise the turning points that highlight the most immediate challenges of our four projects, while opening them up to their own vulnerability to be questioned and, of course, enriched and promoted in this work of joint democratisation.
On this path of development of the four pilot concomitances, it is as important to important to submit to dialogue and questioning by all local social actors with whom we collaborate, as well as the context of professionals who validate and accompany us with their notes and conclusions. Finding formats like this Laboratory helps us to share our internal life as a project, the questions and doubts that surround it, and to reconfigure ourselves in a real effort to grow hand in hand with the actors and professionals with whom we share vision, objectives and a common future.
