Grigri Pixel: Call for African Citizen Initiatives

Proposals are invited from organisations or groups that have a proven track record in the field of collaborative and free culture for the third edition of the Grigri Pixel programme. Deadline for submission of entries is June 24, 2018.

Grigri Pixel is a programme of residencies, workshops and seminars whose purpose is to explore the practices of cultural cooperation and citizenship between Africa and Europe, through the manufacture of grigris or magic objectsintended to protect and re-enchant urban spaces through artistic and digital production practices of a collaborative and experimental nature, from both continents. We understand magic to be practices that are yet to be built, collective processes that are difficult to measure and quantify, learning that arises on the boundary of the unexpected and are able to change us by changing our most immediate environment.

This third edition of Grigri Pixel, scheduled from 15 to 28 October in Madrid, will focus on claiming the right to the city.

After a first phase in February-March 2016 in Medialab Prado, the experience moved to Dakar during the fifth edition of the Afropixel festival. In October 2017, the second edition of Grigri Pixel was held in Medialab Prado (Madrid), in collaboration with the Espacio Vecinal of Arganzuela. The initiative was also invited to Barcelona in 2017, where work took place in collusion with HANGAR and the Taula Eix Pere IV – both entities are located in the neighbourhood of Poblenou.

In this third edition, objects and diverse actions will be designed, constructed and activated. At the end of the workshop, they will also form part of a festive action by way of a pilgrimage around the immediate vicinity of Medialab Prado. This action will be carried out in the Barrio de las Letras (Literary Quarter), located in the historic and tourist centre of Madrid. Its aim will be to conjure and re-enchant these spaces in which a model of the city is being increasingly imposed that is far removed from the neighbourhood scale and from the needs of those who live in them on a daily basis.

These objects that will be made in the form of charms or grigris, will incorporate and materialise experiences and visions brought to us by the African initiatives and those of local collaborators, while they will at the same time try to make visible and propose ways to living the city as a place of encounter and collective creativity. To do this, the work process carried out during the workshop will serve to recognize, pool and hybridise those protective forces, know-hows and peripheral, neighbourhood and non-conventional knowledge, from both the invited African experiences and from the local collaborators, with which we will invoke the common luck brought on by the urban grigris that the groups have built.

Before the workshop takes place, there will be a mediation process with groups and local experiences that will lay the foundation to open a space for collaborative dialogue, exploration and analysis, together with the invited African initiatives, on those conditions, factors and actions that defend and promote the right to the city and places for creativity, and those others that hinder or threaten that right. This exercise of exchange and joint analysis of the transformations affecting the city and its places for creativity and encounters will provide the diagnosis and the conceptual basis on which to define the design and construction parameters that will guide the creation of the grigris during the workshop.

The call goes out to organisations or groups that have a proven track record in the field of collaborative and free culture and in the promotion and generation of citizen collaboration and innovation networks in their local environment.

Requirements:

GRIGRI PIXEL MADRID 2018 will be developed through the following phases:

TYPE OF INITIATIVES CAN APPLY?

• The call goes out to organisations or groups that have a proven track record in the field of collaborative and free culture and in the promotion and generation of citizen collaboration and innovation networks in their local environment.
• Initiatives applying for the call must fill in the form below and attach a document (maximum 1200 words) providing a concrete proposal that will serve as a starting point from which to design the workshop, in dialogue with the team of mentors and the other African initiatives that have been selected. This document must include the following information:

What practices and experiences endeavour to recover common spaces in your city?

In what way, from the initiative to which you belong, are you trying to create spaces for creativity and encounters in your city?

WHAT COMMITMENTS MUST THE PARTICIPANTS MAKE?

The participants undertake to:

• Participate in telematic meetings in order to collaborate with the mediation and coordination team in defining and designing the workshop.
• Attend and take active part in the workshop during the two weeks, and in the related activities.
• Take care of the materials, the space and the atmosphere during the development of the workshop, facilitating collaborative work dynamics.
• Participate in public presentations and the sharing of the developed work, both during the course of the workshop and on the final day of celebration.
• The Grigri Pixel organisation shall place a digital platform at the disposal of the working groups, as an open repository in which to store the projects, the documentation and the resulting prototypes, in order to encourage the creation of networks and promote a shared space that ensures their dissemination and allows their replicability.

How to Submit Proposals for Grigri Pixel Programme.

RECOMMENDED: Check Here for More Scholarships and Opportunities.