IMMART in Alicante – before and after lockdown
Written by Sacramento Roséllo Martinez
Edited by Nicol Savinetti
This post is about IMMART research and a new collaboration. It is about the future – the exciting, enticing and inspirational future that we build every time we have an idea and go for it with our characteristic ingenuity, our thriving creativity, our deep sense of community and solidarity, our innovative networking strategies.
I wanted to clear that up from the beginning, preemptively, as a captatio benevelontiae, as a reminder even, because I am writing this post on my 24th day of confinement in Alicante and I need preemptive happiness and benevolent captivation. I have accumulated about a week more of confinement than the average person here in Spain because we were sick the week before we were ordered to stay home. We are not sick anymore, and we stay home to make sure that others don´t get sick.
It has become a tribute to the power of remembrance to ask of each generation “where were you when … Kennedy was shot? … when the Berlin Wall was taken down?” … or “when they declared the State of Emergency because of COVID19.” Well, on 6 March 2020, I was a guest speaker on the topic of Innovation and Participation at the University of Alicante in Spain. It was a Friday. The event was part of my stay as a visiting scholar at the Department of Sociology II. My old Professor Dr. Enric Bas invited me to participate in his class on “Prospectiva Participativa e Innovación Social” (Social Innovation and Participative Prospective) which is part of the Masters in Social Innovation and Dynamics of Social Change at the university, my Alma Mater.
I started the talk with a video greeting sent from Copenhagen by IMMART founder, Nicol Savinetti. As we were reaching the warmest days of March at about 25 degrees, Nicol´s watery eyes on a chilly morning in Copenhagen were almost met with envy. The core of my talk was a presentation of IMMART – our story, our projects and projection, our challenges. Above all I wanted to tell the story of how through the understanding of Networking as a practice that is dynamic, participative, and mutually enriching, we fulfill our mission of diversifying artscapes in Denmark. It was extremely fitting that the talk took place in FUTURLab, a research unit on foresight and innovation at the University of Alicante, and in ESPAi, an inspiration driven coworking space designed by Professor Bas that makes palpable the relation between participative use of space, creative thinking and innovation.
The talk was structured around three topics: migration, diversity and participation and it showcased the many ways in which IMMART addresses those as opportunities to grow and have a positive impact in the lives of migrant artists and communities in Denmark. I told them about Food Memories, and our Raining Poetry project. We discussed ephemeral art and conservation looking at Elisabetta Bosetti´s work on the conservation of street art as part of the CAPuS project; we discussed possible themes for future IMMART Dinners and talked about the importance of regional networks looking at the NEDNAC project. Students were curious and engaging. They had questions about Denmark´s approach to migration, about the field of arts and culture, about private versus public support for the arts. It was a diverse group with students from Colombia and Algeria, and from different regions of Spain. Some were artists, some wanted to work for creative industries, some wanted to be academics. In a way they were a reflection of our own network and that allowed for a fluid conversation in which I truly felt that I was learning more than I could ever think about teaching them.
I shall continue my stay in Alicante for a few more months and continue working remotely with Professor Bas at FUTURLAb designing a research methodology to study, evaluate and offer potential strategies for the diversification of the arts and culture sector in the Nordic region. I will share some news about that another time … right now, I am getting ready to clap and sing and yell a big thank you to all care workers in the front lines of this pandemic … from my balcony, of course!
Stay healthy, stay home.
All the best
Sacra
