Purpose:
The Espai Avinyó aims to be a dialogue and a meeting space for promoting reflection on what cultural diversity implies in every sphere of society and on the challenges involved in exchanging knowledge from various parts of the world. Its goal is to boost the principles of interculturality by raising the profiles of and lending recognition to the various forms of cultural expression found in Barcelona.
Stimulus/Rationale:
The Espai Avinyó was launched under the first BCN Interculturality Programme back in 2011. It promotes the recognition and knowledge of cultural diversity, through cultural-activity programmes in order to improve interculturality and develop a culture of openness and citizens’ rights and diversity.
Espai Avinyó sends a clear message: cultural diversity should be perceived as an enriching element that strengthens connections, foster creativity, highlighting the values of equality and mutual respect.
Process:
Through a wide range of artistic expressions and formats for the exchange of knowledge, Espai Avinyó offers a multidisciplinary, territorialised, open, free and itinerant programme on a quarterly basis. These activities come in several formats (talks, itineraries, cine forum, workshops, artistic exhibitions etc.). The topics covered include migrations, religious pluralism, Roma, Racism, Health, Feminism, Education, Islamophobia, Youth, Sexual Diversity, etc.
The Espai Avinyó also creates exhibitions with an intercultural approach that are at the disposal of the city’s facilities and associations which aim to work, through the exhibition, on the intercultural perspective.
Espai Avinyó is also a loudspeaker for the practices, projects and initiatives of artists, collectives, community associations, cultural, educational, religious and linguistic institutions and facilities that promote recognition, visibility and respect for cultural diversity in the city.
The Espai Avinyó regularly collaborates with Barcelona’s civil society under the joint activities programme with the city's social organisations competent for interculturality. It has also collaborated with the city’s institutional cultural spaces, such as the Barcelona Institute of Culture. Additionally, many activities are carried out in partnership with the Barcelona Anti-Rumours Strategy and/or the Barcelona Anti-Rumours Network. These connections foster awareness on cultural diversity, harmony and living together, discouraging stereotypes. Equally important, activities have also the aim of promoting popular and contemporary Catalan culture, stressing the importance of the city’s historical and cultural heritage.
Over the years, Espai Avinyó has gradually enlarged its scope and has become an active agent in supporting the mainstreaming of the intercultural perspective in artistic and cultural entities and institutions in the city. It organises training and advise City Council staff on intercultural programming and intercultural perspective.
Impact:
The quality and impact of the Espai Avinyó's activities are continually assessed through forms that are given out to attendees. These forms are not only aimed at assessing the public's level of satisfaction with the activities but also the extent to which these have proved useful for achieving the Espai Avinyó's goals, as an intercultural project. In this regard, in 2021 a total of 33 activities have been offered and 730 people participated. On every quarterly programming, a set of activities is presented seeking balance between artistic languages and formats (cycles, large and small format activities) and main axes.
Under the logic of content generation, from 2020 onwards, a special effort has been made to systematise the reflections and generation of knowledge produced in the different activities. In this way, the dissemination contents after the activities has been consolidated and has been made available at the website resources and reports section.
We worked in an interconnected process of territorialised programming through strategic partnerships and the diversification of audiences, as well as the broadening of themes and formats. In terms of cross-cutting strategies, it is worth highlighting the great reception and impact of the Museums (Im)possible cycle in the cultural sphere of the city. The level of attendance and the evaluations of the attendees reaffirmed the need for a space for reflection and exchange on the various issues related to artistic and cultural management of the city, as well as with the museographic language.
In addition, actively participating in the World Capital of Sustainable Food 2021, promoted by the Department of Cooperative, Social and Solidarity Economy of the Barcelona City Council, made it possible to open workshops and intercultural debates in an area that had not been worked on so far, and which involved talking about the colonial logics in relation to the production, distribution and consumption of food, the relationship between the migration regulations and the food industry, as well as the social and solidarity economy initiatives led by groups of migrants in the city, which have at their core the concern for sustainable food and, at the same time, to ensure dignified working conditions, among others.
Lastly, the support to the technical equipment initiatives of local cultural centres generated the possibility of applying new training methodologies for the mainstreaming of intercultural bases in collaborative workshops on practical cases. This new approach deepened the theoretical reflection and helped the understanding the intercultural perspective applied to the field of cultural management.
In relation to the territorialisation are the strategic alliances and the diversification of audiences with different agents in the cultural, artistic, educational and community spheres. This year it is worth highlighting the various types of groups, radios and several areas of the City Council of Barcelona (such as the Office of Religious Affairs, with which new circuits and flows of internal and external communication have been defined to deepen the approaches to religious pluralism). In line with the Barcelona Interculturality Plan and the priority themes of the Department of Intercultural Dialogue and Religious Pluralism, the work on plurilingualism has been amplified through various programmes aimed at different audiences and at the Catalan students of the Centre for Linguistic Normalisation.
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