ORGANISATION

 AmaraBai Neighbourhood Association (Asociación de Vecinos de Amara).

PROCESS

The main aim of the Association is to enliven cultural and social aspects of the neighbourhood, as well as acting as a tool to ensure the interests of collectives in Amara. The Association’s challenge was therefore to redefine and develop cultural dynamics in the San Sebastián neighbourhood.

The people who participated in the Amara Bai AuzoLab were mainly Association members. They also managed to attract the participation of Amara neighbourhood residents. Meanwhile, the “different other” chosen by the AuzoLab organisational team was Mikel Morlas, an artist living in Catalonia who has collaborated on several occasions in projects conducted by the Conexiones improbables platform. Morlas has a multidisciplinary academic background that combines the development of educational and training innovation projects in public and private organisations with his activities as an artist and curator.

The process began in September 2014 with the holding of the Methodology Session, in which consideration was given on how to tackle an innovation process, with what tools and with which attitude to confront it.

RESULT

The work process was aimed at obtaining information that would allow Amara Bai to design a cultural project for the neighbourhood. The basis of this was that the methodology had to be participatory and encourage the opening up of Amara Bai’s processes in order to broaden the scope of the Association and foster a closer connection to the people residing in the neighbourhood.

A collective mapping device was thereby created to help:

• Collect information about places, events, people and entities, as well as expectations and desires, in order to contribute to creating culture in the Amara neighbourhood.
• Identify possible cultural itineraries in the neighbourhood that reflect the diversity of its inhabitants.
• Establish a new, more creative and uninhibited way of approaching neighbours than those normally carried out by the Association. This new manner of relating will help to establish conversations with a more proactive rather than reactive attitude in order to provoke positive emotions.

Following the conclusion of the AuzoLab, the Amara Bai Neighbourhood Association began drafting a document that will contain the cornerstones of the cultural project.