ORGANISATION

Berreibar is an organisation of people working for years in Eibar (Gipuzkoa) whose focus has been on the disused industrial spaces located in rundown areas of the city.

CHALLENGE

Members of the Berreibar collective applied to the open call made by DSS2016EU to conduct an AuzoLab in the autumn of 2014. The challenge they defined was the creation of a community of users, groups, collectives, owners and administrators to reconvert these spaces and gradually regenerate the affected sites.

IMPROBABLE COLLABORATOR

Participants in the Berreibar AuzoLab were mainly group members, although the collaboration of other local people in the town was also encouraged. In addition, the Maraka collective, comprising Irune Jiménez and Eider Aldape, was chosen as the “different other” to conduct the Berreibar AuzoLab. Maraka’s work is carried out based on design thinking principles. In 2012 it conducted research entitled “Birmoldatu”, which consisted of collecting international initiatives suggesting new uses for artistic, creative or cultural practices in empty spaces, analysing the Berreibar project at the time.

RESULTS

The Berreibar AuzoLab was conducted over two phases:

• The first involved identifying the agents that may share common interests with Berreibar and also commencing work on the creation of community, imagining interactions and sharing this desire for community with other agents in Eibar.
• The second phase consisted of presenting to the public the desire to create a network, a series of agents residing in Eibar. Their opinions were sounded out, as well as their desire to be involved in the Berreibar project.

The actions carried out during the AuzoLab revealed the priority of creating a core group and adapting the network to the needs of its promoters.

FUTURE

Berreibar will work with the results obtained in the AuzoLab in order to create a more cohesive community that also includes other people and groups working with similar interests to those of Berreibar.