interview 3
Matadero Madrid, centre of contemporary creation
Intermediae is a public organisation located within the Matadero Madrid cultural complex that has been producing socially committed artistic programming for over ten years. Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas (VIC) is an independent platform that develops projects with a collaborative approach, generating networks and alliances between different communities. In 2018, VIC and Intermediae carried out, together with other agents, Los Madriles, childhood edition, a mapping of the city of Madrid identifying neighbourhood initiatives aimed at children.
Zoe López Mediero
Head of content, Intermediae
Miguel Jaenicke
Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas
Based on your experience, what advice would you give for the construction of these policies?
Pilot initiatives that unite and nurture a conversation through play.
Re-imagine not to ‘build back stronger’ but to connect and flourish forward (by addressing existing inequalities).
Engage meaningfully avoiding tokenistic practices.
Mainstream children empowering strategies within organisations.
Co-creation, and identify quick-wins and pilots, to start realising as well.
Ask children to draw their city/neighborhood and develop a collective visual narrative map of the city.
To recover time and place for listening the children. First step for building something real
Work with concrete specifics and translate into policy later. Provide participants with arts and culture as tool/language/mirror.
Ask questions early and often
Its never too early to start (in terms of the age of the children).
Question the assumptions you make as an adult – does a map have to be 2D or even from a birds-eye view?
to bet on long-term propossals, spaces and interlocutors
Don’t underestimate the way in which children can articulate and participate in developing strategies/policies that affect their lives. And perhaps celebrate the notion and practice of a knowing playfulness and unlimited joy and the cheeky piratical for children and adults alike!
Co-creation with different target groups – the more you establish firmly, in the beginning, the bigger success in the end and every day working
Be able to become an equal playground space, due to the lack of them depending on the inequality of the city. Also, provide the space to take care of the carers in order to have time to be able to create real conversation, links and new alliances.
Focus on the fact that children (not us as adults) will likely feel the effects of the pandemic and economic austerity longer and more deeply. How do they want their own maps of the city to change to address it? How can they be empowered to remap it?
..place children within cultural organisations’ decision-making and programming practices as a condition of public funding
Empower children more. I can see this happening in other projects too.