This call launches the third edition of Grigri Pixel, scheduled from 15 to 28 October in Madrid, and which will focus on claiming the right to the city.

After a first phase in February-March 2016 in Medialab Prado, the experience moved to Dakar during the fith edition of the Afropixel festival. In October 2017, the second edition of Grigri Pixel was held in Medialab Prado (Madrid), in collaboration with the Espacio Vecinal of Arganzuela. The initiative was also invited to Barcelona in 2017, where work took place in collusion with HANGAR and the Taula Eix Pere IV – both entities are located in the neighbourhood of Poblenou.

In this third edition, objects and diverse actions will be designed, constructed and activated. At the end of the workshop, they will also form part of a festive action by way of a pilgrimage around the immediate vicinity of Medialab Prado. This action will be carried out in the Barrio de las Letras (Literary Quarter), located in the historic and tourist centre of Madrid. Its aim will be to conjure and re-enchant these spaces in which a model of the city is being increasingly imposed that is far removed from the neighbourhood scale and from the needs of those who live in them on a daily basis.

These objects that will be made in the form of charms or grigris, will incorporate and materialise experiences and visions brought to us by the African initiatives and those of local collaborators, while they will at the same time try to make visible and propose ways to living the city as a place of encounter and collective creativity. To do this, the work process carried out during the workshop will serve to recognize, pool and hybridise those protective forces, know-hows and peripheral, neighbourhood and non-conventional knowledge, from both the invited African experiences and from the local collaborators, with which we will invoke the common luck brought on by the urban grigris that the groups have built.

Before the workshop takes place, there will be a mediation process with groups and local experiences that will lay the foundation to open a space for collaborative dialogue, exploration and analysis, together with the invited African initiatives, on those conditions, factors and actions that defend and promote the right to the city and places for creativity, and those others that hinder or threaten that right. This exercise of exchange and joint analysis of the transformations a ecting the city and its places for creativity and encounters will provide the diagnosis and the conceptual basis on which to de ne the design and construction parameters that will guide the creation of the grigris during the workshop.

The sessions on the design, production and activation of the grigris that make up the workshop will be developed from the four proposed African initiatives, selected through this call, together with the local collaborators who respond to the call, accompanied and energised by Blanca Callén (Barcelona), a researcher and lecturer at the BAU, University Design Center; Yago Torroja (Madrid), an electronics engineer and professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, and Enorme Studio (Madrid), an electronics engineer and professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, and Enorme Studio (Madrid), a design rm that produces experimental urban interventions. The activity is coordinated by Susana Moliner (Madrid), a curator and cultural producer.

In addition, these sessions will be accompanied by a creation residency carried out by Lalya Gaye, an artist who works with digital media and a researcher in the design of interactions.

GRIGRI PIXEL MADRID 2018 will be developed through the following phases:

Phase 1: Call for African initiatives: 21 May to 24 June 2018.

Anyone who participates in citizens’, cultural, and artistic initiatives on the African continent can apply for the call. This initiative, group or space should be related to transformative, collaborative and artistic practices, particularly aimed at defending the right to the city and to common urban spaces. These practices may have to do with intervention and action in urban spaces, the establishment of forms and methodologies of collaborative organization, the development of artistic, cultural, design or digital manufacturing practices that re ect on collective creation, or work on recovering or updating artisan crafts.

Only one person may apply per group or space, by lling in the form you will nd in this call. In total, a maximum of four people will be selected.

The organization will look after the travel of those selected from their place of origin to Madrid, as well as their accommodation and living expenses for the duration of the production workshops that will be held in Medialab Prado from 15 to 28 October 2018. Additionally, each person will receive a fee of 500 euros.

Phase 2: Call for local collaborators: from 4 to 23 September 2018.

Once the African initiatives have been selected, the resolution of the call will be published in the Medialab Prado and Grigri Pixel web pages, and the call for local collaborators will be opened.

Phase 3: Design, production and activation workshop: from 15 to 28 October 2018.

The workshop will last for two weeks. The working sessions will be held at Medialab Prado from 4.30 to 8pm. In the mornings, the Medialab Prado space will be available for those participants who want to work there. Throughout the workshop, several visits and parallel activities will be scheduled.

Prior to the workshop, the Grigri Pixel mediation and coordination team will work in a collaborative and remote way with the four people selected, to design and de ne the sessions and activities that will make up the workshop.

WHAT TYPE OF INITIATIVES CAN APPLY?

The call goes out to organisations or groups that have a proven track record in the eld of collaborative and free culture and in the promotion and generation of citizen collaboration and innovation networks in their local environment.

Initiatives applying for the call must ll in the form below and attach a document (maximum 1200 words) providing a concrete proposal that will serve as a starting point from which to design the workshop, in dialogue with the team of mentors and the other African initiatives that have been selected. This document must include the following information:

What practices and experiences endeavour to recover common spaces in your city?
In what way, from the initiative to which you belong, are you trying to create spaces for creativity and encounters in your city?

What local learning and experiences, in your city, do you think might be applicable and could contribute to the right to the city in Madrid?
If you had to propose an action and/or object that would materialize these ideas in the public space, what would they be? If you need to incorporate an image, attach it to the attached le box.

HOW ARE THE INITIATIVES GOING TO BE SELECTED?

Selection Committee

The selection committee consists of the Grigri Pixel team and a representative from Medialab Prado.

Assessment of the initiatives

The initiatives will be selected on the basis of the initiative in which the selected person collaborates, and the proposal submitted. In this way, the committee will assess:

With regard to the initiative:
- Speci c objectives with a focus on social change. – Bene ts generated in the communities involved.
- Relationship with the needs of the territory.

With regard to the proposal submitted:
- Originality and degree of innovation of the proposal.
- Coherence between the proposal and the problem or threat detected.
- Optimization of resources, recycling or recirculation of materials and zero waste.
- Use or development of open source tools and licenses that provide free access to the processes and results.
- Recovery of collective memory and traditional knowledge.

Another criterion that the Committee will take into account, will be that of thematic and geographical diversity in the selection of the initiatives as a whole.

Date and place of publication of the selection of ideas: 23 June 2018 on the Medialab Prado website.

HOW WILL THE DESIGN AND PRODUCTION WORKSHOP BE RUN?

The design and production workshop will take place between 15 and 28 October 2018 and will be hosted by Medialab Prado.

Team work will be encouraged during the workshop: the active and propositive participation of all those involved will be sought from the early stages of conception and design to the manufacture and activation of the grigris. To this end, the Grigri Pixel team will propose di erent organizational dynamics to facilitate a collective involvement.

No speci c technical knowledge is required to participate in the workshop. The workshop will be organized in an inclusive way to incorporate the various skills of the participants.

In addition to the production workshop, a programme of parallel activities will be unfurled during these two weeks, featuring lectures, presentations, seminars and micro-workshops open to the general public, that serve to complement, strengthen, expand and disseminate the project.

The workshop will be held in both English and French and/or Spanish.

WHAT COMMITMENTS MUST THE PARTICIPANTS MAKE?

The participants undertake to:

– Participate in telematic meetings in order to collaborate with the mediation and coordination team in de ning and designing the workshop.
- Attend and take active part in the workshop during the two weeks, and in the related activities. – Take care of the materials, the space and the atmosphere during the development of the workshop, facilitating collaborative work dynamics.

– Participate in public presentations and the sharing of the developed work, both during the course of the workshop and on the nal day of celebration.

The Grigri Pixel organisation shall place a digital platform at the disposal of the working groups, as an open repository in which to store the projects, the documentation and the resulting prototypes, in order to encourage the creation of networks and promote a shared space that ensures their dissemination and allows their replicability.

AUTHORSHIP AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

The participants in the call whose projects (texts, photos, or videos) are selected must license the works under a license that allows Medialab Prado to publish them in any physical or digital format with the maximum legally permitted territorial and temporal scope, allowing them to be transformed to facilitate the dissemination or distribution of the works.

Once the works have been selected and within the course of the activity, the author is required to allow any other participants in the convened activity to use their work as a basis for other derivative works.

CONTACT

For any general doubts or queries, please write to: grigripixel@gmail.com

More information on the Grigri Pixel website www.grigripixel.com