This call addresses citizens’ initiatives of creative experimentation of African origin, to participate in the international workshop which will be held in Medialab Prado from 14 to 27 October 2019, within the framework of the fourth edition of the Grigri Pixel programme.

Grigri Pixel is a programme that is promoted by Grigri Cultural Projects with the support of Medialab Prado and ACERCA Programme of Spanish Cooperation whose purpose is to explore the practices of cultural cooperation and citizenship between Africa and Europe through the manufacture of grigris or magic objects intended to re-enchant urban spaces through artistic and digital production practices of a collaborative and experimental nature, from both continents. We understand magic to be practices that are yet to be built, collective processes that are difficult to measure and quantify, learning that arises on the boundary of the unexpected and is able to change us by changing our most immediate environment.

This programme proposes spaces of collective creation in response to the need for other stories and other modes of intervening in the city from the experience of invited and often overlooked initiatives from the continent of Africa, just 14.4 km from our own continent.

The aim of Grigri Pixel is to connect and link these experiences of creating cities, between Europe and Africa in order to raise common questions capable of visualizing synergies, points of encounter or differences in the practices and processes of re-enchantment for living together within the city.

In this way, this initiative seeks to build alliances with spaces, projects and local communities in the cities taking part, with which it cooperates in the collective construction of grigris , protective objects that materialize and symbolize the creative potential of the group in the city in the face of processes that are homogenising and commodifying their common spaces.

Grigri Pixel seeks to weave a network of contemporary and transformative urban initiatives and practices that facilitate the exchange and learning of different knowledge and strategies in the creation of common urban spaces for a diverse and multicultural citizenship.

The fourth edition of Grigri Pixel will take place in 2019 with a programme that revolves around the theme of hospitality and has two main objectives: on the one hand, to reflect on the power that arises in a territory when it is capable of opening itself up, facilitating encounters and giving rise to that which is apparently different, foreign and strange; and on the other hand, to highlight how these processes are able to mutually enrich the people who participate in them, broadening their horizons and common imaginaries.

You can send your proposal in up to 30 June 2019.

Date and place of publication of the selection of ideas: 5 July 2019 on the Medialab Prado website.

Steps to submit your proposal:
Read the Bases for the call here

—> Send your project proposal by clicking below in “Send My Proposal” 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 facilitate hospitality and welcome in your city?
• In what way, from the initiative to which you belong, are you trying to create spaces for “neighbourhood” meetings and relationships between people of different origins?
• What local learning and experiences, in your city, do you think might be applicable and could contribute to making Madrid a more hospitable city?
• If you had to propose an action and/or object to materialize any of these concepts (hospitality, the idea of “us”, the common identity of “neighbours”…) Which one or ones would you choose? If you need to incorporate an image, attach it to the attached file box.

More information: www.grigripixel.com