Workshop Grigri Pixel 2017. Call for citizen initiatives on the African continent

What is Grigri Pixel?
Grigri Pixel Madrid 2017 phase
What sort of initiatives are elegible?
How vill initiatives be selected?
How will the design and production worshp be carried out?
What obligations do participants have?
Limitation of liability
Contact information

1. WHAT IS GRIGRI PIXEL?

Grigri Pixel is a programme of residencies, meetings and workshops devoted to the creation of magical objects in urban spaces based on collaborative practices and digital manufacturing strategies from the African continent.

Grigri Pixel’s aim is to reconnect the African and European experiences of city-building, with the aim of posing common questions that can showcase synergies, points of intersection and differences in regard to practices and processes of care and maintenance in public spaces in the two territories.

The initiative operates through the creation of alliances with local spaces and communities in participating cities for the purpose of organising workshops to experiment with the collective construction of public copyright street furniture elements.

Grigri Pixel aims to build a network of initiatives from the African continent via the participation of some of their stakeholders in the production and design of street furniture for citizen spaces associated with the project. Grigri Pixel showcases and intertwines innovative and transformative initiatives to construct a network of contemporary urban spaces which enables us to identify and highlight the guidelines and codes that govern these initiatives, and their ability to create urban spaces for diverse and multicultural citizens.

After the initial phase in February-March 2016 at Medialab Prado, the experience continued in Dakar at the fifth edition of the Afropixel Festival. It will carry on in Casablanca (Morocco) in July 2017. Later this year, in October, the second edition of Grigri Pixel will be held at Medialab Prado (Madrid), featuring a production workshop organised in collaboration with Espacio Vecinal Arganzuela. The initiative has also been invited to Barcelona, where a production workshop will be organised in collaboration with HANGAR and Taula Eix Pere IV, entities which are based in the neighbourhood of Poble Nou.

2. GRIGRI PIXEL MADRID 2017 PHASE

The Grigri Pixel workshop held in Madrid in 2017 will be organised in collaboration with Espacio Vecinal Arganzuela (EVA), a citizen-run space located in the former Legazpi Fruit and Vegetable Market.

During the workshop, public copyright street furniture elements will be designed and built for the EVA civic space. Not only will these objects, in the shape of amulets or gris-gris, be able to serve a useful or functional purpose for the EVA community, but they will also act as protectors of the common space where they are located, thanks to the narrative surrounding their manufacture and the affective network they are rooted in.

The process of mediation and research that will precede and accompany the workshops will serve to discover and to map out –in a diagnostic fashion– any threatening or debilitating elements from which protection is required via the manufacture of these urban amulets.

The workshop will also serve, therefore, to make visible, to recognise and to pool together protective forces, know-how and peripheral, unconventional knowledge that can be used to invoke the shared luck offered by collectively made urban gris-gris.

The production workshop will be given by four people from African cities as well as local collaborators that answer the open call and people from the EVA collective (Espacio Vecinal Arganzuela). Throughout the workshop, support and dynamic input will be provided by Enorme Studio (Madrid), a team of architects specialising in tactical urbanism, Yago Torroja (Madrid), an electronics engineer and lecturer at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), and Blanca Callén (Barcelona), a reasearcher and professor at BAU Design College of Barcelona, who works with HANGAR (Barcelona). The activity will be coordinated by Susana Moliner (Madrid).

In addition, the Grigri Pixel workshop will be accompanied by a video-mapping residency carried out bythe artist Bay Diam de Dakar, using the open-source software MAP MAP. This residency will be organised in collaboration with the Medialab Prado group AVFloss. The video-mapping project completed during this residency will be presented at the end of the Grigri Pixel workshop, coinciding with the installation of the object made for EVA.

Grigri Pixel Madrid 2017 will be divided into the following phases:

Phase 1: Open Call for African Initiatives: 16 May to 12 June
Anyone who participates in a collective or an open culture space located on the African continent may apply to this open call. Said collective or space must be associated with transformative collaborative practices. These practices may entail the creation of furniture, infrastructure, modes of organisation, artistic practices or digital manufacturing.

Only one person per collective or space may apply to the open call. A maximum of four people will be selected in total.

The organisers will bear the cost of the selected individuals' travel from their points of origin to Madrid, as well as their accommodation and subsistence expenses throughout the duration of the production workshops to be held in Medialab Prado and Espacio Vecinal Arganzuela, from 2 to 14 October 2017, in addition to providing said individuals with a lump sum payment of 400 euros.

Phase 2: Open Call for Local Collaborators: from 4 to 23 September
Once up to 4 people from African initiatives have been selected, the decision will be published on the websites of Medialab-Prado (www.medialab-prado.es) and Grigri Pixel (http://grigripixel.com/), and an open call for local collaborators will be launched.

Phase 3: Production Workshop: from 2 to 14 October.
The production workshop will be held over two weeks. Work sessions will be held in Medialab Prado and Espacio Vecinal Arganzuela, from 4:30pm to 8pm. In the mornings, the space will be made available to participants who want to work there. Over the course of the workshop, various visits and parallel activities will be scheduled.

3. WHAT SORT OF INITIATIVES ARE ELIGIBLE?

The open call is aimed at organisations or collectives with a background in the area of open and collaborative culture and the promotion and creation of networks of collaboration and citizen innovation in their local settings.

Initiatives that apply to the open call must complete the form provided below and attach a document (with a maximum of 1,200 words) containing the following information:

-Description of the initiative that the applicant is part of
-Aims of the initiative the applicant is part of
-Communities that the initiative works with
-Objectives during the applicant's stay in Madrid

4. HOW WILL INITIATIVES BE SELECTED?

Selection Committee

The Selection Committee consists of the Grigri Pixel team, a representative from Medialab-Prado and a person from Espacio Vecinal Arganzuela, due to their knowledge of the space where the “gris-gris” will be installed.

Evaluation of Initiatives

When selecting initiatives, the Committee will evaluate:

-The originality and degree of innovativeness of these communities
-Specific objectives with a focus on social change
-Optimisation of resources, recycled materials and zero waste
-Use or development of open-source tools and licences that permit free access to processes and results
-Benefits for communities
-Relationship to the territory's needs
-Recovery of collective memory and traditional know-how

Another criterion that the Committee will take into account is the geographic and thematic diversity of the initiatives selected as a whole.

Date and place of announcement of selected ideas: 13 19 June 2017 on Medialab-Prado's website (http://medialab-prado.es).

5. HOW WILL THE DESIGN AND PRODUCTION WORKSHOP BE CARRIED OUT?

The design and production workshop will be held from 2 to 14 October 2017 and it will be hosted by Medialab Prado and Espacio Vecinal Arganzuela.

During the workshop we will foster teamwork. From the earliest phases of development and design up to the manufacturing and installation of the gris-gris, we will aim for active participation and proactive suggestions by all parties involved. To this end, the Grigri Pixel team will put forward various organisational dynamics to facilitate collective involvement which incorporates local residents from EVA who wish to join the workshop.

It will not be necessary to have expert knowledge on construction or electronics in order to participate in the workshop; said workshop will be organised on an inclusive basis, to incorporate the different know-how of the people who take part.

In addition to the production workshop, over these two weeks a programme of parallel activities will be held, such as discussions, presentations, seminars and micro-workshops open to the public, serving to complement, strengthen, broaden and disseminate the project.

The organisers of Grigri Pixel will make a digital platform available to the work groups, as an open repository where projects, documentation and the final prototypes can be stored with the aim of promoting the creation of networks and encouraging a shared space that ensures dissemination and enables replication of this material.

The workshop will be developped as well in English as in French or/and Spanish 

6. WHAT OBLIGATIONS DO PARTICIPANTS HAVE?

Participating individuals undertake to:

- Attend and actively participate in the workshop during the two weeks, as well as in related activities.
- Take care of the materials, venue and the general atmosphere during the workshop, facilitating collaborative work dynamics.
- Publicly present the projects that have been developed on the last day of the workshop.

7.  LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

• The organisers shall not be liable for any use of data or content that may be made by participants. Neither shall they be liable for copyrights or any rights held by third parties under their respective laws.
• Interpretation and Amendment of the Terms and Conditions of This Open Call
• The organisers may make any amendments or interpretations that they deem appropriate, with the aim of clarifying the circumstances that are provided for.
• All circumstances that are not provided for in this open call shall be resolved by the organisers.
• Decisions, particulars and results may not be appealed.
• Participation in this open call entails implicit acceptance of all of its terms, conditions and content.

8. CONTACT INFORMATION

Should you have any questions or require additional general information, please write to: grigripixel@medialab-prado.es

Initiatives that apply to the open call must complete the form provided below and attach a document (with a maximum of 1,200 words) containing the following information:

-Description of the initiative that the applicant is part of
-Aims of the initiative the applicant is part of
-Communities that the initiative works with
-Objectives during the applicant's stay in Madrid