Bonds in Motion: Performing arts intergenerational family at Raval, Barcelona

Abstract

“Vincles en Moviment” [Bonds in Motion] is an artistic community-based research project that originated as a community-based residency in performing arts at Drassanes Civic Centre (CCD) (Raval) in October 2022. With the funding support of the Catalonia Culture Department, OSIC (CLT019/22/000216), we could gather a research interdisciplinary team of five members, experts in heritage and artistic community practices, attention to diversity through scenic arts, choreography and psychology, dance, landscape and experimental geographies, acting, dramaturgy and theatre, and audio-visuals studies. Fourteen participants, aged between 16 to 84 years old, who lived or studied in the Raval neighbourhood (Barcelona), joined the residency. Half of them were migrants from Ecuador, Peru, Colombia or Ukraine and national citizens born in other Spanish autonomous communities. During three months, we experimented with interdisciplinary artistic processes, thus contemplating visual and plastic arts, movement, dance, theatre, performance and "site-specific" indoor and outdoor interventions. All the working sessions were recorded, and on January 2023, a video documentary (40’) was released in a public premiere at CCD, with a round table public discussion. We have witnessed the long-lasting impact of this artistic project on the community at Raval neighbourhood, with the transformation of the group of participants into the “Vincles” Family, active, self-organising activities after the project was finished. In January 2024, the group challenged two research team members to co-produce a community intergenerational theatre play with them. For five months, we all co-created “Temps al Temps” [Time to Time] intergenerational spectacle that premiered in May 2024.