The "la Caixa" Foundation allocates 350,000 euros to social transformation projects through art and culture
Once again, the "la Caixa" Foundation has opened the call for applications for the "la Caixa" Art for Change program, which will remain open until June 8. The selected initiatives will be announced in October and carried out in 2021. Since 2007, this call offers grants and accompaniment to projects led by cultural institutions or artists from all over Spain that promote activities in the plastic arts, photography, music, literature and the performing arts as processes of social transformation, thereby promoting the active role of participating groups and professionals from the world of culture.
The Art for Change call "la Caixa" will encourage the promotion of participatory cultural projects that, in the face of the social and cultural crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, will have to address the new needs that will arise in society. The "la Caixa" Foundation will allocate a total budget of 350,000 euros to all the projects. In addition, the program also offers them advice and support throughout their process, as well as spaces for exchange, contrast and community building. A community of art and cultural professionals committed to society who, through their projects, explore new ways of relating to each other and to our environment.
The director of Culture and Scientific Dissemination of the "la Caixa" Foundation, Ignasi Miró, said: "In a moment as complex as the present one, with the social and cultural spheres being those most affected, the projects selected in this call will have the opportunity and the responsibility to be a way of understanding and expressing a new reality, and to create new forms and spaces for reflection, dialogue, coexistence and transformation".
More than 300 proposals from artists and cultural entities from all over Spain were submitted to the 2019 call for proposals, from which 19 projects were selected, which have performed in the provinces of Madrid, Barcelona, Lleida, Valencia, León, Cádiz, Ourense and Gipuzkoa. Most of the projects have had to suspend their activities due to the state of alarm, and are planning to start up again as the de-escalation of the confinement progresses.
The projects must meet some of the programme's objectives: the promotion of the participant's personal development through their involvement in the creative process; social cohesion and inclusion through the creation of neutral spaces for relationships, exchange and coexistence; and social regeneration of a community nature through activities that contribute to the development of neighbourhoods or social groups and reinforce concepts such as identity and self-confidence.
Art. A way to help us understand reality, as well as a way to transform it
The "la Caixa" Foundation has been a pioneer in the search for new ways of understanding culture linked to people. From this vocation, in 2007, "la Caixa" Art for Change was born, a program that combines artistic creation and personal and social transformation, which encourages participation in creative processes in different artistic disciplines to promote collaboration and inclusion of all and that is respectful of diversity and open to learning and listening to society.
Through Art for Change "la Caixa" generates creative processes led by an artist, in which groups in a situation of vulnerability or people from the same environment or neighbourhood participate with the aim of favouring processes of social transformation. By promoting these initiatives, participants are offered the opportunity to come into contact with art and culture, promoting equal conditions and opportunities and contributing to the empowerment of individuals or groups through an artistic process.