There are many ways of thinking and building a city, and the programme Imagina Madrid aims to offer one that’s different. Based on residents’ desires and dreams as well as proposals by artists and creators, we want to imagine another city.

What is it?

Imagina Madrid is a program of public and community art, developed at Intermediæ-Matadero and promoted by the Culture Department of the City Council, which explores new forms of intervention in the urban space through processes of collective creation between citizens and the city’s artistic fabric.

In this first open call, the program has intervened in nine places of the city through the proposals of nine teams of artists and creators. The resulting projects have brought about new ways of perceiving, narrating and inhabiting these urban landscapes of daily life, without forgetting their history and identity.

To contextualise and design the projects that have been carried out, the program collected,throughout the summer 2017, experiences, emotional connections and memories that residents possess with respect to the proposed places. The imaginaries are availablein the projects pages in Spanish here.

Following a process-based, collaborative and multidisciplinary methodology, the projects conforming Imagina are the result of an intense joint work effort between local communities and artists that began in January 2018 at the co-design meetings. The results, visible between September 2018 and April 2019, are an example of what can happen when we invite creators not only imagine but also to transform the territory they inhabit

 

Participation

New forms of intervening in the city, in which citizen know-how and expert knowledge strike up a dialogue.

Collaboration

Processes that interconnect both the various departments of the City Council and public and private entities which “think” the city from a new perspective.

Multidisciplinarity

Transformations of the city envisioned based on contemporary artistic practices as well as knowledge of architecture and social urbanism.

Descentrality

Interventions in peripheral districts that support a new polycentric and rebalanced city model.

Shared responsability

Projects that explore new forms of shared management which enable their sustainability.

How do I participate?

If you are a creator, an artist of a professional interested in exploring new ways of envision, inhabit and build the public space, and you want to carry out interventions in the public spaces selected in this edition of Imagina Madrid, the ideas submission period starts the 4th of October.

Given the collaborative nature of the program Imagina Madrid the participation of the creators or team of creators is conditioned by their fluency in Spanish language, in order to enable their proximity to the sites of intervention, the neighbourhoods and associative networks. Thus, the information concerning the application and the sites of information is available in Spanish in this Web Site in order to allow you to locate and contextualise the ideas presented to the open call.