About

COLAB QUARTER =

COllaboration LABoratory Quarter

Colab Quarter is an European experimental project that aims to develop a model of local cultural development. It brings together 4 partners: Association CRICAO (lead partner) in Toulouse-France, City of Colomiers-France, Mescladis Association in Barcelona-Spain, and Association Misto Diya in Kiev-Ukraine; and a third country : Japan and the Garaman Hall on Okinawa Island. The partners came together on common values: the belief in cultural development based on a Bottom up dynamic, adherence to cultural rights*, the reference to creolisation**. For 2 years, the partners will meet in Brigade (European Brigade for Cultural Intervention) and intervene in the territories of each partner. Together, they will share their experiences and know-how to create a new mode of intervention. The joint actions are based on 3 artistic media : Culinary design, photography and architecture. Each of these media are used in a collaborative way, with the actors of neighbourhoods (inhabitants, shopkeepers, associations etc.) and will lead to artistic actions linked to the territories. Through these interventions we want to stimulate dynamics that will be seized by the actors of the neighborhoods, to break down the borders between “those who know” and others, making different sectors (public / private / administration / association / inhabitants / structures…) work together for an appropriation of the neighborhoods by all and a valorization of the creativity of each one.

* Cultural rights aim to guarantee everyone the freedom to live his or her cultural identity, understood as “the set of cultural references by which a person, alone or in common, defines, establishes, communicates and intends to be recognized in his or her dignity”. ** Creolisation is the bringing together of several cultures or at least several elements of distinct cultures in one part of the world, resulting in a new fact, totally unpredictable in relation to the sum or simple synthesis of these elements.