The MIRCo-UAM research center is pleased to present to the public the app Voces-Territorios, available via free download on Android and iOS.
This app has been developed under the project Contested Territories (funded by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grants, reference no.873082). Its goal under such framework was creating a collective archive that enables, on one hand, the recollection of the various struggles for the territory this project aims to tackle—from resisting extractivism to the processes of land despossesion, among others—and, on the other, to share these findings among the community.
This project is framed under the principles of open science and citizen science. Citizens’ science is an strategy that facilitates the active engagement of the citizenry in the process of creating knowledge.
That is how Voces-Territorios was born; a platform, created with an accessible and simple display, with which the communities share their experiences in a collaborative map. In this map one’s posts are gathered, but also the posts from all the users’ community. The answers to every post and the struggles they are framed into are also recorded. Posts can be in different formats (pictures, audios, videos or texts) so they can contain everyone’s testimony on every single struggle. Besides, every post is categorized with information (what that struggle is, what the context is, etc.). Then, those categories can be seen in the map, as well as serve as filters.
Voces-Territorios allows for the creation of sub-projects that share the same purpose as citizen science. This way, the platform serves as a methodological tool to engage citizens in researching different fields. For instance, urban studies can gain from using the app, since it allows lo locate and classify different urban processes (gentrification, turistification, etc.). Equally, in ethnographic anthropological studies, Voces-Territorios can be used to gather the cultural experiences of minorities or to strengthen democratic memory initiatives, aiming at recovering the marks of repression and resistance during dictatorships.
This way, he essential component of the platform is its participative, collective character. Submissions made until now, under different research projects, have shown different ongoing processes in different cities and have highlighted the usefulness of the map since results would be analyzed collectively. At the same time, these experiences have opened the door to new debates and encounters among the users. It is a tool to shed light over these struggles, to share information and to create solidarity networks, coming from needs, visions and practices that belong to every community,
Now that this app is open to be downloaded by the public, its uses may broaden, exploring all the possibilities it offers. You can download it for free in Google Play and App Store. You can also explore our webpage, vocesterritorios.com, where we will be posting news and uploading new and useful content.
