On October 16th and 17th, the working days of the FARO Project in Madrid took place, organized by MIRCo-UAM in collaboration with the CIVIS office in the Universidad Autónoma.
The FARO Project in an Open Lab of the CIVIS University Alliance, in which the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, the Roma-La Sapienza University, the Aix-Marseille University and the University of Bucharest participate.
The CIVIS Open Labs works as project incubators within the alliance, oriented towards connecting ideas and local problems with education, research and innovations developed to tackle global, social challenges from a collaborative, innovative perspective.
In this case, the goal was to deepen the principles contained in the Council of Europe’s FARO Convention (2005), that promotes the recognition of the cultural patrimony as part of cultural rights. More concretely, the goal was to develop tools that allow to study the contributions of cultural minorities to the material and immaterial patrimony and how languages, key aspects of the immaterial patrimony, manifests in the space and in intercultural relations.
In the working sessions, MIRCo presented previous experiences with relevant methodologies for this project. Next, we tested a cutting-edge adaptation of the Voces-Territorios app that allows for the geolocation of cultural testimonies of interest for the project.
The beta version of the FARO app was tested in a cultural walk around the Islamic reminders of Madrid, organized by the Centro de Estudios sobre el Madrid Islámico. This walk allowed us to see how Islamic reminders are integrated in the city, or destroyed during the years. The app could also be tested during a historic and cultural walk in Lavapiés, where we could see the urban transformations and how different languages in the city are integrated in the urban landscape (in shops, signs, terrace conversations, etc.).
The final session conducted at La Corrala was conducted to debate proposals to make the app better, reinforcing its relation with the FARO convention, and to plan the next steps of the project. The next encounter will be held in the Roma-La Sapienza University.
These days have been used to reinforce the relations of the project team and to continue pursuing the goals of the project. Not only was it concretized and the project perfected, but significant steps were taking to enrich it.
