From October 16 to 18, 2020, the Territory(ies), Community(ies) and Artistic Practices Symposium was held. This itinerant event took place across La Central del Circ, L’Ateneu Popular 9 Barris, and Graner, aiming to reflect on community-based artistic creation from the perspectives of circus arts, dance, movement, and live arts. The proposal arose from the shared need of the three Creation Factories to position knowledge and practice around these types of creations, with the intention to do so jointly, in collaboration, and by engaging individuals (whether artists or not) who wanted to take part in the reflection. The Symposium was part of the Biennial of Thought, thus becoming the first meeting point between the three Creation Factories—three venues founded at different times and in different territories, where various arts are developed, each maintaining distinct connections with its contexts.
At Graner, more specifically, we started with the following questions: How do we move from participation in an artistic project to collaboration between communities? How can we rethink the idea of territory collectively so that it becomes a common space? How can we work with artistic bodies to generate relational contexts of experience and cultural practice? How do we shift from social return to social impact? Where does the need for a creation factory emerge in order to foster collective actions with and for the community?
We worked through the following activations:
- “Behind the Mountain”: is the performance piece that builds on the work *A quatre potes* by the nyamnyam collective, based on a project with the La Marina neighborhood. Together with Imma Solé from the Montjuïc Institute and various families from the neighborhood, the nyamnyam collective has traversed the area, and with the collaboration of Dianelis Diéguez, Pedro Pineda, Salva Sanchís, and Anna Rovira, they created this performance device: a space for free interaction between the audience and creators, exploring the appearance of everyday life in the performative act.
- Panel “Live Arts” with nyamnyam and Imma Solé: Based on a concept that refers to processes within and between communities, this session proposes not a table, but workbenches. Drawing from the device presented in *Behind the Mountain*, a dialogue will be opened, sharing in practice how ‘live arts’ create spaces of action and reflection.
- Panel “Expanded Scene” with Dianelis Diéguez, Aurora Bauzà, and Pere Jou: This discussion will start from the need to bring more experimental and genuine practices into conventional spaces. The notion of the *expanded scene* is to place at the center things that are not typically centered. To do so, a new glossary will be developed to redefine these concepts.
- Panel “Relational Practices” with Roger Bernat: Understanding territory as a socially constructed space traversed by the community gaze, different working methodologies that activate such territories will be explored. These practices transcend boundaries, existing between corporeal practices and collective dynamics.
