Can culture and participation respond to the challenges of the most vulnerable neighborhoods?
In 2019, the City Council of Hospitalet de Llobregat started a participatory process with local entities, educational centers and the neighborhood to identify the main needs of Florida. This is the neighborhood with the highest population density in Europe, with the lowest per capita income in the metropolitan area of Barcelona and where people from 122 different nationalities coexist. Thus is born, like a pilot test, Module, a project to reactivate a disused municipal plot and transform it into a community and self-managed cultural equipment; An impulse to recover public space and to serve the citizenry.
Since then, a module has shown to have enormous potential. So much so that over time it has stopped acting only in a space and has become a Network of cultural facilities active in various territories. With the support of the Carulla Foundation, with whom he worked L’Escala and replicability of the project, module has established himself as a benchmark for other social and cultural initiatives, and He continues to inspire new ways of managing public space and promoting citizen participation.
The construction of the pilot test, the Cultural Ecological Centerstarted by 2020 and made it local and volunteer entities. The space is made of recycled materials: the multipurpose room and the workshop are reused maritime containers and the exterior structures (the access stairs, the agora, the stage and the children’s play area) are made of reused wood. All the energy that the space uses comes from solar panels. In addition, since November last year, it has a community vegetable garden of 1,000 m2. From this space, The center promotes community projects and program cultural activities of all kinds: children’s architecture, 3D printing, graphic arts, makeshift rap, etc. Anyone in the neighborhood can sign up for free. With this project, Module has returned his life to a space that was in a state of abandonment.
It Lluís Carulla Prize For the best project that the Carulla Foundation awarded to module in 2022 was the definitive impetus to consolidate this model of cultural, environmental and educational programming. It also allowed to begin to think about replicating it in other locations. Module had put into practice and perfected a methodology that, thanks to the culture, had responded to some of the challenges in one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the country. Why not take it to other places?
Last October, after analyzing the situation of Sant Feliu and El Prat de Llobregat, module inaugurated its second space. The center, this time, is located in the Plaza de la Llibertat de Hospitalet de Llobregat, where in little space lives more than 1,200 people with a cultural offer aimed at very limited children. The main structure is again a reused maritime container, but can be deployed to accommodate all kinds of cultural proposals. Currently, he carries out activities twice a week and has been conducting tadpoles, puppets, and dance and corporality. With the new space, module uses the arts to transform the relationships between the inhabitants of the territory and put into Valor Culture and citizen participation as tools to improve coexistence and social welfare. 
The scope of this network ofSpaces of culture located (That is, a culture transferred to the place where the most lack has continued). More recently a new premises have been opened in the district of Sant Cosme in Prat de Llobregat where, in alliance with the City Council, a community space has been opened open to various social and cultural organizations. Work is also underway to open a new space in the Laujar Andarax square in Sant Feliu de Llobregat.
Although module was born to solve a local problem, He has shown to have the strength to expand and transform all kinds of territories. With the follow -up of the Carulla Foundation, the project has become a methodology capable ofIdentify the specific needs of a locality and offer cultural solutions. The initiative drives four Spaces of culture located that shake the territory and the communities with more than 550 activities a year. More than 3500 people have struck, many of whom are in extremely vulnerability situations and are often not considered by official and official cultural circuits. Module puts the person at the center of the action, the attorney and gives him the tools to transform his environment; He uses culture to respond to contemporary urban challenges.
