Beyond their administrative functions, neighborhoods have always functioned as anchor points for different networks of mutual support and care. Based on neighborhood proximity as a means of affiliation, these networks, in the majority of cases self-organized, represented an essential help for the different generations in order to have a more dignified life. But now … what happens when this neighborhood defined by territorial proximity is forced to constant change due to the processes of speculation, eviction and gentrification that provoke the incessant movement of the inhabitants of a city, making this neighborhood no longer be identifiable?
Now… how can we define today a ‘neighborhood structure’ configured by different care and support networks that can be transformable, portable and highly re-upgradeable with the aim of being sustainable in these new settings that we inhabit? What happens with the existing social inequalities that have turned the city into a terrain only habitable in decent conditions to those who have sufficient resources?
It is within this framework that the TE (n) CUIDADO takes place, with the motivation to collectively address these and some other issues. A challenge to which we want to respond with forms of celebration, transversal learning, the use of our public spaces and diverse ways of living together that lead us to discover and imagine sustainable ways of generating other “neighborhood” structures. To do so, and starting in March 2020 and for the next two years, we will set up welcoming spaces in which to engage in cooperative learning and transferance of knowledge between the translocal knowledge of the academy, the situated struggles of social movements and the transformative potentiality of cultural practices.
Ultimately, the main objective is to co-create a toolbox, understood as a ‘tool kit’, in which all the experiences, methodologies and knowledges that have been developed during the process of TE(n) CUIDADO will be archived, collected and shared. By doing so, we aim at telling, transferring and collectivizing our experiences, “being able to catalyze an experience of the ‘environment’ that prevents each group to ‘reinvent everything’ every time ”(Vercauteren & Crabbé & Müller).
TE(n) CUIDADO is a project developed by Larre collective and with the support of Daniel & Nina Carasso foundation
About Larre: a propositive force formed by Priscila Clementti, Lara García Díaz and Ángela Palacios. Since its origin in 2018, it aims at developing and putting into use feminist tools and practices to reflect and generate a common and plural ground from which to point out, question and reconstruct theories and practices of/in the current cultural sector.