An audiovisual workshop, a research seminar, and an exhibition at the Culture Walk Festival in Hammarkullen.
- Emilio Brandao
- Oct 16, 2023
- 4 min read
workshop, research seminar, and participation at a local community cultural event
The ECHO Project - Echoing the Communal Self (ECO in Portuguese), from Portugal, visiting and collaborating with our project in Hammarkullen, Gothenburg
From October 9th to 14th, 2023, the Swedish CoNECT team invited the graphic designers and researchers Daniel Brandão, from Universidade do Minho, Portugal, and Nuno Martins, from Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave, Portugal, to lead a workshop in Hammarkullen, Gothenburg, Sweden, involving residents of the neighborhood to create documentary videos capturing oral history related to the local Carnival. The Hammarkullen Carnival is a locally significant cultural event recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage according to the Levande Kulturarv homepage (https://levandekulturarv.se/in-english/the-inventory/submissions/hammarkullen-carnival). The workshop was coordinated by CoNECT researcher Emílio Brandão, in collaboration with the local cultural organization HAM-SAM Hammarkullen, and took place in the neighborhood, at the teaching facilities of the Chalmers University of Technology.
The workshop created the space for residents to tell their own stories, and through video recording and editing skills. It facilitated the sharing of personal, social, and community narratives reflecting the diverse cultures within the neighborhood. Hammarkullen has for decades celebrated its residents' cultural diversity through the Hammarkullen Carnival. With this initiative, the aim was to encourage residents to take control over their own narratives, promote mutual learning, and foster discussions about local culture and community values aligned with those cultivated by the ECHO and the CoNECT projects. The methodology followed a similar structure to the one that the team of facilitators has used for several years in studio teaching with architecture students at the Chalmers University, and on other research contexts such as the Museum do Resgate project (https://museudoresgate.org/#), the Future Places’ series of conference workshops CitaDocs (https://citadocsblog.wordpress.com/), and the ECHO community project (https://eco.ipca.pt/), all in Portugal, a methodology now adapted to Hammarkullen.
After an intensive workshop week involving 11 participants, five individual videos were produced and edited by workshop participants, residents of Hammarkullen with limited to no prior experience with video production, and mostly using material coming from their personal archives. These works were publicly showcased and presented at the Culture Walk Festival held on October 14, 2023, at the Folkets Hus, within the Hammarkullen neighborhood. This was a wider celebratory event about different forms and manifestations of local culture.
The ECHO project's engagement with Hammarkullen exemplifies the transformative potential of design in community-led processes. Providing tools and platforms for self-expression and storytelling not only preserves cultural heritage but also strengthens social bonds and fosters resilience within diverse urban contexts. Through collaborative efforts like these, design emerges not merely as a tool for aesthetics but as a catalyst for social change and sustainable development.
On October 12, 2023, our collaborators in the audiovisual workshop Nuno Martins and Daniel Brandão, from Portugal, presented their project at a seminar titled "ECHO Project: Design's contribution to the dissemination of community practices created in social neighborhoods", on invitation of the CoNECT project. Held at the facilities of Chalmers University of Technology, this seminar aimed to share the methodologies and outcomes of the ECHO project with a wider audience of researchers and educators in the Swedish context, fostering connections for future collaborations.
The project ECHO-Echoing the Communal Self (ECO in Portuguese) (https://eco.ipca.pt/) is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and it aims to identify, document, interpret and disseminate current self-regulated community practices in social housing neighborhoods in the city of Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. Arguing that COVID-19 pandemic regulations have had a significant impact on the nature and viability of these practices, the proposal to document and disseminate these practices aims to strengthen mechanisms of empathy and social solidarity among the population. Using Design research, the aim is to disseminate these community practices to other socially disadvantaged communities. The project also wants to encourage the development of these type of practices among these communities, showing them that it's possible to both be successful and learn how to communicate about it. There is therefore a mission that is not only social and inclusive, but also educational, while providing the means of access to knowledge and active citizenship. In this seminar the researchers presented the work process, the methodologies, and the results of the ongoing project after almost two years of work.
One of the publications from the ECHO project, in collaboration with Emilio Brandão is:
Martins, N., Brandão, D., Guimarães, L., Penedos-Santiago, E., & Brandão, E. (2023). “The Importance of Communication Design in the Process of Disseminating Community Practices in Social Neighbourhoods: The Balteiro”. In: Comunicação E Sociedade, 43, e023010. Bilingualhttps://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.43(2023).4455(English: https://revistacomsoc.pt/index.php/revistacomsoc/article/view/4455/5347)
Commentaires