Flower Squad - Rural cultural life (2)

The main objective of this project is to embed ecological themes in cultural rural development through artistic and creative proposals.

This years experience will be an advance of a bigger project to be effective in 2022, though depending on the situation of the pandemic, when a team of international volunteers will interact with local rural society and participate in already existing activities and innovate new initiatives, related with ecological development in a rural context, centred in group creation and contemporary art.

In this project volunteers will both work directly with Imágenes y Palabras and together with befriended associations and initiatives in surrounding villages. The daily work in and around El Hacedor, the base of the association, consists of maintenance of the arts gallery and art works, the workshops and its direct environment, including the organization of exhibitions (both inside the gallery and in the open air) and, where needed, assistance of artists in residence and other digital nomads (i.e. people working temporarily in a different context), maintenance of the vegetable garden, planting of aromatics, caring of animals (donkeys and bees) and general conservation of infrastructures.

In the other villages volunteers will participate in the ongoing activities proposed by the different associations. The time they will spend there depends on availability of people and planning of activities but will be approximately 2 days a week.

During free time we introduce volunteers to places “normal tourists” wouldn’t find so easily: small enterprises of the region, geographical jewels and amazing, hidden corners. We actively impulse a permanent dialogue between volunteers and habitants from the region.

Volunteers will have time to develop their personal project. Youngsters with an interest for artistic creation and/or ecological (rural) development will find loads of opportunities to elaborate their own project. Artistic creations will be part of, and will increase, the collection of artworks of Imágenes y Palabras.

Volunteers work and live in the hostel of Imágenes y Palabras, based in a small hamlet in the North of the province of Burgos (Spain). The silence of the village and the huge, empty surroundings make coexistence during daily life a very intense experience. Independently of what volunteers learn during work on a practical level, the experience is social and human, is of respect and confidence, appreciation and values. We hope, both volunteers in this project and students, artists in residence, visitors of El Hacedor and habitants of the villages, with this initiative will understand a little bit better the meaning and the significance of the word inter-cultural.

We are searching for 1 volunteer from France willing to work in small villages in Spanish mountains, with interest in rural development and artistic creation, in a broad meaning of the word, and ready to live closely together with coordinators of the project and other visitors of El Hacedor.

The cultural association Imágenes y Palabras, in permanent search of cultural activity and diversity in the rural areas of northern Spain, uses cultural action as a method and a tool to fight against depopulation of small villages. The association has been active in the region, in the field of arts and culture, over the past 20 years.