Give back to the community: can residencies help face the challenges of rural Spain?

Last September, DutchCulture organised the live event Country Focus: Spain – Changing Landscapes, New Residency Opportunities. The main focus was the important role of art and culture in a democratic society in general, and specifically artist residencies as a creative way to develop long-term relationships between people and places. Or, as DutchCulture’s director Kirsten van den Hul put it in her opening speech: “spaces of resistance to cultural polarization”.

But before we look back at the event, I had the chance to talk with keynote speaker Rosa Cerarols, an expert wearing two hats: “I’m an academic cultural geographer who has been working at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona for many years, trying to understand how culture interacts with nature in specific places and how that is part of people’s knowledge and roots. But as co-founder of Konvent Zero, a contemporary cultural centre located in an old nunnery in the industrial river colony of Berguedà, Catalonia, I’m also an activist interested in how we deal with culture in rural areas, from a political, economic and artistic perspective.”

Immerse yourselves about it on the website of DutchCulture!