• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • The project
    • Objectives
    • Secondments
    • Methodology
    • Summer schools
    • Case studies
  • Partners
  • Outputs
    • Conceptual framework
    • Co-Creation methodology
    • Summer Schools
    • International conferences
    • Case studies
    • Policy Recommendations
    • Final Report
  • Events
  • In the media
  • Blog
  • Contact

Co-Creation Network Homepage

Co-Creation-Logo AW
  • Home
  • The project
    • Objectives
    • Secondments
    • Methodology
    • Summer schools
    • Case studies
  • Partners
  • Outputs
    • Conceptual framework
    • Co-Creation methodology
    • Summer Schools
    • International conferences
    • Case studies
    • Policy Recommendations
    • Final Report
  • Events
  • In the media
  • Blog
  • Contact

Co-Creation as an Arts-Based Approach to Decolonising Knowledge Production: Mexican Visitors in the City of Bath

March 6, 2020 by Christina Horvath

During the first week of March 2020, members of the Co-Creation teams at the University of Bath and the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) met in Bath to explore together how Co-Creation can be used to support processes of democratisation and promote the inclusion of non-academic groups from the Global South in practices of knowledge production.

The Co-Creation event at the BRLSI disseminated project findings to audiences in Bath

Funding from the University of Bath’s International Scheme enabled the organisers to invite two UNAM researchers from the Faculty of Political Science, Karla Valverde Viesca and José Luis Gázquez, and a journalist-practitioner, Samuel Mesinas, who currently works with the City Council of Tlalpán, to spend a week in the UK. Over the five days of their stay in the city of Bath, the three visitors and their hosts engaged in a critical reflection about the role of the State and groups of local residents who contribute to Co-Creative practices at neighbourhood level.

Samuel Mesinas and Karla Valverde visit heritage sites in the city

After visiting Bath’s emblematic heritage sites and reviewing some of the local Co-Creative practices, members of both teams contributed to a half-day symposium at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution on Monday 2nd March which brought together ten speakers from Bath and Mexico City. Delegates tackled the potential of arts-based methodologies to generate ‘places of dissensus’ where dominant discourses can be disrupted and challenged. The seven presentations explored through a series of case studies based in Bath, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City how Co-Creation can create agonistic spaces and open ‘cracks in the system’ by prompting shifts in the participants’ spatial imagination.

Karla Valverde presented strategies of participative budgeting in Mexico City
José Luis Gázquez discusses West African drumming workshops as examples of Co-Creation in the Global South

After an introduction by the organiser Christina Horvath (University of Bath) summarising some key conclusions of the book emerging from the project, Co-Creation in Theory and Practice (Policy Press, forth-coming), Andres Sandoval, Joanne Davies and Eliana Osorio (University of Bath) drew lessons from a poetry and graffiti workshop they initiated in secondary schools in Iztapalapa, Mexico City. The third presentation, by Ben van Praag, explored how graffiti can promote language learning and become a tool of international communication helping artists from the periphery break their isolation and become active contributors to innovative international networks.

Artist-researcher Ben van Praag draws on his international experience of graffiti and language learning
Artist-researcher Richard White (Bath Spa) reflects on his walking-with practice in and around Bath

José Luis Gázquez (UNAM) reflected on drumming workshops in West Africa as Co-Creative practices designed to provide not only music and dance education to Western students but also to build an immersive space where embodied, practice-based knowledges can be experienced first-hand. Artist-scholar-practitioner Richard White (Bath Spa University), highlighted the importance of walking-with as a way to engage local audiences and visitors with the reluctant history of slave ownership in and around Bath. The penultimate presentation, by Karla Valverde (UNAM), addressed top-down initiatives that use the strategy of participatory budgeting to encourage co-creation at community-level and promote citizen participation in Mexico City. The last talk, by Samuel Mesinas, complemented this focus on State-approaches with a focus on bottom-up initiatives that seek to create public space illustrated by his recent project, ‘Peatonal arte público’.

Moments of conviviality and trust building
form an important part of the Co-Creation practice
The Mexican and Bath-based participants explored together how they could continue to collaborate beyond the Co-Creation project

This public engagement event created opportunities to share outcomes emerging from the Co-Creation project with local audiences and discuss with practitioners to what extent Co-Creative projects involving grassroots movements, local associations, national and international NGOs and State actors can promote decolonial perspectives and the creation of a new public sphere. Delegates concurred that to balance power inequalities between different participants, academics must adopt a compassionate approach and be flexible about their research agendas, methods and favoured outcomes.

Samuel Mesinas talks about his methodology to students and staff at the University of Bath

The last two days of the visit were dedicated to the dissemination of Co-Creation projects and innovative, bottom-up methodologies from the Global South to staff and students at the University of Bath. Members of both teams also explored future avenues that would allow them to extend their collaboration around Co-Creation by engaging with some of the emerging global challenges and strategic priorities of their institutions, including the areas of urban inequalities, vulnerable youth groups and civic education in contexts of high socio-economic polarisation. They agreed to draw on a range of practical experiences in the Global North and Global South to investigate Co-Creation’s potential to produce new synergies between academics, artists and communities across disciplinary boundaries.

Irene Macias moderates the final discussion on Wednesday 4th March at the University of Bath

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: agonistic space, Bath, bottom-up, Co-Creation, global South, participatory, State

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Walk through Bath’s Uncomfortable Past
  • Engaging with Bath’s Uncomfortable Past through walking and creativity
  • CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS FOR A COLLECTIVE VOLUME
  • Co-Creation as an Arts-Based Approach to Decolonising Knowledge Production: Mexican Visitors in the City of Bath
  • Co-Creation Final Conference

Footer

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Oxford Brookes University logo
  • University of Bath logo
  • Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro logo
  • Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México logo
  • European Alternatives logo
  • Tesserae logo
  • City Mine(d)  logo
  • European Union logo

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 734770

Site managed by © 2017–2023 Eye Division

 

Loading Comments...