Tracing itineraries in Madrid’s Villaverde neighbourhood in search of communities that drive more sustainable changes from their gardens
Sendas (o)Cultas is a research project based on the practice through different artistic and educational disciplines that provide a critical and reflective look at the disconnection we maintain with the urban nature of our environments.
In this project, art and culture are used as tools to communicate the innovation and knowledge of experimental gardening that have emerged from the citizens of Villaverde. The starting point is the discovery of good environmental (Nature-based Solutions (NBS)) and cultural practices that occur in a territory, documenting and extracting the learning observed, enhancing them by transferring them to environmental and social recipes and applying them collectively to deteriorated, forgotten or invisible spaces in the neighbourhood.
Thus, the methodology tested in 2020 with Sendas (o)Cultas Fuencarral is used to build and disseminate new imaginaries and narratives about the socio-environmental paradigm shift in which we are immersed.
Sendas (o)Cultas Villaverde: Environmental Clinics
If in Fuencarral nature and culture were the connection to implement actions with citizens, in Sendas (O)cultas Villaverde the aim is to investigate the connection between nature and community health to heal the territory and contribute to adapt and mitigate the scenario of climate emergency towards which we are moving and in which the BNS can play a decisive role. One of the means developed for this are the ‘recipes’. The recipe is the traditional and classic format through which popular knowledge has travelled for centuries, a shared and common knowledge. Sendas (O)cultas Villaverde is thus configured as an itinerant clinic that will elaborate and apply environmental and social recipes.
ZASS (‘Yellow Sustainable Sensitive Zones’)
ZASS is a project co-financed by the Montemadrid Foundation that seeks to experiment with a diverse community fabric on new models of gardening that adapt in a more sustainable way to the climate change scenario in which we live.
Sendas (O)cultas proposes the generation of a diverse and open learning community . Through itineraries in which contact is made with the community fabric of the district, exploring local ecosystems, a learning community is forged around experimental gardening that will seek to implement ZASS gardens in the neighbourhood.
Garden Atlas
Building on the experience and complicity of the learning communities in the ZASS phase, this new phase seeks to further expand the recognition of ecosystems in collaboration with the Nomad Garden collective. A mapping of agents and species is being developed through the Garden Atlas platform, recording everything identified during the walks. The photographer Bego Solís accompanies us throughout the process to make a kind of portrait of each gardener and his or her garden.
The open field
In parallel to the artistic interferences, we design our own interventions that support the experimental gardens found in inter-block spaces, balconies and public spaces. The biodiversity of the district’s open spaces is highlighted with the aim of promoting a change in the aesthetics of gardening in public spaces. It also encourages the physical and digital connection of these spaces and promotes the emergence of new experimental gardens.
Sendas (o)Cultas Villaverde-ZASS Festival
Finally, a second edition of the Sendas (o)Cultas Festival is held as the culmination of the project. After travelling around the neighbourhoods to discover the district’s hidden neighbourhood gardening, artists, botanists, landscapers, chefs, etc. are invited to turn these experimental gardens into new scenarios for celebrating, listening, experimenting, prototyping and producing new narratives to reach new audiences.
The Festival is configured around six open and free artistic proposals , which will take place between June and December 2023:
– Sounds from the Third Landscape. Improvised musical piece composed by Chefa Alonso with the Afandice occupational gardening group, inspired by three species of wild plants. Held in the ZASS neighbourhood garden of the María Moliner Library.
– Hand Made Urbanismo. Self-building workshop in the Los Pinos vegetable garden in the San Cristóbal neighbourhood, in collaboration with students from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá.
– Invocamos al Butarque. Sound walk by the artist Susana Jiménez Carmona in collaboration with the Escuela Municipal de Música Antón García Abril de Villaverde along the old bed of the Butarque stream.
– A peripatetic garden. A strolling conversation with the landscape gardener Teresa Galí through the neighbourhood gardening of Villaverde Alto.
– Wild flavours. Gastronomic tasting of dishes made with wild flora by chef Kike Gallardo, from El Herbario Comestible, in the gardens of Afandice.
On 21 March 2024 we celebrated the change of season from Sendas (O)cultas Villaverde with a curation by Bosque Real together with the artists Lorenzo García-Andrade, Cris Blanco and Anto Rodríguez, once again realising the beauty and richness of the natural heritage with which we inhabit the city.