the starting point: Can Font, the space 21 of Can Ricart

The work-in-progress that started almost a year ago at Can Ricart has offered the citizens an opportunity to participate in a different manner, away from the urban revisionism to which we are so used to. Many people have approached Can Ricart to get acquainted with its locations and activities, thus being able to evaluate and improve the meaning of the whole project from their own points of view.

We find a clear example of this revalorisation process at Can Ricart’s Tower Building. This location, an antique factory of colour pigments called Can Font, hosted for more than ten years a regular artistic activity that exemplified the social-productive network of Poblenou.

By the end of spring 2005, Can Font’s artists and creators were preparing to leave the building because of a demolition warning. Many collectives and persons approached them at the time and became aware of the site’s importance, of its activity and the need to prevent its destruction.

The group resulting from this first contact found out that Can Font has been catalogued in official documents as “7@” (cultural building) and therefore, won’t be demolished but handled over to the City Hall. Thanks to this change of categorization, Can Font resumes its activities, issues a series of reports and sets personal contact with several institutions: ICUB, 22@, Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, AAVC and the city’s cultural sector. The main objectives are clear: to discover the site’s specific destination; to establish a dialogue with the new people in charge in order to put forward a project of space implementations, and to inform the general public about the critical situation that all creative spaces are going through in Barcelona.

While contacts were established and several meetings with municipal agents attempted, Can Font participated in various activities destined to revive the workshops and different locations at Can Ricart:

The event “Visquem Can Ricart”, organized by City Mine(d) and context weblog under a cultural european program, took place from the 27th to the 30th of July 2005, intended to inform the city of Barcelona about the site’s situation in general and that of the artists in particular. Many people and associations in the city and other countries have collaborated, enabling us to transform an old caravan into a multimedia tool that was posted on different locations (Rambla Poblenou, Forat de la Vergonya, Rambla del Raval). Several activities were pivoted around this caravan, such as live-concerts, screenings and interviews to convey the opinions of workers and artists of Can Ricart and Can Font. The events were retransmitted direct all over the world through the Internet. International projects were also presented in this context (Statbad in Berlin, Reseau Citoyen in Brussels, Buildings of temporary uses in Copenhagen) together with projects originated in Barcelona and related to the new technologies (cooperativa de la xarxa sense fils, r23 ràdio streaming). For the first time, members of all creative groups that have been working at Can Ricart separately (AXA, Musikomuna, Flea, ParcCentralPark, Nave7, Hangar) have finally come together and became aware of the site’s value and importance, and of the considerable number of people involved.

Can Font also manifested its relation to Can Ricart taking part in Salvem Can Ricar platform and remaining present at Can Ricart during August 2005, a crucial act to stop the demolition of Ricson, the last vacated location. Can Font launched many initiatives to protect the site’s integrity during such a critical month, as most enterprises, neighbours and citizens who support its actions during the rest of the year are usually on vacation. One of these initiatives was to write down, in collaboration with Martí de sos-monuments, a course of action in case of demolition warning. Thanks to this guide, it was possible to corroborate that the demolition workers didn’t have the requested permissions to dismantle the building’s roof before tearing down the walls, and thus the whole process was stopped. Other initiative was the installation of a closed-circuit television system (CCTV) connected to the Internet, intended to prevent disproportionate courses of action such as those carried out by law-enforcement agents during the last and definitive forced evacuation of Ricson enterprise.

Another action that illustrates the relation between Can Font and other locations at Can Ricart is the organisation of Xinacittà Xplícita (Xinacittà animation film festival’s workshop, Mostra d'Animació Xinacittà) at Iracheta Enterprise building on September 24th.

That same month, Can Font also took part in the neighbourhood’s main festivities (Fiestas Mayores) devising a program of activities from the 13th to the 16th, which included Can Ricart’s signalisation and visual communication, collective painting of murals, the screening of animated short-films (Xinacittà Snacks) and a Theatre of Shadows (Lacònica – La Cònica).

But not all actions were enclosed among the walls of Can Ricart. On September 9th Can Font sent an SOS to the cultural sector seeking complicity from all persons and agents involved in the urban creative process in Barcelona. The letter was signed by 200 people showing their support, and personal messages accompanying those signatures clearly stated that Can Font’s situation wasn’t exceptional.

The action range centred at Can Font finally spread all over Barcelona in November through the celebration of "Can Font: Odisea en la Nave XXI” included in the European program Tri(p)oils by City Mind(e), and the public event "Made in Can Ricart". Representatives of various creative spaces gathered to discuss the site’s situation and progressive deterioration, and soon it was agreed on the need to join forces and elaborate a new proposal based on accumulated experiences.

When Can Font’s keys where surrendered early this year, a whole phase of the process was symbolically closed down, just to open the gate for the coming Project Nau21, keeper of all these previous activities and experiences.

february 2006