WHAT WE DO
The project is based on courses and workshops with migrants of different places and gender. The project “Rebuild the life in the Frontier” is formed by University professors and researchers and by experts of Arts and social sciences. The project is funded by the CICODE (Centro de Iniciativas de Cooperación al Desarrollo) of the University of Granada, a Centre for research and funding of projects related with social exclusion and International cooperation. The project is also based on the collaboration with local NGO’s, especially Melilla Acoge. The project is made for the migrants that lives in the CETI, a special Camp created to control migration coming from Africa to Melilla, a door to Europe. Totally at least one hundred migrants participated in the diverse activities made during the first year of the project.
Objectivities of the project:
Principally to reach a better quality of life of the migrants through a social action that considers Arts and Media.
The diverse courses of photography, participatory video, Blog, Radio communication, Painting and Theatre tries to give to the participants the instruments to let them participate in the life of the city, making it possible for them to build a life out of the segregation of the Camp where they have to sleep while they are waiting for their “ticket” to Europe.
Life in the Camp is characterized by loneliness and resignation to do anything during this awaiting. The institution makes very few activities and in many cases there is no possibility for migrants to express feeling and creativity and in the majority of the cases these activities are made inside the Camp giving no chance to integrate with the rest of the society.
Through our courses we try to ferment the sentiment of union between the different groups living together with the goal to make possible a life in common and a sociability that in the Camp is hardly impossible due to the coactive situation.
We try to use Art as a therapy and relief, as a moment of emotional rest and in a space where to learn from various cultures in an intercultural ambient.
All our courses are made outside the CETI, the Camp where migrants live, with the score to build bridges with the rest of the society, especially with students of the University, realizing for example some of the activities in the Campus of the University in Melilla.
We also want to bring to upper levels the self-esteem of participants. In this precarious situation we think Art and communication may help to give strength to live and to express feelings in this space that separates them from the finishing line of the migration process.
We also pretend to show other faces of migration, far away from victimizing or criminalizing the migrants as mass media try to show through negative terms as clandestine or illegal, for example.
We want to show the participant the importance of Arts and communication to liberate and express and the importance of these in the integration in new society.
With the production and diffusion of the material done during the courses we want to make aware the Spanish society of the situation of migration in the frontier of Spain and try to show them the other “face” of migrants. Finally we want to diffuse the work and try to encourage other people to do projects like ours, other activities to build bridges between undocumented migrants and the rest of the society.
to contact the group: caronte.granada@gmail.com
