Creative FLIP Peer-to-Peer Scheme Online Exchange 

In late November and early December 2020 Creative Spark hosted Anda Cowork from Granada in Spain for a virtual exchange visit. Instead of welcoming Victoria and Manuel to Dundalk we held a series of exchange sessions online via zoom and included a group of artists from Ireland called AAEX (Art as Exchange).

Our aim in the P2P exchange was to share knowledge between our hubs and to share and understand the challenges and obstacles that we both have in the ways we attract creative businesses and in particular how we are addressing the difficulties of covid-19 in our communities.

ANDA Cowork is a Coworking space, located in Granada, Spain, which opened its doors in April 2016, its purpose is to be a collaborative work space where the important thing is people, a space to receive and accommodate professionals from all disciplines, always focused on supporting, promoting and developing activities of diverse cultural and creative nature. Co-creating a diverse and inclusive community, with its central axis in social innovation and the collaborative economy.

Creative Spark, a centre for creativity and innovation, provides space, skills, technology, structures and platform for peer support and capacity building for creative practitioners, start-ups and entrepreneurs. Its vision is to provide a collaborative environment where learners, educators, innovators, start-ups, SMEs, creative industries and the local community can meet and exchange ideas, knowledge and best practice – to provide economic  opportunity and development across the region. Its mission is to provide space and technology and deliver diverse programmes that reach and activate creative and entrepreneurial people in its community by building capacity and staying ahead of requirements for successful creative and innovative entrepreneurship.

In 2020 we had an interesting new challenge in Covid-19 and what this meant for our communities and how we as hubs could continue to create meaningful interactions for our communities. The exchange helped us explore our various approaches to creating and maintaining community, through workshops with hub staff and members and through the realisation of artworks and a screen-printing workshop during the exchange.

The key participants in the FLIP Exchange were Victoria Carreras and Manuel Navarrete Lopez from Spain and Sarah Daly and Gráinne Murphy from Ireland.

In Ireland we invited a group of 15 artists from AAEX (Art as Exchange) to participate in the art exchanges and workshop

TUESDAY 17 NOVEMBER – MEETING 1

Introductions to all of the artists and presentation by Manuel Navarrete and his Haiku creations made for this project.

THURSDAY 26 NOVEMBER – MEETING 2

Artists idea exchange and zoom-making session.

The zoom-making session focuses on the work of the artist. We try to remove the participants’ faces from the screen so that we just see their hands at work, and we don’t have any talking or sound, subverting the ubiquitous zoom call and ‘always on’ nature of communications during lockdowns.

Manuel Navarrete is a multidisciplinary artist, collaborator of ANDA, who has worked for more than ten years in wall painting, performance, music, object customization and photography. His best known project is Instagram.com/Piedidicolori. He proposed the realization of an artistic work in response to chicken rearing, food poverty and poetry during the exchange and the AAEX group of artists to work with him in the realisation of  a series of artworks which will be printed as postcards and included with boxes of eggs for distribution in Granada. AAEX member were excited to work with Manuel in the realisation of his art project.

SCREEN-PRINTING WORKSHOP – 10 DECEMBER – MEETING 3

Screen-printing workshop at Print Studio (Ireland) and 2 hours online exchange) 

MEET THE HUBS – 2 DECEMBER 2020 – MEETING 4

Sarah and Victoria met via Zoom to do a ‘walk through’ each other’s hubs and learn a bit more about each other. 

Some of the Artwork: