We live in times of transitions that involve important changes in terms of ecology, culture, production… And to achieve it we must dare to do things differently to how we have done them until now, changing behaviour, cultivating new ways of relating to each other and with the environment.
This places us before many challenges and opens up an array of possibilities and opportunities. But how do we imagine and develop the alternatives? How do we contribute towards these transitions through the collaboration and hybridisation of skills, resources and experiences between the environmental and eco-industry, and the culture and creativity sectors? What conditions would foster relationships between players of different types and from a diversity of sectors? What can we cultivate and make blossom between us?
If these questions resonate with you. If you feel identified as an active player in these transitions. If you want to be part of a collaboration process alongside a variety of other players to explore new possibilities. THEN READ ON!
1. What is EREIAROA?
We often face processes of change and transition with urgency, with anxiety, maintaining the status quo and following and short-termist patterns, leading us to follow the same beaten tracks.
EREIAROA is born in order to overcome these inertias, a commitment to more ecological and creative transformation processes, more linked to the region and its players. An opportunity to give ourselves higher quality time to sow ideas, to create the conditions for a substrate from where new proposals and solutions can sprout, grow and bear their fruit in the form of services, products, materials or activities that are more sustainable, healthy, circular and co-responsible.
EREIAROA is a programme to activate cross-pollination and collaboration processes between a diversity of players, working with their needs, skills and experiences. A process focused on mutual knowledge, the creation of trusting relationships, the identification of potential scopes for cooperation and laying the foundations to take on shared projects.
EREIAROA is developed jointly between Aclima, the Basque eco-industry and environment cluster, and Tabakalera, the centre for contemporary creation and culture, which is also a hub of the New European Bauhaus. It is facilitated by ColaBoraBora and funded by Gipuzkoa Provincial Council’s Ekonomia Sortzailea programme.
2. What do we work on?
The challenges and transitions we have to tackle are very cross-cutting in nature, but at EREIAROA we're going to focus on the intersection between sustainability and creativity. The final themes will depend on the participants selected and their profiles and specific interests, but some scopes of activity that could be used as an example are:
- 360º urban regeneration and resilient territories.
- Nature-based solutions integrated in the urban, periurban and rural environment.
- Circular economy, efficient resource management and eco-efficient cycles.
- Reduction of inputs (materials, energy, food) and outputs (waste, contamination).
- Focus on durability, repairing and recycling.
- Green and blue materials and infrastructures.
- Renewal of neighbourhoods and buildings, and fostering shared spaces and uses.
- Improvement of environmental quality and reduction of atmospheric contamination.
- Healthy working, consumption and lifestyle habits, promoting the community.
- Quality of life, care and mental health.
- Affordable, safe and clean energy.
- Fair and healthy food system.
- Sustainable mobility.
These fields of work are given priority status within a strategic framework that links the global with the local, from the UN’s 2030 Agenda or the EU's New European Bauhaus, to the KLIMA 2050 Climate Change Strategy or the BULTZATU 2050 Urban Agenda in the Basque Country.
3. Who can participate?
EREIAROA is aimed at companies, organisations and professionals in Gipuzkoa who work in the fields of eco-industry and the environment or in culture and creativity, understood in a broad and transdisciplinary way.
We seek to form a group of up to 12 people predisposed to share, to co-create, and to be surprised. Committed people, eager and ready to collaborate, who already bring a project or a specific field of research and work and/or are open to exploring new ground and the opportunities that may arise. A small group that combines a variety of backgrounds and skills, different fields and disciplines, different experiences and expectations.
Are you one of those 12 seeds with which to cultivate the collaboration?
4. What will you achieve by participating?
- Driving your curiosity and making new possibilities emerge, identifying potential fields of work and specific displays of interest in collaboration.
- Mutual recognition among diverse/complementary players and the creation of professional relationships in a climate of trust that favours collaboration.
- Formulation, at individual and collective level, of needs and expectations when launching collaboration processes, as well as the resources and capital that have to be brought into play.
- Definition of draft projects based on scenarios of opportunity and/or basic draft projects.
- Support in the subsequent development of the draft projects: specifying the next steps, search for partners and support, presentation of calls, etc.
5. What does the process consist of?
EREIAROA is a process developed throughout 2022 in several phases. The joint working and presentation sessions will be carried out in person at Tabakalera in Donostia/San Sebastian (unless unforeseen situations make it necessary to transfer the activity online).
PHASE 1: SELECTION OF SEEDS (February-March 2022)
Presentation of candidacies via the application form. Until Monday 28 February via the application form (see point 6).
- Selection process of the group of up to 12 participants. Until 9 March.
- Individual interviews in order to better situate each profile within the framework of the programme and within the group as a whole.
PHASE 2: DEVELOPMENT OF THE CROP (March-June 2022)
Four inter-related meeting and collective work sessions. In order to participate in EREIAROA, given that it is mainly based on relational activities and shared working, it is necessary to commit to participating in all of these sessions, which will take place on the following days:
- Tuesday 22 March from 9:30 to 14:00.
- Tuesday 26 April from 9:30 to 14:00.
- Tuesday 24 May from 9:30 to 14:00.
- Tuesday 28 June from 9:30 to 14:00.
Throughout these sessions two types of moments will be combined with different but inter-dependent functions:
- The seeds. Who are we? Getting to know and introducing each other, mingling, highlighting the value of diversity, differences and complementary features. Explaining needs, motivations and expectations. Analysing what we have and what might be lacking.
- The cultivation. What can we do together? Identifying possible ideas, spheres of opportunity, lines of work to address through collaboration and hybridisation. Finding a common purpose (what for), defining a framework or possible cooperation project (what), seeing what other players it might be necessary to involve (who) and specifying how to do it (how).
PHASE 3: HARVESTING OF RESULTS (July-September 2022)
- Specifying conclusions, learnings and possible next steps.
- Presentation session. Tuesday 27 September.
6. How to take part
If you want to be one of the 12 seeds selected at EREIAROA, first of all make ensure you have the availability to commit to participating in all the sessions. If so, you have until Monday 28 February to fill in an application form.
