Exploring Creativity in The Global North and South

CO-CREATION IN THEORY AND
PRACTICE
Exploring Creativity in the Global
North and South
Edited by
Christina Horvath and Juliet Carpenter
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
Policy Press
University of Bristol
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Cover design by Clifford Hayes

Front cover image: Leandro ‘Tick’ Rodrigues
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page iii
1
2
Contents
3
4 List of figures and tables v
5 Notes on contributors vii
6 Acknowledgements xv
7
8 1 Introduction: conceptualising Co-Creation as a methodology 1
9 Christina Horvath and Juliet Carpenter
10
11 PART I: Co-Creation in theory
12 2 Co-creation and the state in a global context 23
13 Sue Brownill and Oscar Natividad Puig
14
15 3 Fostering artistic citizenship: how Co-Creation can 41
16 awaken civil imagination
17 María José Pantoja Peschard
18
19 4 Global North-South tensions in international 55
20 Co-Creation projects
21 José Luis Gázquez Iglesias
22
23 5 Doing politics in uncertain times: Co-Creation, agency 71
24 and the ontology of the city
25 Niccolò Milanese
26
27 6 Co-Creation and bridging theory-method divides 87
28 Annaleise Depper and Simone Fullagar
29
30 7 Does space matter? Built environments and 103
31 Co-Creation in Mexico City
32 Pamela Ileana Castro Suarez and Hector Quiroz Rothe
33
34 8 Co-Creation, social capital and advocacy: the 121
35 Neighbourhood and Community Improvement
36 Programme, Mexico City
37 Karla Valverde Viesca and Dianell Pacheco Gordillo
38
39 PART II: Co-Creation in practice
40 9 A top-down experiment in Co-Creation in Greater Paris 137
41 Ségolène Pruvot
42
iii
page iv Co-Creation in Theory and Practice
1 10 Can literary events use Co-Creation to challenge 155

2 stigmatisation?
3 Christina Horvath
4
5 11 When Co-Creation meets Art for Social Change: the 173
6 Street Beats Band
7 Juliet Carpenter
8
9 12 Co-Creation and social transformation: a tough issue 189
10 for research
11 Jim Segers
12
13 13 We Can Make: Co-Creating knowledge and products 207
14 with local communities
15 Martha King, Melissa Mean and Roz Stewart-Hall
16
17 14 Innovative collaborative policy development: Casa 223
18 Fluminense and Rio’s public agenda challenges
19 Inés Álvarez-Gortari, Vitor Mihessen and Ben Spencer
20
21 15 Working the hyphens of artist-academic-stakeholder 237
22 in Co-Creation: a hopeful rendering of a community
23 organisation and an organic intellectual
24 Bryan C. Clift, Maria Sarah da Silva Telles and Itamar Silva
25
26 16 Artist-researcher collaborations in Co- 253
27 Creation: redesigning favela tourism around graffiti
28 Leandro ‘Tick’ Rodrigues and Christina Horvath
29
30 17 Capturing the impact of Co-Creation: poetry and street 271
31 art in Iztapalapa
32 Joanne Davies, Eliana Osorio Saez, Andrés
33 Sandoval-Hernández and Christina Horvath
34
35 18 Conclusion: lessons, implications and recommendations 291
36 Christina Horvath and Juliet Carpenter
37
38 Index 299
39
40
41
42
iv
page v
1
2
List of figures and tables
3
4
5
6
Figures
7 1.1 Co-Creation principles. 9
8 6.1 Youth organisation, Megan’s poster from the photovoice 95
9 outing.
10 9.1 Saint Denis, Plaine Commune and the Greater Paris 140
11 Metropolis.
12 9.2 La Grande Rencontre (The Big Encounter). 144
13 11.1 Key contributors to the Street Beats Band project. 179
14 11.2 The binners curating instruments. 180
15 11.3 The Street Beats Band performance, November 2017. 181
16 13.1 Charlotte Biszewski and her Mobile Wallpaper Making 217
17 Machine.
18 13.2 Charlotte Biszewski with wallpaper cyanotypes. 218
19 14.1 Map of the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region (RJMR) 224
20 showing the three regions and the central area where
21 commercial activity is concentrated.
22 16.1 Self-portrait by Tick. 259
23 16.2 Tick painting. 260
24 16.3 The workshop participants posing in front of the mural 264
25 they painted together in Tabajaras & Cabritos.
26 16.4 The walk in and around Tabajaras & Cabritos. 265
27 17.1 Flow of participants through each stage of the evaluation. 276
28 17.2 Results for treatment and control groups concerning how 278
29 often students raise current political topics for discussion
30 in class.
31 17.3 Results for treatment and control groups concerning 280
32 students feeling like they do not fit in at school.
34 students’ fear of bullying at school.
36 perceived self-efficacy in organising fellow students to
37 make changes at school.
39 students’ desire to contribute to an online forum
40 discussing political and social issues.
41
42
v
page vi Co-Creation in Theory and Practice
1
Tables
2
3 7.1 Examples of collaborative arts projects in Mexico City. 111
4 7.2 Examples of art and cultural facilities in Mexico City 114
5 8.1 Neighbourhood Improvement Community 126
6 Programme: number of projects approved, 2007–17.
7 8.2 Neighbourhood and Community Improvement 127
8 Programme: type of intervention in community public
9 spaces, 2007–17.
10 17.1 Themes included in the questionnaire and issues identified 277
11 in the school and community.
12 17.2 Results for treatment and control groups concerning how 278
13 often students raise current political topics for discussion
14 in class.
16 students feeling like they do not fit in at school.
18 students’ fear of bullying at school.
20 perceived self-efficacy in organising fellow students to
21 make changes at school.
23 students’ desire to contribute to an online forum
24 discussing political and social issues.
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
vi
page vii
1
2
Notes on contributors
3
4 Inés Álvarez- Gortari is based in Nairobi where she works as a
5 behaviour change researcher at ThinkPlace Kenya. She conducts
6 ethnographic research and engages directly with local communities,
7 involving them in co-creation processes to find solutions to their
8 challenges. Inés is a graduate of the London School of Economics,
9 where she studied Geography as an undergraduate and Urbanisation
10 and Development at postgraduate level. She also holds a postgraduate
11 degree in Social Innovation Management from Amani Institute. Inés
12 worked for four years at Casa Fluminense, a civil society organisation
13 in Rio de Janeiro which advocates for inclusive urban policies for the
14 city’s metropolitan region.
15
16 Sue Brownill is Professor in Urban Governance and Policy at the
17 School of the Built Environment, Oxford Brookes University. Her
18 research focuses on the spaces of participation created through the
19 interaction of the state with urban social movements. She combines
20 this with longstanding experience of community-led planning and
21 regeneration, both as a practitioner and a researcher. As well as
22 involvement with the Co-Creation project, her recent projects include
23 research into neighbourhood planning and localism in the UK and
24 into participatory approaches to encouraging healthy urban mobility
25 in Brazil.
26
27 Juliet Carpenter is Senior Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes
28 University, working at the interface of debates within a range of
29 disciplines, including geography, urban planning, political science and
30 sociology. From 2017 to 2020, Juliet held a three-year Marie Curie
31 Global Fellowship, in collaboration with the University of British
32 Colombia, Vancouver, working on an international comparison
33 of urban regeneration and governance in the context of social
34 sustainability. She has a particular interest in exploring arts-based
35 methods as a means of giving voice to marginalised communities in
36 an urban planning context.
37
38 Pamela Ileana Castro Suarez is an urban planner, holding an MSc in
39 Property Development from the National Autonomous University of
40 Mexico (UNAM) and a PhD in Urban Design from Oxford Brookes
41 University. Since 2012 she has been a part-time professor at undergraduate
42 and postgraduate levels in urban morphology and urban design, social
vii
page viii Co-Creation in Theory and Practice
1 and self-sustainable economic projects, and urban and regional planning,

2 having been a module teacher since 1993 and a casual lecturer at Oxford
3 Brookes in 2006. Since 2013, she has been head of the undergraduate
4 programme in urbanism. Her main research fields are urban design and
5 morphology, property development, crime prevention through urban
6 design, urban instruments, healthy cities, vulnerable neighbourhoods,
7 public space and children, education and co-creation.
8
9 Bryan C. Clift is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Humanities
10 and Social Sciences at the University of Bath and Director of the
11 Qualitative Research Centre. His research is oriented around three
12 foci: sport and physical activity in relation to issues of contemporary
13 urbanism, popular cultural practices and representations, and qualitative
14 inquiry. These are inspired by the notable ways in which sport, physical
15 activity, and popular cultural practices contribute to examining the
16 structure and experience of contemporary social formations and issues.
17 His work has recently been published in Body & Society, Sociology of
18 Sport Journal, Qualitative Inquiry, and Cultural Studies <=> Critical
19 Methodologies.
20
21 Maria Sarah da Silva Telles is Professor and Researcher of the Post-
22 Graduation Programme in Social Sciences of PUC-Rio. Her teaching
23 and research expertise lie in sociology, particularly urban sociology
24 focused on themes of poverty, social inequality, social mobility,
25 migration, favelas, working-class families, education and indigenous
26 people in the city. Her current projects are about women and the life
27 trajectories of young black people. Her publications include an edited
28 volume with S. Luçan, Os Sociólogos; Viver na Pobreza: Experiência e
29 representações de moradores de uma favela carioca; and Il Genocidio Nero
30 Continua? La Lotta Continua (Clemente, Silva Telles, Sousa e Silva,
31 and Brandão).
32
33 Joanne Davies is a PhD candidate in the Department of Education at
34 the University of Bath. She holds a BA Honours in French and Music
35 from the University of Birmingham and a CELTA qualification from
36 the University of Cambridge in teaching English to speakers of other
37 languages. Her PhD explores geographical inequalities in access to elite
38 universities and follows on from her previous work for the education
39 charity, IntoUniversity, and King’s College London in the field of
40 widening participation in higher education.
41
42
viii
page ix Notes on contributors
1 Annaleise Depper is an engagement practitioner at the University

2 of Oxford, where she supports researchers to collaborate with public
3 and community groups beyond academia. Annaleise previously
4 completed a PhD at the University of Bath, UK, in the Physical
5 Culture, Sport and Health research group. Her research explored
6 young people’s experiences of embodied mobility and inequality in
7 low-income communities. Annaleise is particularly interested in using
8 Co-Creative approaches to bring together researchers, practitioners
9 and communities to Co-Create solutions in response to everyday
10 challenges and inequalities.
11
12 Simone Fullagar, FAcSS, is an interdisciplinary sociologist who leads
13 the Women in Sport research group as Professor at Griffith University,
14 Australia. Simone’s research uses feminist post-structuralist and new
15 materialist theory-methods to explore the gendering of health and
16 emotional well-being, as well as sport and leisure practices. Her latest
17 book was published by Palgrave in 2019 – Feminism and a Vital Politics
18 of Depression and Recovery. Simone was previously Chair of the Physical
19 Culture, Sport and Health research group at the University of Bath, UK.
20
21 José Luis Gázquez Iglesias holds a PhD in International Relations and
22 African Studies from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain.
23 He completed his graduate studies at Sciences-Po in Paris, France, and
24 a postdoctoral internship at the Autonomous Metropolitan University
25 Cuajimalpa, Mexico. He has also conducted extensive fieldwork in
26 several cities of Senegal and Europe and a research internship at Cheikh
27 Anta Diop University, Dakar. He currently works as an Associate
28 Professor and Researcher in International Relations and African
29 Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
30 His main research topics are Sufi Islam, transnational migrations and
31 networks, state formation and construction processes in Sub-Saharan
32 Africa and Senegal.
33
34 Christina Horvath is Reader in French Literature and Politics at
35 the University of Bath. She holds a PhD in contemporary French
36 literature from University Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her research
37 addresses urban representations in literature and film, with emphasis
38 on artistic expressions of advanced marginality such as contemporary
39 French ‘banlieue narratives’ and favela literature in Brazil. She has
40 published widely on contemporary French and Francophone literature,
41 banlieues and postcolonial legacies in France. Since 2013, she has been
42 working on the conceptualisation and testing of ‘Co-Creation’ defined
ix
page x Co-Creation in Theory and Practice
1 as an arts-based method to promote social justice in disadvantaged

2 urban areas.
3
4 Martha King is Arts Producer at Knowle West Media Centre
5 (KWMC), and has developed and delivered a wide range of socially
6 engaged, digital and contemporary arts projects, applying methods
7 of co-creation to explore topics such as data ethics, community-led
8 housing and participatory sensing. She co-authored ‘Artists, data, and
9 agency in smart cities’ in Big Data in the Arts and Humanities (2018)
10 with Roz Stewart-Hall, and co-authored a CHI published paper ‘A
11 city in common: a framework to foster technology innovation from
12 the bottom up’. She is KWMC’s representative for the ‘Co-creating
13 Change’ network and is supporting a ‘Creative Civic Change’ project
14 in Knowle West, 2019–21.
15
16 Melissa Mean is Head of Arts at Knowle West Media Centre. For
17 over 15 years she has worked across the arts, urbanism and public
18 participation, and has led projects ranging from setting up a pop-up
19 factory to train local people to design and make furniture, to creating
20 a living archive of tattoo culture. She now leads We Can Make, a
21 citizen-led housing programme. Melissa is also part of Redcliffe
22 Neighbourhood Forum, a community group working on a £100m
23 project to reclaim a dual carriageway in Bristol and create affordable
24 housing and public space in its place.
25
26 Vitor Mihessen is Information Coordinator and co-founder of Casa
27 Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro. He researches socioeconomic indicators in
28 the Rio Metropolitan Region and also designs and organises capacity
29 building activities, including Casa Fluminense’s Public Policies course.
30 Vitor holds a Masters in Economic Science with a specialisation in
31 Public Policies and Governmental Management from universities in
32 Rio. Vitor also studied comparative economic development at the
33 Universidad de Salamanca, Spain. His research interests revolve around
34 urban mobility and its social and economic interfaces. Vitor previously
35 worked at several research and policy organisations in Rio and was chief
36 adviser to the Secretary of Economic Development in the State of Rio.
37
38 Niccolò Milanese is a director of European Alternatives, a transnational
39 civil society organisation which promotes democracy, equality and
40 culture beyond the nation-state, with offices in London, Berlin, Rome
41 and Paris where he lives. He is a Europe’s Futures Fellow at the Institut
42 für Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. His most recent books
x
page xi Notes on contributors
1 are Citizens of Nowhere: How Europe Can be Saved from itself (Zed Books
2 2018) and Wir Heimatlosen Weltbürger (Suhrkamp 2019).
3
4 Oscar Natividad Puig is a PhD student in Planning at Oxford
5 Brookes University, researching the role of social network structures
6 in participatory approaches. An architect and urban planner by
7 training, he has participated in development initiatives for vulnerable
8 communities in South Africa, Haiti, Chile, Nepal, and Panama. Before
9 starting at Oxford Brookes, Oscar managed an asset-based community
10 development project for CoLab MIT. His former education includes
11 a degree in Architecture at Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and
12 a Masters at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His research
13 consistently returns to the role and social responsibility of the designer
14 to incorporate the voice of vulnerable communities.
15
16 Eliana Osorio Saez is a PhD candidate in the Department of
17 Education at the University of Bath. She holds a BA in Teaching
18 Spanish and English from Universidad Popular del Cesar and an MA in
19 Education: English Didactics from Universidad Externado de Colombia,
20 both in Colombia. She also holds an MA in Education, Leadership and
21 Management from Bath Spa University in England. Her PhD topic is
22 the use of technology to support parental engagement in schools.
23
24 Dianell Pacheco Gordillo graduated from the National Autonomous
25 University of Mexico (UNAM) with a Bachelors in Political Science
26 with a major in International Cooperation, and a Masters in Public
27 Affairs and Government. She has held various positions, including
28 member of the local electoral representation in the Council of the
29 National Electoral Institute, analyst at the Council for the Evaluation
30 of Social Development in Mexico City (EVALUA DF) and Research
31 Assistant at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences in UNAM. She is
32 currently the Technical Secretary of the H2020 Project ‘The Cohesive
33 City: Addressing Stigmatisation in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods’
34 at UNAM.
35
36 María José Pantoja Peschard graduated in Philosophy at the National
37 Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She holds an MLitt in
38 Philosophy from the University of St Andrews, and an MA in Film
39 Studies from the University of East Anglia. She obtained her PhD
40 in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her
41 research interests are the relationships between political philosophy,
42 aesthetics and visual cultures. She is currently a full-time lecturer in the
xi
page xii Co-Creation in Theory and Practice
1 Department of Media and Communications, in the School of Social

2 and Political Sciences at UNAM in Mexico City.
3
4 Ségolène Pruvot is Cultural Director of European Alternatives.
5 She was trained as a political scientist and urban planner in France
6 (Sciences-Po), the UK (LSE), and Germany (University of Leipzig).
7 Ségolène has published several articles related to urban planning
8 and to gender equality in print and online. Her latest publication is
9 ‘Feminists know how to build bridges’ in the volume ‘The Right to
10 Truth’ (Kiev: Visual Culture Research Centre, 2019) on Feminist Arts
11 and Social Change. In the past 10 years, Ségolène has investigated the
12 transformative power of the arts in several research and activist projects,
13 such as TRANSEUROPA Festival. She has also collaborated with the
14 URBACT European Programme.
15
16 Hector Quiroz Rothe is an urban planner and historian from the
17 National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He holds a PhD
18 in Geography from the Université de Paris 3 – Sorbonne-Nouvelle. Since
19 2004 he has been a full-time professor in the School of Urbanism and a
20 member of the National Research System since 2006. His main research
21 fields are contemporary history of Mexican cities, representations of the
22 city in cinema, and co-creation.
23
24 Leandro Rodrigues de Souza, known as ‘Tick’, is a graffiti artist,
25 activist and cultural promoter working in the favela of Tabajaras &
26 Cabritos, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Originally from North-Eastern
27 Brazil, he grew up in Rio de Janeiro where he has been working as a
28 graffiti artist since 2001. Since 2015 he has been active in the project
29 ‘Viva Bairro’, which aims to develop community-based tourism around
30 graffiti in Tabajaras. Tick has contributed to three international Co-
31 Creation workshops (Santa Marta, 2018, and Tabajaras and Bath, 2019),
32 several international graffiti events and hosted two large-scale graffiti
33 encounters, each bringing together over 35 artists.
34
35 Andrés Sandoval-Hernández is Reader in Educational Research
36 at the University of Bath. His research interests include comparative
37 analyses of educational systems using large- scale assessment data
38 with a focus on educational inequalities and civic education. He is
39 part of different international networks on these topics and is co-
40 editor of ‘Teaching Tolerance in a Globalised World’ (Springer, 2018),
41 which investigates the attitudes of secondary school students towards
42 minorities across 38 countries.
xii
page xiii Notes on contributors
1 Jim Segers co-founded City Mine(d). His current interest lies with
2 tough issues and with the tension between individual capabilities and
3 the need for collective action. He is currently active with City Mine(d)
4 in London on the role of personal competences in local development
5 (in ‘Elephant Path’ in London’s Somers Town area) and in Brussels
6 with the triple challenge facing the electricity sector of fairer pricing,
7 rethinking ageing infrastructure and reducing climate impact (in ‘La
8 Pile’ in Brussels’ Quartier Midi). He holds a BA Hons in Politics, a
9 BSc Hons in Econometrics and is trained as a theatre director.
10
11 Itamar Silva is a journalist, researcher, and former director of the
12 Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE) until
13 April 2019. Currently, he is the president of the School Without
14 Walls Association, or Eco. Previously, he was a militant of the Rio de
15 Janeiro Slum Movement, director of FAFERJ, president of the Morro
16 Santa Marta Residents Association. He is a member of the Rio 2004
17 Social Agenda, Terra do Futuro Network, and ActionAid Brasil. His
18 work focuses on favelas, housing, drug trafficking, and public safety.
19
20 Ben Spencer is Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University.
21 He has a PhD in urban design and a background in community
22 development and lifelong learning. His research in the School of the
23 Built Environment is focused on gerontology, mobility and developing
24 healthy urban environments through community engagement. Recent
25 projects have included the award-winning cycle BOOM research
26 project on understanding older people’s cycling (www.cycleboom.org)
27 and the Healthy Urban Mobility research project (www.hum-mus.
28 org) in partnership with colleagues from three universities in Brazil.
29
30 Roz Stewart-Hall is Head of Research and evaluation at Knowle
31 West Media Centre (KWMC), Bristol. Her role involves supporting
32 KWMC’s team and people who participate in projects to reflect on
33 and evaluate their work, as well as reporting to funders. Roz has
34 developed a set of tools and mechanisms for generating evidence
35 and data about the work and impact of KWMC. She has extensive
36 experience of research and evaluation and has worked in the field of
37 socially engaged arts practice since 1991. Roz uses action research
38 approaches to evaluation and aims to embed ongoing reflection into
39 organisational practice and systems.
40
41 Karla Valverde Viesca is full-time Professor at the Political Studies
42 Center in the Political and Social Sciences Faculty, National Autonomous
xiii
page xiv Co-Creation in Theory and Practice
1 University of Mexico (UNAM). She is member of the National

2 System of Researchers in Mexico and author of the book, Construcción
3 Institucional del Desarrollo Social en México (2015). Karla is coordinator at
4 UNAM of the Co-Creation Project ‘The Cohesive City: Addressing
5 Stigmatisation in Disadvantaged Urban Neighbourhoods’ and the
6 Project ‘Vulnerabilidad Socioterritorial y Proceso Metropolitano
7 en la Región Centro de México’ (Socioterritorial Vulnerability and
8 Metropolitan Processes in the Central Mexico Region). She is a
9 member of the Global Participatory Budget Research Board for the
10 Participatory Budgeting Project.
11
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page xv
1
2
Acknowledgements
3
4 We would like to thank all the authors who have contributed to this
5 volume, together with the partners in the Co-Creation project, and
6 the participants of the workshops and creative activities that have fed
7 into our exploration of Co-Creation over the last four years. We hope
8 that this book will be the starting point for further experiments with
9 Co-Creation in the future.
10 Thanks are also due to the editorial team at Policy Press for their
11 support in producing this book, and to Rose Norman for her assistance
12 in proofreading.
13 This volume has received funding from the University of Bath
14 and from the European Union’s RISE Horizon 2020 research and
15 innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant
16 agreement No 734770.
17 Chapters 3, 4 and 8 have received funding and support from the
18 research project based at UNAM, PAPIIT CG300118 ‘Vulnerabilidad
19 Socioterritorial y Proceso Metropolitan en la Region Centro de
20 México’ (Socioterritorial Vulnerability and Metropolitan Processes in
21 the Central Mexico Region).
22
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xv
page 1
1 1
2
3
4
5
Introduction: conceptualising
6 Co-Creation as a methodology
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Introduction
14 Since the neoliberal turn of the 1980s and the globalisation of trade
15 and information flows a decade later, cities around the world have
16 been faced with the increasingly complex societal challenges of
17 ‘spatial segregation, separation and exclusion’ (Bauman, 1998: 3).
18 The protection of private property rights and the reduction of state
19 expenditure have resulted in a radical polarisation of the distribution
20 of wealth and power. At the same time, the expansion of the urban
21 lifestyle has turned cities into commodities for those with money,
22 encouraging the formation of market niches in consumer habits
23 and cultural forms (Harvey, 2012: 14). As a result, we are living in
24 increasingly fragmented, conflict-prone cities with privatised public
25 spaces, increasing surveillance and growing divides between gated
26 communities and vulnerable neighbourhoods. While new hierarchies
27 founded on global mobility have sharpened the divide between the
28 extraterritorial elites and the localised groups ever more affected by
29 urban marginalisation, close-knit communities and ideals of urban
30 identity, belonging and citizenship have become increasingly harder
31 to sustain.
32 Despite the growing number of studies exploring urban disadvantage
33 and territorial stigmatisation, knowledge generation about processes
34 of marginalisation remains largely the remit of academic research,
35 considered as the key source of understanding and insight to enhance
36 societal awareness. Yet it has been increasingly recognised that
37 alternative approaches to producing knowledge can lead to much
38 greater societal benefits. According to Lupton and Dyson (2015),
39 quoted in Campbell and Vanderhoven (2010: 10), ‘knowledge of the
40 social world must be deeper and stronger if it is co-produced with
41 actors in that world; research is more likely to effect change if it is
42 owned by people who have a capacity to effect change’. To respond
1
page 2 Co-Creation in Theory and Practice
1 to a growing need for co-produced knowledge, this book proposes to

2 challenge territorial marginalisation by inviting to the dialogue partners
3 who rarely participate in collaborative knowledge practices (Banks
4 et al, 2018), namely non-academic collaborators from the civil society
5 sector and communities carrying knowledges that have previously been
6 passed over, and those outside the Global North, increasingly validated
7 as examples of the ‘epistemologies of the South’ (Santos, 2018).
8 This is important for a number of reasons. First, civil society
9 groups matter today because they are situated at the forefront of the
10 creation of a new public sphere. The turn to civil society since the
11 1980s (Yúdice, 2003; 2009) was a consequence of neoliberal trade
12 liberalisation, privatisation and the reduction of state-subsidised services
13 including health care and education. Since institutionalised political
14 parties were unable to counter austerity and structural adjustment
15 policies, the most innovative actors in setting agendas for social justice
16 moved to grassroots movements, local associations, and national and
17 international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These civil
18 society actors have opened up new forms of ‘progressive struggle
19 in which culture is a crucial arena’ (Yúdice, 2003: 88), turning to
20 areas of social life abandoned by the neoliberal state and setting a
21 new agenda for organising civil society. These actors are therefore
22 important collaborators for knowledge production involving subaltern
23 communities (that is, non-elite communities which can become agents
24 of political and social change).
25 Second, knowledge practices focusing on marginality must
26 necessarily involve communities whose knowledge is emerging from
27 struggles against oppression. As opposed to the ‘epistemologies of the
28 North’ linked with the objectivity, rationality, neutrality of Eurocentric
29 approaches in knowledge generation, these epistemologies emerge
30 from resistance to colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy. They seek
31 to challenge dominant, Eurocentric ways of scientific knowledge
32 production by identifying and discussing:
33
34 … the validity of knowledges and ways of knowing not
35 recognized as such by the dominant epistemologies …
36 either because they are not produced according to accepted
37 or even intelligible methodologies or because they are
38 produced by absent subjects deemed incapable of producing
39 valid knowledge. (Santos, 2018: 2)
40
41 According to Santos, what distinguishes the epistemologies of the
42 South from those of the North is that they are embodied, rather than
2
page 3 Introduction
1 intellectual, and value sensations, emotions, experience and memory.

2 Empathic to suffering, they do not distinguish between knowledge,
3 ethics and politics since ‘the politics of sharing or solidarity with the
4 struggle are not possible without an ethic of care’ (Santos, 2018: 91).
5 Furthermore, they reject the abstract idea of progress and seek social
6 transformation through solidarity with and listening to the life
7 experiences of social groups that are victims of exclusion and unjust
8 suffering under capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy. Learning from
9 their approaches and methods is therefore vital to elaborate alternative
10 strategies involving disadvantaged communities in knowledge
11 production and achieving cognitive justice.
12 Collaborations with such politically engaged actors have important
13 consequences for academic partners. They redefine the role of
14 academics, transforming researchers into collaborators in the projects of
15 communities (Bonfil, 1991). This impactful transformation of vertical
16 relationships between researchers and researched into horizontal ones
17 between equal knowledge producers is anchored in a range of ideals
18 which, despite their potential contradictions, all concur in promoting
19 greater social justice in cities. The first one is the ‘right to the city’
20 (Lefebvre, 1968), interpreted as a collective rather than individual right
21 to ‘reinvent the city more after our hearts’ desire’ (Harvey, 2012: 4).
22 The second one is the model of the ‘socially cohesive city’ (Cassiers and
23 Kesterloot, 2012) with its roots in social justice, unity and equality of
24 opportunity for all (Harvey, 1973). The third one is linked to the role
25 of creative practice in these processes, and the hope, shared by Chantal
26 Mouffe (2007), that artistic activism can play a critical role in a society
27 ‘by subverting the dominant hegemony and by contributing to the
28 construction of new subjectivities’ (Mouffe, 2007: 5). Finally, the last
29 ideal is based on the belief that an ‘epistemological shift is necessary’
30 (Santos, 2018: viii) in order to change the world by collectively
31 reinterpreting it through a dialogue between the producers of different
32 types of knowledge.
33 In line with these ideals, the core aim of this volume is to reflect on
34 how collaborations between scholars, activists, stakeholders, artists and
35 communities can be used as a springboard to strengthen resilience to
36 socioeconomic marginalisation in vulnerable urban areas in countries
37 belonging to the different regions of the world. Without claims to
38 global relevance, the contributors of this volume have chosen to focus
39 primarily on two large geographical areas: Western Europe and North
40 America on the one hand and Latin America on the other hand.
41 These regions were chosen for their different sociopolitical evolution
42 and complementary perspectives on arts-based approaches. While the
3
1 approaches of countries located in the so-called ‘Global North’ have

2 been marked by the legacies of colonial expansion, nationalism, civil
3 rights movements, individualism and the ideal of the welfare state,
4 Latin American countries in the so-called ‘Global South’ experienced
5 colonialism followed by independence, modernisation, revolution or
6 military dictatorship, redemocratisation and struggles for emancipation
7 led by indigenous and Afro-descendent populations. Emerging from
8 a Latin American context, emancipatory approaches to art such
9 as the conceptualisation of public art available to the citizenry in
10 post-revolutionary Mexico (Coffey, 2012) or Boal’s (1979; 2000)
11 theorisation of the ‘theater of the oppressed’ in Brazil, drawing on
12 Freire’s work (1993), have long been leading the way in exploring new
13 ways of democratising knowledge through arts practice.
14 While the terms ‘Global North’ and ‘South’ might seem practical
15 to refer to regional groupings of case-study countries having similar
16 political and socioeconomic histories, the authors recognise that these
17 categories have originated in the traditionally Eurocentric dichotomy
18 of metropolitan and colonial societies. As such, the authors believe that
19 the binary distinction between these two labels is not only arbitrary but
20 also increasingly porous, as each collection of countries encompasses
21 diverse values and ideologies that defy being grouped together as a
22 common entity. The authors would also like to highlight the fact that
23 the entities designated as ‘Global North and South’ do not necessarily
24 overlap with what is meant by ‘epistemologies of the North and the
25 South’. Scholars from the Global North can be promoters of the
26 epistemologies of the South while academics from the Global South,
27 whether educated internationally or not, may rely on categories and
28 research methods established by the epistemologies of the North, some
29 of which come with embedded biases and hidden agendas resulting
30 from centuries of knowledge regulation in which any knowledge not
31 susceptible to serve the objectives of the colonial rule was invalidated
32 and suppressed.
33 In the light of this context, this volume aims to use a multidisciplinary
34 framework to propose an original approach to methodology,
35 reconceptualising it as ‘Co-Creation’, to explore this process as a
36 broadly applicable tool, and to examine its suitability and relevance
37 to challenging marginalisation in various contexts. A key innovation
38 of our approach is to define Co-Creation as a knowledge process that
39 employs creativity through arts-based methods as an alternative way
40 to listen to the voices of marginalised communities and involve them
41 in generating shared understandings of their neighbourhoods and
42 (in)justices in the city. This volume is the first to conceptualise this
4
page 5 Introduction
1 understanding of Co-Creation and to critically explore it in a range

2 of geographic and organisational settings in both the Global North
3 and South. The comparative approach adopted by this volume has
4 provided the contributors with opportunities to test Co-Creation in
5 various contexts, seeking to address different forms of marginalisation
6 including ethnic, racial, social, postcolonial or generational inequalities,
7 and to discuss these experiences in the light of international debates
8 on cohesive cities and active citizenship.
9 By involving local residents and practitioners in collaboration
10 with researchers, artists and other non-academic communities, the
11 Co-Creation method aims to promote new interactions between
12 partners based on dialogue, to create new links (for instance between
13 researchers, residents and artists) and to provide a safe environment
14 for shared knowledge production. It encourages participants to share
15 insights and awareness using creative or arts-based practice as catalysts to
16 develop skills, networks and resilience. Co-Creation therefore primarily
17 represents an artist-researcher-stakeholder collaboration which results
18 in producing advances in shared knowledge as well as tangible outputs.
19 While the authors of this volume recommend using creativity as a
20 catalyst to facilitate trust building, cooperation and interaction between
21 the different actors involved in knowledge production, they are also
22 aware of the risk of cooptation that this advocacy represents for the arts.
23 Yúdice (2003) described top-down strategies of ‘channelling the arts
24 to manage the social’ (Yúdice, 2003: 12) as the ‘expediency of culture’,
25 arguing that in the post-Fordist, post-civil rights era the reduction of
26 direct state subvention of social services led to a reorientation of arts and
27 culture to a means with no value other than to solve social problems, a
28 cost-effective instrument to reduce crime, enhance education, create
29 jobs, facilitate urban renovation and consolidate citizenship founded
30 on active participation. This vision of art as a panacea for ‘a more
31 vigorous economy, more democratic and effective government, and
32 fewer social problems’ (Yúdice, 2003: 14) was encapsulated among
33 others in the New Labour notion of the ‘creative economy’ which
34 sought to turn the arts into a resource for economy and politics. This
35 vision has resulted in top-down arts projects in a range of countries
36 around the world.
37 There is, however, another, more political, vision of creative
38 engagement articulated by Chantal Mouffe (2007; 2013) according
39 to which socially engaged artistic and cultural practices can provide
40 communities with opportunities for self-understanding and resistance
41 to the dominant social imaginary. The authors therefore apprehend
42 Co-Creation workshops as agonistic interventions which have the
5
1 potential to open ‘cracks in the system’ and to ‘allow us, through

2 imagination and the emotions they evoke, to participate in new
3 experiences and to establish forms of relationships that are different from
4 the ones we are used to’ (Mouffe, 2013: 97). Through understanding
5 differing viewpoints and ‘ways of knowing’, from both academic and
6 non-academic perspectives using artistic practice, a shared, agonistic
7 understanding can be developed and translated into recommendations
8 that lead to practical and potentially transformative change (Mitchell
9 et al, 2017).
10
11
12
What is Co-Creation?
13 This volume defines Co-Creation as a collective creative process that
14 aims to feed into shared understandings of socially just neighbourhoods
15 and cities (Carpenter and Horvath, 2018; Carpenter et al, 2021
16 forthcoming). Co-Creation simultaneously results in tangible material
17 outputs – for instance, artworks, artefacts or other objects – and
18 knowledge generated by multiple partners. The former are produced
19 using arts or other creative methods. While their aesthetic quality is
20 important, the collaborative process leading to their elaboration is
21 equally, if not more, vital, because it offers multiple opportunities for
22 participants to share perceptions, views and understanding about how
23 to build more socially just places for the future.
24 The term ‘co-creation’ itself was initially applied in the business
25 sector in the 1990s, referring to customer contribution to product
26 and service development (Vargo and Lusch, 2004; Ind and Coates,
27 2013). It has since been applied more broadly in areas such as public
28 participation, collaborative governance and community engagement
29 (Voorberg et al, 2015: 1335). It is in this sphere that this book seeks to
30 redefine the concept in relation to a methodology that engages with
31 communities and helps them produce knowledge and understanding
32 about their neighbourhoods, to deepen their awareness of the social
33 world in close collaboration with artists and academic communities.
34 Although in recent times ‘co-creation’ has gained traction in a
35 variety of contexts, it has been used with shifting meaning and often
36 interchangeably with other ‘co-’ terms. One of these is ‘co-production’,
37 a term associated with citizens’ involvement in the provision of public
38 services. Originating in the work of Ostrom (1990), the concept of
39 ‘co-production’ was further developed by Jasanoff (2004) in the field
40 of public management research. More recently, critics have highlighted
41 how co-production has also been associated with the reduction of
42 state funding for services in the public sector, where end-users are
6
page 7 Introduction
1 increasingly called upon to fill the gaps in provision left by austerity cuts
2 (Fotaki, 2015). The term has recently been also adopted in the academic
3 literature (Campbell and Vanderhoven, 2016; Banks et al, 2018), where
4 it is used to describe the ‘participatory turn’ through which researchers
5 generate knowledge in collaboration with stakeholders and other non-
6 academic partners previously excluded from formal research processes
7 (Ersoy, 2017; Banks et al, 2018). In this context, the process can also
8 be labelled ‘co-creation’ (Leading Cities, 2015).
9 The knowledge generating process this book refers to as ‘Co-
10 Creation’ (used in this volume with capital letters to distinguish it from
11 the previously explained meanings of ‘co-creation’) draws on many
12 of the principles of ‘participatory action research’ as a well-established
13 approach to social enquiry (Whyte, 1991; Reason, 1994; Greenwood
14 and Levin, 1998), while it also reflects the core foundations of ‘co-
15 operative inquiry’ (Heron, 1996). These approaches emphasise the
16 importance of research ‘with’, rather than ‘on’, people and have a long-
17 established tradition in social science enquiry, blurring the boundaries
18 between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’ to break down hierarchical
19 barriers in order to encourage mutual learning (Beebeejaun et al, 2014).
20 Our approach to Co-Creation adopts these guiding principles, but
21 takes them one step further, by advocating for systematic collaborations
22 between academic researchers and a range of non-academic partners.
23 These involve three groups in particular: first, groups of local residents
24 who have a stake in the research topic at hand; second, stakeholders
25 who are invested in local structures to affect societal change; and
26 third, artists whose socially engaged practices contribute to voicing
27 diverse experiences and processes at the local level and to generating
28 understanding around spatial justice and social inclusion. The
29 boundaries between these groups are fluid and partners in Co-Creation
30 may sit within one or several groups simultaneously.
31 A key innovation of our understanding of Co-Creation is the
32 involvement of all participants in a creative, arts-based practice of
33 knowledge production, including academic researchers and members
34 of the non-academic community who together engage in creative
35 methods. By challenging rigid binaries such as ‘researchers’ and
36 ‘researched’, ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’, or ‘artists’ and ‘non-
37 artists’, this approach seeks to balance the inherent power dynamics
38 that are present in social relationships. Whereas the overarching aim
39 of Co-Creation is underpinned by notions of equality and inclusivity,
40 Co-Creation as a practice inevitably unfolds within an arena of diverse
41 and at times conflicting interests. Researchers, local residents, artists and
42 policy makers may have different ideas about the overall narrative to be
7
1 developed using Co-Creation, who is best positioned to develop and

2 disseminate the emerging stories, and how these should be presented
3 and applied.
4 Recognising such deep-rooted power relations embedded within
5 society, Alexandra (2015: 43) offers the conceptual tool of ‘political
6 listening’ as a way forward, suggesting that ‘within this nexus of
7 interdependent yet unequal relationships, a methodological attention
8 to the politics of listening offers conceptual inroads into addressing the
9 power asymmetries inherent in participatory knowledge projection’
10 [italics added]. The concept of ‘political listening’, first identified by
11 Bickford (1996), highlights the presence of conflict and difference
12 and makes communicative interaction necessary. As Bickford notes,
13 ‘communicative interaction – speaking and listening together – does
14 not necessarily resolve or do away with the conflicts that arise from
15 uncertainty, inequality or identity. Rather it enables political actors to
16 decide democratically how to act in the face of conflict, and to clarify
17 the nature of the conflict at hand’ (Bickford, 1996: 2). Co-Creation
18 involves political listening and complex negotiations to address
19 hierarchies, tensions and disagreements during the Co-Creative process.
20 A further issue for Co-Creation is the need for reflexivity, on the part
21 of all participants in the process, paying attention to positionality, as
22 well as to ‘reflexivity, the production of knowledge and the power
23 relations that are inherent in research processes’ (Sultana, 2007: 382). If
24 successfully executed, this approach to Co-Creation acknowledges the
25 tensions and power relations that are likely to exist between participants
26 and creates an environment of mutual trust in which participants can
27 both listen to each other and negotiate outcomes through the more
28 subtle, embodied ways of collective creative practice.
29
30
31
Co-Creation in theory and practice
32 Translating the central aims of Co-Creation into practice is faced
33 with complex challenges due to the infinite variety of contexts,
34 configurations of actors and power relations. To be able to satisfy
35 different needs and address issues that are relevant in certain contexts
36 rather than in others, Co-Creation as a method has to be adaptable.
37 Yet this flexibility should not jeopardise the democratic, inclusive
38 ethos at its core. This makes it difficult to provide a universally valid
39 blueprint applicable in every context. Thus, without pretence to
40 offering precise guidelines, this volume proposes a set of overarching
41 ‘principles’ (understood here both as a rule and as a foundation for
42 belief and behaviour) which have been shaped through discussions
8
page 9 Introduction
1 Figure 1.1: Co-Creation principles.

2
1 EQUAL 6 EMBEDDED
3 ETHOS
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH
Co-Creation provides a safe Participants taking part in Co-Creation
4
environment for knowledge workshops are embedded in the urban
5 exchange, in which inequalities area where the intervention happens.
6 are recognised and mitigated
against using strategies for power
7
drawn up early on in the process.
8
2 RESPECTFUL 7 AWARE
9
All participants commit to Co-Creation workshops are preceded
10 respecting each other and the Co- by a series of stakeholder consultations
11 Creation principles. to ensure that local needs, contextual
specificities and existing knowledge
12
are taken into account and that
13 evaluation criteria are co-created with
14 stakeholders at the beginning of the
15 process.
16 3 ETHICAL 8 PLURIVOCAL
Ethical issues are handled All participants have a voice setting
17
with care following University the goal(s) of Co-Creation workshops
18 procedures, and whenever and the design of the activities is based
19 possible, local labour is on a consensus about what will be
20 remunerated. co-created.
21 4 SHARED 9 ACTIVE
The outcomes are the shared All participants involved in Co-
22
property of all participants and Creation workshops play active roles in
23 cannot be exploited without their preparing, running, documenting and
24 previous consent. analysing the creative process, be they
25 researchers, artists or communities.
26 5 TRUST-BASED 10 CREATIVE
Co-Creation aims to produce trust- Co-Creation workshops use art/
27
based relationships. To facilitate creativity to produce outcomes, both
28 this, participants are encouraged tangible such as works of art or creative
29 to spend time together, sharing products, and intangible, such as
30 meals and social space. networks and shared understanding.
These outcomes are captured and
31 evaluated.
32
33
34 with researchers, artists and practitioners and tested through a range
35 of case studies in both the Global North and South (see Figure 1.1).
36 These ten principles establish a framework underpinned by a set
37 of ideals and a range of methodological considerations. The first five
38 principles outline an ethos in which all partners are considered equals
39 and treated with respect, existing power relations are acknowledged
40 and strategies are devised to mitigate them. The dialogue between
41 participants is enabled by trust built through lengthy processes facilitated
42 by sharing social space and common meals and working together
9
1 towards shared creative objectives. Some of the ethical issues addressed

2 here revolve around partners’ status as professional or volunteer
3 Co-Creators, with salience for whose time and labour should be
4 remunerated. With regard to ownership and dissemination, the authors
5 believe that collectively produced outcomes should be considered as
6 the shared property of all participants.
7 The remaining five principles are concerned with methodological
8 issues rather than ethical ones. They argue for initial stakeholder
9 meetings to be held as a way to identify participants’ needs and
10 acknowledge pre-existing local knowledge. They also recommend that
11 at least some, if not all, actors should be embedded in the context where
12 Co-Creation is taking place, thereby facilitating the understanding of
13 specific local challenges. They advocate for the active participation of
14 all the partners in the project design as well as in knowledge production
15 and creative activities. However, there may be circumstances in which
16 some of these principles can be disregarded.
17 Our definition of Co-Creation sees arts practice as embedded in the
18 process of knowledge production. This implies that the production
19 of the understandings and the creation of tangible artefacts are not
20 two isolated processes, but two strongly interconnected facets of the
21 same process. This inevitably raises questions about how knowledge
22 created through creative methods is articulated and interpreted and
23 how it contributes to a deeper understanding of different perspectives
24 about issues related to the neighbourhood, the city and social justice
25 in general.
26 Another set of questions concerns Co-Creation’s relationship with
27 other arts-based methods. What does Co-Creation do differently from
28 other creative methods? Is it impactful in general or only in certain
29 contexts? What are Co-Creation’s social benefits and how can they
30 be evidenced? While some critics have cautioned against proclaiming
31 the all-encompassing benefits of arts-based methods in bringing about
32 social change (Low et al, 2012), there is a growing body of literature
33 on arts-based methods in research as a valid approach to troubling
34 social issues (Leavy, 2015). Blodgett et al (2013: 313) suggest that
35 arts-based methods can be used not only by professional artists but
36 also by ‘researchers and professionals to assist people in expressing
37 feelings and thoughts that … are difficult to articulate in words’.
38 Arts-based approaches are increasingly seen as being particularly
39 powerful in enabling agency, and in creating spaces for empowerment,
40 engagement and ownership (Mitchell et al, 2017), while ‘investigating
41 topics associated with high levels of emotion’ (Prendergast, 2009).
42 Involving artists in research projects can be beneficial because often
10
page 11 Introduction
1 their ‘approaches will be different from established norms, creating

2 an unexpected experience for all collaborators’ (Pahl et al, 2017: 131)
3 and their ‘interventions can change the way people do things … and
4 might create a new configuration of how space is used and appreciated
5 by those who live there’ (Pahl et al, 2017: 132).
6 However, many arts-based research projects only use art as a trigger
7 to elicit emotions or responses. In these projects, arts-based researchers
8 remain purposely outside the creative process (which differs from the
9 Co-Creation approach), in order to be able to understand participants’
10 views without adopting and reproducing them as their own (Bryant and
11 Charmaz, 2007). Other approaches, however, may ally arts-based and
12 participatory research methods to use the productive tension during
13 the collaborative process of knowledge production to help multiple
14 and conflicting perspectives emerge. This is advocated by Gallagher
15 (2008) who uses arts-based methods to position the researchers as doers
16 instead of observers and to build a shared place in which ‘polivocality’
17 helps resist ‘closed interpretations’ (Gallagher, 2008: 71).
18 Similarly, in Co-Creation, the authors propose that all participants,
19 including researchers, engage in the creative process as a way of
20 collaboratively Co-Creating knowledge and deepening understanding
21 from different perspectives. In addition, Co-Creation seeks to learn
22 from artists’ capacity to challenge and dismantle multiple stigmas
23 attached to disadvantaged neighbourhoods using ‘complicated gestures
24 of rewriting, strategies of decontextualising’ (Rosello, 1998: 18)
25 and encourage residents of vulnerable neighbourhoods to embrace
26 aspirations, contributing to improve their lives and well-being, and
27 to achieve positive outcomes in terms of health, education, and
28 employment to reposition themselves within society (Kearns, 2003).
29 Other issues arising concern the finality and the feasibility of the
30 knowledge process. What motivates different actors’ participation?
31 Who is meant to apply the results and to what end? How will the
32 collectively produced understanding lead to social change? To what
33 extent do residents actually benefit from working with artists and
34 researchers and what do researchers gain from engaging in creative
35 activities together with communities and artists? How can this impact
36 be evidenced? How can Co-Creation handle hierarchies and conflicting
37 interests that may exist within the communities, and between them
38 and the external partners? For instance, should policy makers or other
39 power holders be admitted to participate in Co-Creation or would this
40 make the creation of a safe space for other participants too challenging?
41 Can state-initiated, top-down attempts at Co-Creation be trusted to
42 come without a hidden agenda? Who is the most credible initiator of
11
1 Co-Creation, researchers or artists seeking to reach into communities,

2 or communities reaching out to them? And finally, can Co-Creation
3 be practised in large groups or at a wider community level rather than
4 in the intimacy of a small group framework? Can it be done in a short
5 timeframe or does it require a lengthy phase of relation-building?
6 These are only some of the questions this volume sets out to
7 explore. Being critically mindful of the links between socially engaged
8 collaborative practice, artistic presence, urban change and displacement,
9 and aware of potential tensions between artistic and academic ways
10 of producing knowledge, the authors of this volume propose to
11 analyse the potential of Co-Creation to offer an alternative lens and a
12 crossover between the epistemologies of the North and the embodied,
13 sensorial and passionate approaches developed by the epistemologies
14 of the South.
15
16
Co-Creation in the Global North and the Global South
17
18 This book originates in a partnership between two European and two
19 Latin American academic institutions and three European non-profit
20 organisations, brought together in a research project funded under the
21 EU’s Horizon 2020 RISE scheme (2017–20) to explore Co-Creation
22 in Western Europe and Latin America. Some chapters draw on
23 research undertaken as part of the project, such as case studies in Rio
24 de Janeiro, Greater Paris or Mexico City. Other contributors reflect on
25 similar practices and their own experience in cities including Bristol,
26 Brussels, Madrid, Swindon and Vancouver. However, rather than the
27 planned outcome of a project, the book is the result of an organic
28 collaboration between artists, researchers, NGOs and community
29 activists who have engaged in an interdisciplinary and cross-national
30 dialogue about knowledge production with communities in different
31 contexts of urban marginality.
32 Some authors are academics based at the University of Bath,
33 Oxford Brookes University, the National Autonomous University of
34 Mexico (UNAM) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de
35 Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Others are activists from the NGOs European
36 Alternatives (Paris), City Mine(d) (Brussels) and Tesserae (Berlin).
37 Despite their diverse experience as academics, practitioners, activists
38 and in some cases artists, most contributors associated with the
39 Horizon 2020 project have studied in Global North universities and
40 are as, if not more, familiar with the epistemologies of the North than
41 with those of the South. Reversely, corporeal knowledge associated
42 with the epistemologies of the South can also exist in communities
12
1 based in European or North American geographical settings. For a

2 better representation of community voices and Southern perspectives,
3 however, the pool of authors has been widened to include chapters
4 written or co-written by artists and activists who were not part of the
5 project originally, but who are now associated with it. As a consequence
6 of this, the book is truly Co-Created across disciplines, sectors and
7 continents.
8 Drawing on a range of Global North and Global South perspectives,
9 this volume seeks to investigate Co-Creation through theoretical
10 reflections supported by analysis of Co-Creation practice using a
11 case-study approach. It is divided into two main parts. Part I seeks to
12 engage with broader theoretical debates about Co-Creation and arts-
13 based knowledge production in the Global North and South, while
14 Part II focuses on Co-Creation in practice and seeks to bridge the gap
15 between academic, artistic and community perspectives.
16 After this introduction sets the scene for a reconceptualisation of
17 Co-Creation as collaborative arts and knowledge practice, the chapters
18 in Part I critically explore the opportunities Co-Creation opens up for
19 emancipation, civil imagination, artistic citizenship, destigmatisation
20 and new narratives. However, these chapters also point to potential
21 risks such as cooptation by the state or the recycling in new forms
22 of old hierarchies that Co-Creation seeks to disrupt. Brownill and
23 Natividad Puig (Chapter 2) discuss whether existing definitions and
24 conceptualisations of Co-Creation originating from the Global North
25 can adequately describe experiences from the Global South. They
26 focus on the relationship between Co-Creation and the state as a
27 way of illustrating these debates in more depth. In Chapter 3, Pantoja
28 Peschard investigates the role of Co-Creation in challenging official
29 narratives and histories which tend to exclude deprived communities
30 from participating, as well as its relationship to Ariella Azoulay’s (2012)
31 concept of ‘civil imagination’, which is also then linked to the concept
32 of ‘artistic citizenship’.
33 Gázquez Iglesias (Chapter 4) develops this further, exploring the
34 theoretical limitations of the ‘Global North–Global South’ model
35 and investigates the risks of a hegemonic representational practice
36 that reproduces asymmetry and domination. Here, Co- Creation
37 is suggested as an innovative approach for constructing alternative
38 representational structures, discussed in the context of the Co-Creation
39 workshop that was held in Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro, in August
40 2018. Milanese (Chapter 5) then explores the questions of where
41 and when the Co-Creation methodology can be a useful strategy. He
42 reflects upon Co-Creation’s ability to open up temporary spaces of
13
1 collaboration in which the shifting shape and time of the urban can
2 be discerned and made accessible. Depper and Fullagar (Chapter 6)
3 link Co-Creation as inventive practice with contemporary debates
4 within new materialism. They examine the implications of affect
5 and of human and non-human relations in creative collaborations
6 and Co-Creation’s material-discursive process. In Chapter 7, Castro
7 Suarez and Quiroz Rothe broaden the field, by exploring the material
8 conditions of Co-Creation in metropolises such as Mexico City and
9 focusing on the role of the built environment in processes associated
10 with Co-Creation. The authors examine a range of art practices
11 taking place in different venues across the city and use the example
12 of the recent FAROS project involving the creation of dedicated
13 art facilities in deprived areas. Finally, Valverde Viesca and Pacheco
14 Gordillo (Chapter 8) investigate the link between community social
15 capital generated in public programmes, advocacy actions and Co-
16 Creation. They draw on the experience of the recent Neighbourhood
17 Improvement Programme in Mexico City to identify the potential
18 role of Co-Creation in participatory processes with a direct impact
19 on policy making.
20 Part II addresses Co-Creation through a range of practices observed
21 by contributors across the Global North and South. Chapters in
22 this section primarily focus on practices initiated by artist-cultural
23 promoters, artist-researchers, or the state. Some of these were originally
24 designed as Co-Creation while others were established on similar
25 premises and therefore constitute useful examples as comparators for
26 the analysis here. Whereas some chapters explore Co-Creation practice
27 from a predominantly academic perspective, others are authored or
28 co-authored by artists and civil society organisations and examine
29 from their angle how the methodology of Co-Creation might support
30 their activities.
31 In Chapter 9, Pruvot examines the methodology of Co-Creation
32 in the context of a local authority arts collaboration project in Plaine
33 Commune, in the Greater Paris area, setting the case in the context
34 of debates around the Creative City. The chapter explores whether
35 the Co-Creation methodology could be used by local authorities in
36 rethinking processes of consultation and participation and in creating
37 new modes of governance around urban development projects. Horvath
38 (Chapter 10) then explores Co-Creation from a Global North/Global
39 South comparative perspective, by taking examples of two literary
40 festivals: the Brazilian Literary Festival of Peripheries (FLUP) and the
41 French ‘La Dictée des Cités’ (The Dictation of the Suburbs). While the
42 chapter explores the creative potential of these two events to disrupt
14
1 some of the clichés attached to the French banlieues and Brazilian favelas,
2 it also reflects upon the possibilities of Co-Creating on a larger scale
3 than the neighbourhood level.
4 Carpenter (Chapter 11) then takes the example of a Co-Creative
5 practice in the form of a community- based percussion band in
6 Vancouver, Canada. She demonstrates that while the methodology of
7 Co-Creation holds critical potential as a tool to challenge stereotypes
8 and marginalisation, it nevertheless operates within the structural
9 constraints of deeply embedded power hierarchies and hegemonic
10 discourses that dominate received narratives.
11 In Chapter 12, Segers draws on insights derived from projects run
12 by the NGO City Mine(d) in Spain and Belgium to reflect on social
13 transformation through the lens of ‘tough issues’, drawing on the
14 work of de Certeau (1980) to explore the shift within community
15 organisations from ‘résistance’ to ‘bricolage’. The chapter argues for the
16 role of a third actor in a social transformation process who, through a
17 creative process such as ‘prototyping’, becomes tactically linked to key
18 stakeholders. In Chapter 13, King, Mean and Stewart-Hall explore
19 the work of the Knowle West Media Centre, in Bristol (UK), which
20 engages with communities using creative methods to address local
21 issues such as inadequate and unaffordable housing. The chapter shows
22 how creative processes can contribute to nurturing exchanges and
23 developing relationships of trust through Co-Creation. Continuing
24 on the community theme, Álvarez-Gortari, Mihessen and Spencer
25 (Chapter 14) discuss some of the innovative ways and collaborative
26 approaches developed by Casa Fluminense, a non-profit organisation
27 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to influence urban policy and address issues
28 of marginalisation. Although Casa Fluminense’s approach shares some
29 of the principles and strengths of Co-Creation, they moved away from
30 using the term Co-Creation itself, as they recognise that on a regional
31 level a truly Co-Creative process is difficult to achieve. In Chapter 15,
32 Clift, Telles, and Silva focus on the history of cultural activism in the
33 favela of Santa Marta organised by the Eco Group and its leader Itamar
34 Silva, a black journalist, organic intellectual, activist, and community
35 organiser in Santa Marta. The chapter explores the history of cultural
36 activism in Santa Marta, Itamar’s leadership in building this activism
37 in the neighbourhood, and the role of community stakeholders and
38 researchers in Co-Creation.
39 Staying in Rio de Janeiro, Rodrigues and Horvath (Chapter 16)
40 explore favela tourism through the lens of Co-Creation, taking the
41 example of the favela Tabajaras and Cabritos in Rio de Janeiro, where
42 graffiti artist Tick (Rodrigues) has been working to design a favela
15
1 tour focusing on street art. Building on a collaboration between

2 researchers, local residents and the artist, the project investigates Co-
3 Creation’s potential to challenge dominant narratives related to favela
4 populations and disrupt established models of favela tourism. Further
5 community perspectives are examined in Mexico City (Chapter 17)
6 where Davies, Osorio Saez, Sandoval-Hernandez and Horvath explore
7 the efficiency of mixed-method research and a quasi-experimental
8 approach in measuring the impact of Co-Creation in an educational
9 setting in Iztapalapa, a marginalised area of the city. The authors
10 claim that, while some aspects of the behavioural change enabled by
11 Co-Creation can be successfully evidenced at a neighbourhood level,
12 others are deeply embedded in the resulting artwork and the affects
13 generated by their creation and sharing, which call for new types of
14 evaluation tools to be developed in dialogue with the epistemologies
15 of the South.
16 The Conclusion (Chapter 18) seeks to summarise what we can
17 learn from Co-Creation experiences and similar creative initiatives
18 in the Global North and South. Horvath and Carpenter identify key
19 challenges (such as ethical issues resulting from previous hierarchies,
20 practical obstacles in the way of collaborative processes and relational
21 issues) both between Co-Creation partners and between Co-Creation
22 teams and other audiences, such as broader communities, policy makers
23 and the state. Drawing on the contributions in the previous chapters,
24 the authors highlight key underlying themes, in particular drawing
25 out the salient comparative aspects. The book ends with a set of
26 recommendations which can provide guidance for activists, researchers,
27 artists or policy makers and other practitioners setting up Co-Creation
28 workshops and offer directions for further research.
29
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Co-Creation in theory
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Co-creation and the state in
6 a global context
7
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Sue Brownill and Oscar Natividad Puig
10
11
12
13
Introduction
14 Co-creation1 narratives are gaining global currency, with initiatives
15 and governments around the world increasingly using the term to
16 label their activities across very different contexts, in an example of
17 what McCann and Ward (2011) refer to as ‘policy mobility’. This
18 chapter critically explores the implications of this in two ways. First,
19 by drawing on debates about the need for theory to ‘see from the
20 South’ (Watson, 2009), it discusses whether existing definitions and
21 conceptualisations of co-creation, which tend to come from the Global
22 North, can adequately characterise and understand the experience of
23 the Global South. Such debates overlap with decolonial approaches
24 seeking to challenge the geopolitics of knowledge production, which
25 are of particular relevance to considerations of co-creation (see for
26 example Mignolo, 2000; Quijano, 2007). This chapter therefore asks
27 the question: is co-creation a colonising concept or can it be explored
28 in ways which break down dichotomies and change relations between
29 the Global North and South as well as addressing other examples of
30 marginalisation and exclusion?
31 Second, the chapter focuses on the relationship between co-
32 creation and the state as a way of illustrating these debates in
33 more depth. In liberal democracies, the ideal of co- creation
34 sees communities and the state working together in addressing
35 inequalities, allowing voices to be heard, providing emancipatory
36 potential and thus changing the relationship between the state and
37 its publics. But as Pritchard’s (2017) critique among others points
38 out, in both the Global North and South, such initiatives can be
39 coopted by the state and other agencies as a way of devolving
40 responsibilities, implementing growth-oriented urban agendas and
41 organising voluntary effort leading to the potential cooption of
42
23
1 groups and initiatives into a restrictive narrative of co-creation. In

2 other more extreme cases, an oppressive and militarised state can
3 close down spaces of co-creation. How do projects and communities
4 navigate these differing contexts, and what forms of co-creation
5 emerge within them?
6 These questions are significant ones for a project that brings together
7 partners from the Global North and South, but the origins of which
8 could arguably be seen as adding to the colonisation of urban theory
9 and practice. This chapter will address them by drawing on relevant
10 literature and exploring the views and experience of participants in
11 co-creative practices gathered in a series of in-depth interviews with
12 four local stakeholders directly involved in the H2020 Co-Creation
13 case studies in Brazil and Mexico, and with three additional academics
14 from these countries working in related fields. The questions are
15 aimed at capturing the implications of differing contexts and local
16 conceptualisations, exploring co-creation as an emerging concept in
17 conversation with the partners of the project beyond the term Co-
18 Creation as defined in the introduction of this book (Chapter 1). It also
19 brings in material and discussions held at three conferences organised
20 by the project in Berlin, Rio and Mexico City. The discussion is,
21 therefore, largely restricted to the countries participating in the
22 project but the authors hope that this will raise debates and issues
23 with a wider remit.
24
25
26
Seeing from the South
27 The phrase ‘seeing from the South’ was popularised in a 2009 article
28 by South African planner Vanessa Watson (Watson, 2009). The article
29 was part of a growing body of work which questioned the ability
30 of the urban theory ‘canon’ to fully understand and explain the
31 urban experience in the Global South, given such theory was based
32 largely on the experience of major Western cities such as Chicago
33 and Los Angeles. Not only is this seen as an example, for some, of
34 the colonisation of knowledge and the exclusion of some voices
35 in favour of others, but also as resulting in theory which cannot
36 explain Southern cities, much less support calls for interventions
37 within them. Watson was joined by other writers such as Ananya
38 Roy (2011) (writing largely about the Asian experience) and Jennifer
39 Robinson (2013) (Africa) in calling for urban studies and urban
40 theory to be reoriented and transformed by taking on board the
41 knowledge and experiences of the Global South. This, they asserted,
42
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page 25 Co-creation and the state in a global context
1 would produce different arguments and concepts, and include voices

2 different from traditional hegemonic theory, which, as a result, can
3 be seen as provincial rather than global. There are other dimensions
4 than the geopolitics of North–South distinctions to these critiques,
5 particularly articulations with relations of race, gender and sexuality
6 (Lugones, 2007). However, the focus here is on ‘seeing from the
7 South’. The implications of this for a concept such as Co-Creation
8 are twofold: first, is it merely yet another example of a concept from
9 the North, which is imposed on the South, or second (and from a
10 more nuanced perspective) what are the implications of the differing
11 contexts in which Co-Creation occurs for how the concept can be
12 theorised and understood?
13
14
What/where is the Global South?
15
16 Before exploring these questions further, it is important to
17 understand what is meant by the term ‘the Global South’. Like ‘co-
18 creation’, the term is itself contested. Its origins lie in the Brandt
19 report of 1980 (Brandt and Sampson, 1980), which sought to move
20 away from the ‘Third World’ label and shift global debates from a
21 focus on East/West. Nevertheless, Roy (2014) has questioned the
22 subsequent construction of the Global South as the location of
23 underdevelopment. She notes that initiatives such as participatory
24 action research (PAR), movements for rights to the city, participatory
25 budgeting, and so on show that new formations are occurring
26 in Southern cities meaning the South cannot be seen as a ‘stable
27 ontological category symbolising subalternity’ (p 15) but instead
28 should be seen as a source of innovation. Previously (Roy, 2005), she
29 has called for informality to be recognised as a form of urbanisation
30 in its own right, rather as something apart from the formal; in other
31 words, as real urbanisation. Miraftab and Kudva (2015) recognise
32 the dangers of essentialism and hierarchies associated with the term
33 the Global South, but argue for an understanding of the term that
34 ‘emphasise(s) a shared heritage of recent colonial histories in the
35 global peripheries … combined with Post WWII experience of
36 development to “alleviate” poverty’ (p 4).
37 Mabin (2014) (also writing from South Africa) sees a dual situation
38 of postcoloniality and a particular political economic situation in which
39 there is a condition of scarcity for the majority as Southern conditions.
40 It is above all, he argues, a relational not a geographical term. However,
41 he also cautions against a focus on ‘seeing from the South’ which sets
42
25
1 up new dichotomies and hierarchies and could potentially repeat the

2 exclusion it is trying to overcome. He and others have questioned
3 the usefulness of the term ‘South’ itself. He also suggests that some
4 theoretical tools may have value in understanding the global urban
5 experience despite their provenance. The issue then becomes one of
6 conducting research which tests rather than assumes the theoretical
7 efficacy of such tools.
8
9
Policy mobility: a new form of colonisation?
10
11 It is not just theory which is critiqued from this perspective, but
12 also practice. Weiner (2014), writing from the Brazilian perspective,
13 questions the notion of best practice in policy and the rise of globally
14 circulating city-models (see also McCann and Ward, 2011). These
15 are, he argues, also rooted in colonial history and he details, for
16 example, how urban planning in Rio adopted European models
17 from the Portuguese colonialists through to the French Beaux-
18 Arts and the ‘Barcelona effect’. Mabin (2014) also challenges the
19 tendency to export modernity as the aim of city building, which has
20 an underlying assumption that the Western city is somehow ‘better’.
21 Weiner argues that this practice has been cemented in more recent
22 years through multilateral development agencies and research which
23 ‘reflects particular conceptions and goals’ (Weiner, 2014: 51) under
24 the guise of international collaboration. This, he argues, is another
25 form of colonialisation, not the same as the cathedral and squares of
26 the Portuguese but one which nevertheless demonstrates relations of
27 power, domination and exclusion in similar ways to debates about the
28 colonisation of knowledge.
29 The rise of global research agendas and the search for ways of
30 addressing global challenges such as the United Nations’ Millennium
31 Development Goals, imperatives that to a certain extent have driven
32 this project, can be seen as part of these debates. As Izzi points
33 out in an auto-critique of one such project, these agendas set up
34 expectations that research projects will produce cutting-edge results,
35 be interdisciplinary, collaborative and participatory, and achieve impact
36 and equitable North-South relations all at the same time (Izzy, nd).
37 There are dangers that from such practices new forms of knowledge
38 colonialisation will occur and tokenistic practices will emerge, which
39 do not fundamentally alter research agendas in the West unless
40 attention is paid to the difficulties and politics of such projects. For
41 example, she argues that space should be found to reframe questions
42
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1 as a result of participatory research as projects progress. This critique

2 also raises questions about the micro-politics of Co-Creation projects,
3 in particular, the extent that ‘experts’ and ‘outsiders’ frame debates,
4 lead activities and present results.
5 Against this, Weiner (2014) and others argue that practice and
6 knowledge should be decolonised. ‘Decoloniality is an intentional
7 act a process of “de-linking” knowledge, theory and praxis from
8 Euro-centric Western structures and systems’ (Fernandez, 2019; see
9 also Mignolo, 2009). Weiner argues this is a dual process; recognising
10 how the cities (and theories) of the West were themselves built upon
11 colonialism (trade and slavery) – in other words modernity and
12 colonialisation are linked – and also imagining a ‘different world’ not
13 by replacing one set of theories with other Southern ones but through
14 pluri-versalism, dialogues and research which is specific to context
15 (Weiner, 2014).
16
17
Moving forward: beyond dichotomies
18
19 The implications of these debates in terms of future urban research
20 are varied. For some (Roy and Watson), the current challenge is that
21 of replacing many existing concepts and theories with new forms
22 of knowledge and new concepts and theories – ‘Southern theory’.
23 However, others (Mabin and Weiner) argue against this, seeing it
24 as replacing one set of limited theories with another. Instead, they
25 say, there is a need to move beyond critique and dichotomies to
26 think about how research and policy mobility can be framed to
27 avoid exclusion and the resulting partial theorisation. This implies
28 more dialogue, reflexivity and hybridity in research. This would
29 include recognition of the diversity of experiences and knowledge,
30 and a commitment to theorising from this plurality/ diversity.
31 This is accompanied by an appreciation of the power relations of
32 colonising knowledge and an intent to ‘trouble methodological
33 paradigms and knowledge constructions’ (Fernandez, 2019) while
34 also paying attention to power dynamics within research processes
35 (Gaventa, 1993).
36 Robinson (2013) and others, for example, call for a new form of
37 comparative research which is not about comparing or transferring
38 best practice but about understandings emerging out of a deep
39 appreciation of each context. In this vein, Weiner (2014) calls for a
40 dialogical approach based on a borderless, free and fair trade of ideas,
41 an appreciation of the condition of production of the knowledge that
42
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1 is being submitted to the dialogues, a questioning of taken for granted

2 assumptions, and a recognition of the difficulties of translating ideas and
3 practices from one place to another. In short, these seem to be about
4 replacing the North/South dichotomy with a transformed research
5 process and a search for pluralistic/hybrid theorising.
6 The chapter turns now to look at the implications of these debates
7 for the concept and practice of Co-Creation, as experienced on this
8 project.
9
10
11
Co-creation: a colonising concept?
12 Major reviews of co-creation and related concepts already exist (see
13 for example Voorberg et al, 2015; Horner, 2016). These indicate that
14 co-creation is a diffuse and contested concept. Leaving aside these
15 debates, this chapter focuses on the question raised in the introduction
16 about whether co-creation is an example of a colonialising concept or
17 whether it could be explored conceptually and methodologically in
18 different contexts in a way that moves beyond dichotomies of North
19 and South. First, the evolution of the term co-creation is explored
20 and, second, the understandings and uses of it from the perspective of
21 respondents are explored in more depth.
22 Through carrying out a literature review for the project, it became
23 clear that most recent writing and discussion on the concept of co-
24 creation has largely come from and is related to the Global North
25 (Colini and Brownill, 2018). Nevertheless, noting Weiner’s (2014)
26 calls for scholars to reveal the interplay between North and South in
27 the formation of theories and ideas is one way of challenging such
28 silences. Such an exercise reveals a pattern of North/South interaction
29 which is arguably underplayed in many accounts. As shown elsewhere
30 (Colini and Brownill, 2018 , and in Chapter 1) co-creation is not a new
31 concept. It initially gained traction in the business world in the 1990s
32 referring to the active involvement of customers in the co-creation
33 of the products they would consume in the future (Vargo and Lusch,
34 2004). Significantly, the term then migrated to the world of social
35 and economic development through the work of Eleanor Ostrom
36 (1990), which stressed the value of cooperation and co-creation in
37 resource development and management, particularly in the Global
38 South. Practices such as participatory rapid appraisal (PRA), which
39 focused on the participation of people in the formation of development
40 programmes and initiatives developed around this, went on to influence
41 community development activities in the North. However, this
42
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1 incorporation into international aid and development practice could be

2 seen as supporting arguments around colonialisation and co-creation.
3 Another example of North/ South interactions is the work of
4 theorists such as Freire (1993), who established a strong base in
5 theory and practice in the South, which then influenced thinking in
6 the North. Crystallised in his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1993),
7 Freire addressed one of the key concerns that co-creation and related
8 concepts are addressing, that of knowledge and whose knowledge
9 should be used in the basis of action and decisions, seeking to establish
10 an epistemology based on challenging dominant discourses, decentring
11 exclusionary knowledge, and acknowledging the value of multiple
12 forms of knowledge. His theorisation of knowledge based on Brazilian
13 society is a clear example of how the South has impacted theories in
14 the North, as his pedagogic values and theories can now be found
15 through most Anglo-Saxon education systems. In a similar way, but
16 more recently, Mike Davis popularised the term ‘favela’ (Davis, 2015) in
17 contrast to the English concept ‘slum’ to acknowledge differences across
18 territories of poverty across the globe. Such a recent conceptualisation
19 may still result in a dichotomy between ‘slums’ and ‘favelas’, but it has
20 the potential of promoting the hybrid conceptualisation this chapter
21 is exploring for the term ‘co-creation’ itself.
22 Considering the nature of the Co-Creation project, in which
23 knowledge exchange is promoted between partners in Europe and
24 the Global South (Brazil and Mexico), the views of these ‘Southern’
25 partners, as expressed in their interviews with the researchers, is of
26 significance here. First, at the level of terminology, most felt that
27 the concept was yet to be commonly used in both the policy and
28 academic literature in their countries. The prior arrival of other ‘co-’
29 terms, especially around social and economic development and also
30 participatory arts movements, may have arguably led to the elision of
31 the idea of ‘co-creation’ with related terms such as ‘co-production’, a
32 recurrent point raised by the project’s informants. Second, there was
33 some support for seeing co-creation as another ‘idea from elsewhere’
34 (McCann and Ward, 2011) moving from North to South. On the
35 rare occasions the researchers were told that the term co-creation was
36 used, it tended to be by non-government organisations (NGOs) reliant
37 on international funds and therefore linked to the global agenda of
38 cooperation and development discussed earlier in this chapter. In this
39 way, such NGOs become agents of policy mobility.
40 However, in a comment on why such mobility occurs, a respondent
41 from one such NGO claimed that imported concepts like ‘co-
42 production’ or ‘co-creation’ are sometimes imposed not only by
29
1 the North but also by governments themselves, cementing what he

2 called “the relationship between the centre and periphery”. This is an
3 acknowledgement of the relations of power and domination not just
4 potentially between the North and South but also the dominant view
5 in cities of the South, ‘the centre’, and those voices from historically
6 marginalised communities, the ‘periphery’. Nevertheless, while
7 conscious of these relations, the organisation was also attempting to
8 develop its own approaches under the co-creation heading which
9 could challenge them, once again showing the complexities that exist.
10 Related to this, in the words of one respondent, “the proximity of
11 co-creation to innovation is dangerous; there is a danger that (practices
12 and theorisations) will be lost in the search or fashion for new words
13 and ideas”. For some respondents, this raised the danger that the use
14 of a term such as co-creation could obscure long traditions of social
15 thought and action in particular places, while others felt there was
16 an opportunity for co-creation to learn from existing bodies of work
17 pursuing similar goals. Some mentioned the work of theorists such
18 as Freire already discussed. Additionally, several respondents called
19 attention to the long and proud history of popular movements in the
20 South, a long fight for a more meaningful involvement whenever
21 external stakeholders come to work in their territories. This fight has
22 sparked a conceptualisation of what popular movements in Brazil call
23 ‘effective participation’, while in Mexico it has resulted in advocacy
24 for participative development and horizontally constructed public
25 policies. In both cases, respondents felt these practices, which have
26 existed and matured in their countries over decades, are addressing
27 what Co-Creation is ultimately aiming for. Therefore, arguing not
28 only for continuity of social movements and activism in popular
29 territories but also for a conversation between foreign concepts with
30 local experiences, some respondents insisted on incorporating local
31 traditions to the conceptualisation of Co-Creation when working in
32 their territories.
33 Third, however, despite the dangers of uncritically adopting concepts
34 from elsewhere, and even though co-creation is not part of the
35 theoretical discourses of these respondents, some commented on the
36 usefulness of a new concept in bringing in fresh ideas and discussions,
37 not only among academics but also policy makers: “Could Co-Creation
38 be a weapon to recognise agency and elevate claims and demands?”
39 asked one. Respondents recognised the importance of having a space
40 for dialogue, a space in which the different participating stakeholders
41 openly acknowledge their interests, knowledge and preconceived
42 ideas. Co-Creation could be a way of opening up such spaces and
30
1 acknowledging different forms of knowledge and debate. However,

2 interviewees pointed out that Co-Creation “may change the way we
3 look at a situation, the way we describe, analyse and discuss it, but it
4 won’t directly change the root of the problem …”.
5 Finally, Co-Creation, by definition focuses on the co-elaboration
6 of objects. Some interviewees recognised the value of focusing on the
7 production of an artefact or output, rather than becoming trapped
8 in the discussion of intangible processes, the search for effective
9 participation or trying to influence wider policy processes. This can
10 open up new ways of influencing debates when other routes are
11 blocked. This also led to discussion around the role of arts, culture
12 and/or citizenship more broadly in the discussions of Co-Creation.
13 For instance, Brazilian respondents advocated a broader role for culture
14 instead of focusing only on arts, as it encompasses popular processes
15 of knowledge production more broadly.
16 Therefore, it would be too easy to conclude that co-creation is a
17 concept only relevant to the Global North, making its usage in the
18 South questionable, or that an inevitable process of colonisation was
19 occurring. However, while the label ‘co-creation’ may not be applied
20 by the partners in the Co-Creation project, the process of ‘co-creation’
21 may well be occurring under a different name: ‘effective participation’
22 in Brazil or ‘participatory development’ in Mexico being some of
23 them. There is also evidence of an awareness of how terms such as ‘co-
24 creation’ could be adapted, made and remade as they circulate globally.
25 Bearing in mind the calls of Watson (2009) and Robinson (2013)
26 for more comparative research, this provides scope for exploring the
27 different meanings, definitions and practices of co-creation in a variety
28 of different contexts in both the Global North and South. The aim
29 here is not to develop conceptual clarity or to reach an overarching
30 definition of co-creation, but to show the complexity, variation and
31 potential of the concept. To do this, the argument focuses on a key
32 aspect of the theory and practice of co-creation: the role of the state
33 and state–citizen relations that are embodied within it. Therefore, in
34 order to reflect on the sociopolitical particularities of these contexts, the
35 following section explores the role of the state in Brazil and Mexico,
36 relating it to Western liberal democracies.
37
38
39
Co-Creation and the state: North and South
40 Co-Creation as an activity, certainly within this project, tends to focus
41 on the actions of communities attempting to make their voices heard,
42 change conditions or address marginalisation and stigmatisation. In
31
1 many contexts, this brings the Co-Creation process into contact with
2 the state. Yet if definitions of co-creation are contested, then so is the
3 relation between co-creation, people, and the state. In addition, the
4 spaces of co-creation created by the dynamics between these elements
5 can vary greatly from place to place. Therefore, this becomes fertile
6 ground to explore further debates regarding North and South based
7 on the experiences in the different countries in the project.
8 The role of the state and the relationship between the state and
9 its publics is a key focus of debates on ‘seeing from the South’. As
10 previously indicated, such debates include calls for an awareness of
11 how governance forms part of the ‘southern condition’ (Mabin, 2014)
12 and the need to avoid imposing theories developed in the context of
13 liberal Westernised democracies, with their emphasis on consensus-
14 building, on the South. Within this, this chapter focuses on two
15 areas: different rationalities of state–society relations and different
16 spaces of participation. In terms of different state rationalities, Parnell
17 and Robinson (2012) for example caution against seeing the state as
18 monolithic and of assuming that neoliberalising trends evident in the
19 Global North are universal. Writing about South Africa, they see
20 the state as having an important role in, for example, anti-poverty
21 programmes which need not follow the coopting logic of neoliberalism.
22 This suggests the need for an awareness of different rationalities of state
23 intervention, which again, this chapter would argue, can transcend
24 North/South distinctions. De Satge and Watson (2018) extend this to
25 look at state–society relations. They use the term ‘conflicting rationality’
26 to describe state–society relations in highly conflictual Southern
27 contexts, where consensus-building or collaborative participatory
28 processes are unlikely to be effective. For example, they write about
29 attempts by the state to ‘formalise’ informal settlements, which are met
30 with resistance by those who feel their livelihoods and ways of life are
31 being threatened as a result. Even practices such as Co-Creation, aimed
32 at recognising diversity within territories, may be based on universal
33 assumptions of inclusion that would fail to recognise the conflicting
34 rationalities (Watson, 2003) within a sociopolitical context.
35 The recognition of the complexities of state– society relations
36 is extended when looking at participation. Cornwall (2004), for
37 example, distinguishes between invited and claimed spaces. Invited
38 spaces are those in which participants are asked to participate, such
39 as those linked to public policy. Claimed spaces are those that are
40 created and taken by citizens themselves, either in opposition to or in
41 the absence of formal policies. This inevitably raises questions about
42 power. American planner Sherry Arnstein summed these relations
32
1 up 50 years ago in her famous ladder of participation, with differing

2 degrees of citizen power represented as different ‘rungs’ on the ladder.
3 Notable in the ladder are the bottom rungs: these depict attempts at
4 participation without changes in power dynamics, which instead can
5 be used by those with power to legitimate their (unchanged) roles/
6 decisions and manipulate participants (Arnstein, 1969). It is this sort
7 of manipulation which prompted Cooke and Kothari (2001) to label
8 participation as a new tyranny, linking it to the spread of neoliberal
9 governance forms and development aid agendas (including practices
10 such as PRA) around the world.
11 Miraftab (2009), writing from the context of the Global South,
12 discusses the role of insurgent planning here. These are practices which
13 are counter-hegemonic, transgressive and imaginative: that is, they
14 create spaces which challenge the status quo (and for Miraftab that
15 includes the transfer of policy objectives from North to South) and aim
16 for more inclusive and just outcomes. Such debates, while intersecting
17 with North/South distinctions, nevertheless ultimately transcend them.
18 There can be no simple reading off of particular participatory spaces
19 being linked to particular geographies. Instead they can coexist or
20 conflict within the same city or even initiative. However, the context
21 in which these practices occur needs to be fully appreciated and taken
22 into account in ways that are aware of North/South dynamics.
23 Such arguments suggest that the state can take different forms in
24 different places and over time and, as a result, there are complexities in
25 the relationship between co-creation and the state which may or may
26 not correlate with North/South distinctions. This chapter illustrates
27 this with an overview of the context of Co-Creation actions in the
28 different locations within which the project is engaged. Later chapters
29 discuss particular neighbourhoods in detail; here the focus is on broad
30 trends in state–civil society relations around Co-Creation, drawing on
31 ideas of differing and conflicting rationalities and spaces of participation.
32 In Western Europe, normative assumptions about ‘co-creation’ as
33 a ‘good thing’ have led to it being increasingly adopted within policy
34 programmes, such as those of the EU. Many area-based schemes see
35 the democratic deficit as being part of the causes of neighbourhood
36 disadvantage along with related issues such as the lack of social capital.
37 Ways of overcoming this could be through collaborative planning,
38 community involvement and the use of art projects to empower and
39 to build social capital. This will then contribute to the redirection of
40 resources to areas/groups and the building of a consensus around future
41 actions. Co-creation, in this way, is seen as a way of bringing together
42 policy makers, residents and other actors to ‘co-create’ solutions to
33
1 particular issues/problems. Such approaches become further embedded

2 through funding programmes on the national and global scales.
3 The role of culture and artistic practices in addressing urban
4 deprivation and marginalisation has received increased attention in
5 recent years. As Pruvot’s chapter in this volume (Chapter 9) shows in
6 the case of Saint Denis, Paris, at the macro level, culture is seen as a way
7 of promoting economic growth and attracting inward investment and,
8 at the micro level, a cultural strategy looks to involve young people in
9 theatre, music and the arts to promote inclusion. Participatory practices
10 are also labelled as ‘co-creation’ or ‘co-production’ with consultancies
11 and agencies being employed to implement programmes. One such
12 example is the co-creation with artists and designers of open spaces
13 and art works linked to a major new rail link. In this context, ‘co-
14 creation’ as a term and a process often implies the complex ‘complicity’
15 (to use the phrase from the project’s Berlin conference) of state and
16 non-state actors.
17 Critiques of such actions argue that they can be coopted by the state
18 and constitute ‘governance through community’ (Rose, 1996) with
19 the state adopting ‘co-creative’ policies in order to use inclusivity and
20 participation to its own ends. An example in the UK is the Big Society
21 of the 2010–15 Coalition Government, when then Prime Minister
22 David Cameron’s political agenda to create a more participatory
23 democracy and devolve responsibility to the local level came at a time
24 of public sector cuts. As a result, the public was being asked to take on
25 the role of co-creators/co-deliverers of services, either instead of the
26 state or as unpaid volunteers for it. Others (for example Swyngedouw,
27 1997) argue these actions fundamentally ignore the conflict and the
28 inequality in power that exists between participants and naively assume
29 consensus can be built.
30 Focusing briefly in the role of arts, as the focus on Co-Creation
31 within this project intends, it is important to highlight that similar
32 critiques have been made of ‘art-washing’ (Pritchard, 2017) as a
33 process by which artists and creative practices are used to literally ‘paint
34 over’ both the incorporation of communities through participation,
35 but also the continued existence of major socioeconomic divisions
36 which remain unaltered by the regeneration or other policies targeted
37 at ‘deprived’ communities. The role of artists in the processes of
38 gentrification is a particularly relevant issue here, both in terms of their
39 role in the potential incorporation of community energy and also the
40 micro-politics of ‘co-creative’ practices (Ley, 2003).
41 Such examples and experiences highlight the dangers of entering
42 the invited spaces of participation. This does not mean, however, that
34
1 there are no spaces being claimed by and through Co-Creation in the

2 Western European context. Throughout the European cities involved
3 in the project it is possible to see examples where land is being used to
4 create cultural spaces which celebrate local culture rather than promote
5 economic development, and which use artistic practices to challenge
6 and disrupt dominate narratives about people and places.
7 In the case of Brazil, by contrast, there has been a dramatic change
8 in state–society relations as a result of the election of a popularist
9 Right-wing government. This has closed down spaces of co-creation
10 and policy opened in previous years and lead to state responses in low-
11 income areas being characterised largely by military interventions and
12 an absence of social programmes. This is particularly the case in Rio,
13 where over the previous two decades, political narratives advocated
14 terms such as community participation and social inclusion (for
15 example the discourse behind Favela Bairro), enabling communities
16 to co-design urban interventions. In the words of respondents, these
17 approached “true co-creation” or “effective participation”. In the
18 current political scenario, however, the Western policy ideal of all
19 stakeholders (particularly state and non-state actors) ‘co-creating’
20 solutions appears both distant and naïve. Nowadays, the reality for many
21 low-income areas is that the presence of the state is largely characterised
22 though police pacification units, a militarised and controlling form of
23 "poverty management", and an example of "anti-politics" according
24 to the project’s partners. As a result, and in a clash of rationalities,
25 favelas are subordinated and remade within public policy not as a space
26 where the state and civil society can work together but as a space to
27 be ‘pacified’ and occupied.
28 Therefore, in the face of a militarised state looking to restrict rights
29 and resources to low-income areas, culture and ‘co-creation’ become
30 both highly constrained and highly politicised. It is here that the
31 discussion of insurgent spaces becomes significant. Cultural practices
32 such as poetry, graffiti, music and dance were seen as challenging such
33 images, bringing different people and communities together and as
34 practices of resistance. As one interviewee said, “Cultural movements
35 have the possibility of reconfiguring the city … . We do politics through
36 culture.” But they were also mindful that, “We are not able to change
37 wider structures of power and inequality in society” even though they
38 were able to enact a different notion of community politics which
39 defies the state’s positioning.
40 Within this context, some see the potential of co-creation as a way of
41 opening new spaces of dialogue, sharing knowledge, and legitimising
42 the claims of marginalised groups. An example here is the Popular Plan
35
1 for Vila Autodromo, a favela threatened with demolition to make way

2 for the Olympic Park in Barra da Tijuca. Pressure groups, residents,
3 universities and others came together to create an alternative plan
4 which was partially successful in ensuring 20 families remained on the
5 site. Such activities, as well as giving support and sharing knowledge,
6 can be useful in legitimising campaigns and validating the claims of
7 marginalised groups. In other cities in Brazil, for example Salvador,
8 where the local state is more open to working with communities, work
9 between universities and community groups has been welcomed as a
10 way of bringing the municipality and professionals into the arena to
11 enable their demands to be implemented. Therefore, there could be
12 hope for co-creation as a form of autonomous practice beyond the
13 state, or which links with parts of the state that are more sympathetic.
14 However, in recognition of the significance of the micro-politics of
15 co-creative practices, respondents were clear that this had to be from
16 the perspective of the community reaching out, not NGOs, universities
17 or artists reaching in. In the Brazilian context, therefore, Co-Creation
18 could be seen as a potential insurgent practice formed in the face of
19 a very different form of state intervention both from the ideals of
20 consensus-building and from the contexts in other partner countries
21 to the project.
22 The value of making South-South comparisons as part of the
23 attempt to break down rigid North/South dichotomies is underlined
24 when exploring the third partner country. State–society relations in
25 Mexico appear very different from the Brazilian experience. The
26 foundations for the current Mexican state rationality can be traced to
27 the early 1990s. The adoption of a neoliberal model in 1988 increased
28 socioeconomic polarisation, which resulted in a crisis of political
29 legitimacy (see Chapters 4 and 7 for more details on the neoliberal
30 shift in the Global South and in Mexico City respectively). During this
31 political crisis, governmental research on marginality (CONAPO, 1994)
32 acknowledged the ‘emergence of an active civil society that claimed
33 new terms of political coexistence, as well as spaces for participation …
34 specially in the political and social institutions of the State’ (CONAPO,
35 1994, p9). This document not only established an Index of Municipal
36 Marginality (IMM) still used today to locate the most vulnerable
37 neighbourhoods, but also shifted the role of marginalised groups from
38 being purely passive beneficiaries to active agents in urban programmes.
39 Under such a rationality, the state provided multiple invited spaces for
40 participation over the last two decades, including the Neighbourhood
41 Improvement Programme since 2006 (see Chapter 8). However, in
42
36
1 practice, questions exist about whether some of these are coopted by

2 the state as in European examples.
3 The election of a Left-wing government in 2018, which expressly
4 challenges neoliberalism, has intensified the discourse on opening
5 more spaces of participation and social justice. For example, a new
6 programme, PILARES (points of innovation, freedom, arts, education
7 and knowledge) establishes innovation points to provide skills and
8 training aimed at developing economic opportunities together with
9 the community which, while not using the term ‘co-creation’, suggests
10 a similar approach of bringing together multiple stakeholders and
11 experiences, including artists, to address urban issues. However, it is
12 too soon to see whether this will lead to any changes in outcomes.
13 There has also been a long history within Mexico on the use of murals
14 as a form of political expression (see Chapters 4 and 7). However, one
15 respondent said, “… sometimes tools from public and community
16 art are appropriated by the state for regeneration purposes”’, which
17 acknowledges the risk of Co-Creative spaces being coopted by the
18 state as has happened in Western Europe. Therefore, the Mexican
19 example, while not denying the differences between North and South,
20 reveals how rationalities of state intervention and configurations of
21 participatory spaces can cross the boundaries of North and South.
22
23
Conclusion
24
25 This chapter has shown the significance of ‘seeing from the South’ to
26 understanding and characterising the theory and practice of co-creation.
27 Not only is it clear that there is a need to highlight the interplay of
28 theorisations between North and South which underpins such concepts
29 (decolonialisation), but it is also apparent that co-creation is constituted
30 and enacted in different ways in different contexts. This underlines
31 Robinson’s (2013) call for context-rich research and Weiner’s (2014)
32 ‘pluri-versatilism’ to help break down North/South dichotomies and
33 to generate new forms of understanding. Later chapters in this volume
34 add to these rich understandings of how co-creation is constituted and
35 experienced in a variety of contexts.
36 It has also shown how the spaces of co-creation, particularly those
37 linked with state activity, vary over time and space, not only between
38 North and South but also within different places. This underlines the
39 need to avoid a one-size-fits-all view of co-creation, and instead see it
40 as a contingent and complex practice which has multiple possibilities
41 and limitations partly dependent on place and context. Practitioners
42
37
1 and academics need to be alive to these differences and to take them

2 into account in both theorisation and action.
3 Finally, the experience of co-creation in some parts of the Global
4 South also underlines its potential in creating autonomous, insurgent
5 and alternative spaces leading to the conception of Co-Creation as
6 set out in Chapter 1. Such spaces can challenge not only the transfer
7 of ‘ideas from elsewhere’, but also related attempts to impose from
8 the centre/top/powerful on the peripheral and marginalised. Despite
9 the contrasts in the relationship between co-creation and the state in
10 different contexts, this experience can speak to universal debates about
11 cooption, empowerment and ‘art-washing’.
12 Therefore, Co-Creation and Co-Creators need not inevitably be
13 agents of ‘colonisation’ but can be a way of changing relations both
14 between North and South and within individual cities. However, it is
15 equally clear that such potential depends on an awareness of context
16 and micro-politics; such an awareness is deepened and intensified
17 through ‘seeing from the South’.
18
19
Notes
20 1
The authors use ‘co-creation’ in the context of discussing broader debates in the
21 literature around this concept, and ‘Co-Creation’ to refer to the definition and
22 use given in this project as outlined in the previous chapter.
23
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page 41
1 3
2
3
4
5
Fostering artistic citizenship: how
6 Co-Creation can awaken civil
7
8
imagination
9
10 María José Pantoja Peschard
11
12
13
14
15
Introduction
16 One of the many spheres from which marginalised and deprived
17 communities have been constantly excluded is that of culture and the
18 arts. Indeed, as Moore (1998) and many others have documented,
19 people living under precarious conditions have very limited access or
20 no access at all to museums, galleries, cinemas and other cultural and
21 artistic venues. The methodology of Co-Creation discussed throughout
22 this book engages researchers, community workers, artists, policy
23 makers and, most importantly, members of a particular neighbourhood
24 or urban community as participants in creative projects and other
25 inclusive artistic practices.
26 The central idea behind Co-Creation is that, through collaboration
27 where all participants contribute as equals, knowledge is both shared
28 and co-produced and new synergies are fostered. By promoting equal
29 participation through projects that make different art forms and creative
30 practices available to marginalised communities, Co-Creation has the
31 potential to counter segregation and build relations based on solidarity,
32 respect and collaboration. The role of art and creativity within Co-
33 Creation projects is crucial insofar as these practices function as bridges
34 that connect the different participants: researchers, artists, activists,
35 policy makers and residents or community members. Although it is
36 important not to romanticise the extent to which arts-based projects can
37 bring about significant social change, as Rosie Meade and Mae Shaw
38 (2007) have argued ‘clearly the arts cannot transcend socioeconomic
39 contexts by the force and will of their craft alone’, socially engaged
40 arts do have the potential to ‘awaken people to both the negative and
41 positive spaces which it opens up’ (Meade and Shaw, 2007: 416).
42
41
1 The aim of this chapter is to explore how and to what extent the
2 collaborative art and creative projects that are essential to Co-Creation
3 can help to make visible the conditions of marginalisation within and
4 beyond the communities in which they take place. The discussion
5 here will be theoretical, as there are other chapters in this book that
6 analyse specific Co-Creation projects and their outcomes. Rather than
7 focusing on any particular case study, this chapter will claim that these
8 projects contribute to awaken what Ariella Azoulay (2012) calls ‘civil
9 imagination’, and hence also take part in the construction of ‘artistic
10 citizenship’.
11 In order to demonstrate this, the chapter first discusses what ‘civil
12 imagination’ means for Azoulay. She defines this notion as the potential
13 capacity to build relations of solidarity, partnership and sharing
14 between people within marginalised communities, as well as between
15 the latter and people living outside of them. Such relationships serve
16 to unearth and reflect critically upon the structures, hierarchies and
17 relations of power that are the causes underpinning the flaws, social
18 disparities and injustices existing in our societies. Azoulay’s proposal
19 of ‘civil imagination’ as an ability required for the understanding of
20 photography as a practice (rather than just a product, the photograph),
21 and one which involves spectators, the photographer and the individual
22 photographed, implies that ‘civil imagination’ is a skill. This chapter will
23 argue that this skill can be – and actually seems to be – put into practice
24 through Co-Creation projects, and not just in photography. Second,
25 this chapter will claim that this ‘civil imagination’ is necessarily linked
26 with an exercise in ‘artistic citizenship’, which can be understood as
27 the commitment to engaging in collaborative art projects that stimulate
28 positive interactions and exchanges among participants, and that can
29 thereby improve communal well-being (Elliot et al, 2016).
30 Finally, the chapter argues that Co-Creation, insofar as it involves
31 a collaborative process based on the sharing of creative and artistic
32 skills, promotes among the participants a sense of community in which
33 their opinions are heard and counted. This sense of community and
34 belonging is crucial, this chapter claims, in the construction of more
35 cohesive and thriving communities.
36
37
38
The potential of a civil imagination
39 In Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography (2012), Azoulay
40 critically examines issues of visual culture; in particular, she discusses
41 the political aspects of photography, the roles of both spectators and
42 critics (of photography), the body politics, as well as the concept of
42
page 43 Fostering artistic citizenship
1 citizenship. She argues that the boundaries of ‘the aesthetic’, ‘the

2 political’, and ‘the civil’ perpetuate power relations both within the
3 nation-states and among them, which also produce and maintain
4 exclusions and abuses upon certain populations. Following up the
5 arguments advanced in her previous publication The Civil Contract
6 of Photography (2008), Azoulay constructs her argument by using
7 the example of the Palestinian struggle and other populations that
8 are vulnerable because they have been displaced or are stateless. In
9 particular, she points to the classification of Palestinians as non-citizens,
10 and the oppression and injustices they endure because of this exclusion
11 from the category of citizenship. In what follows, the author will
12 present how Azoulay constructs her concept of ‘civil imagination’ and
13 what she means by it so as to explain later how this skill is exercised
14 through Co-Creation.
15 Azoulay begins her argument by questioning the dichotomy between
16 the realm of aesthetics and the realm of politics, especially as this
17 distinction has been applied to photography. Whenever photographs
18 are qualified as ‘aestheticising’ what they portray, what is meant is that
19 they are not ‘political’ enough; and conversely, whenever photographs
20 are said to be ‘too political’, it is meant that they are not ‘aesthetic’
21 enough. Azoulay criticises Walter Benjamin for articulating and
22 institutionalising a relation of mutual exclusion between the political
23 and the aesthetic; she claims instead that the political and the aesthetic
24 are beyond the either/or dichotomy. Her argument is, first, that the fact
25 that an image belongs to the realm of the aesthetic does not depend
26 on the choice of a particular individual or set of individuals (the artist
27 or the critic); rather the image falls under the domain of the aesthetic
28 simply because it is an object that presents itself to the senses, it can
29 be perceived through the senses:
30
31 … the aesthetic configuration associated with a given
32 object or image may be appraised and evaluated in a variety
33 of ways, but it is impossible to negate its existence. The
34 aesthetic exists there as a consequence of the very fact
35 that an object or an image is given to the senses. (Azoulay,
36 2012: 48)
37
38 The aesthetic is thus a necessary component of any image. The second
39 thing that Azoulay argues is that the political, like the aesthetic, is
40 not a quality attributed to the image by an artist or a critic; the
41 political is not the result of the intention of the artist. Instead, the
42 quality of the political cannot ‘be attributed to a single person or
43
1 thing but involves the relations between human beings in the plural’
2 (Azoulay, 2012: 49).
3 These two arguments allow Azoulay to affirm that a photograph
4 is always the result of an event, the event of photography, which is
5 necessarily a collective practice insofar as the photographer makes some
6 choices that determine the final product of the event of photography
7 but she or he can never have full control over the photographed
8 subjects nor over the meaning that the spectators may draw out of
9 the photograph. The event of photography thus implies an encounter
10 between people, which remains open and never completely determined
11 by one single person. This means that the event of photography
12 configures a political space, ‘a space of relations between people who
13 are exposed to one another in public’ (Azoulay, 2012: 52):
14
15 Once the presence of photographed subjects is brought into
16 consideration, it is hard not to see that the space where the
17 image is created, like the space from which it is viewed, is
18 indeed a plural one. … Whereas the space within which
19 people act is … always a political one, the photograph is
20 not political in itself except to the extent that people make
21 it exist among themselves, in plurality, in public. (Azoulay,
22 2012: 54)
23
24 Co-Creation, as collaborative creative and artistic ventures, also con-
25 figures – this chapter will claim – a space of relations that are political
26 in the sense that these projects advocate plurality and are based on the
27 principle of respect and equality of all participants.
28 The implications that Azoulay draws from all of this are, on the one
29 hand, that photographs (and all images) belong ontologically to the
30 realm of the aesthetic since the images are given to us by way of our
31 senses and, on the other hand, that photographs constitute a political
32 space because they result ‘from the actions of multiple participants who
33 play various roles in [their] production and dissemination’ (Azoulay,
34 2012: 55). This explains in what sense she thinks that the political and
35 the aesthetic are not two mutually excluding domains: a photograph
36 can be political and aesthetic at the same time.
37 Azoulay continues and expands on her theses defended in The Civil
38 Contract of Photography (2008), where she claims that photography
39 has the potential to create a space of political relations between the
40 photographer, the photographed subjects and the spectators, which are
41 not regulated or sanctioned by the sovereign rule of the nation-state.
42 These are relationships of solidarity, partnership and responsibility
44
1 between the three partakers (photographer, photographed subjects

2 and spectators) in the event of photography that escape the sovereign
3 sanction but are, nonetheless, political relations that configure the
4 citizenry of photography (Azoulay, 2008: 23–4). For Azoulay, everyone
5 is already or can become a citizen in the citizenry of photography to
6 the extent that all the participants in the event of photography can
7 address others and make claims through photographs. Even a stateless
8 person can become a citizen in the citizenry of photography, addressing
9 claims to the other members of this citizenry. As Azoulay explains:
10
11 The theory of photography [the one Azoulay proposes]
12 takes into account all the participants in photographic
13 acts – camera, photographer, photographed subject, and
14 spectator – approaching the photograph (and its meaning)
15 as an unintentional effect of the encounter between all
16 of these. None of these have the capacity to seal off this
17 effect and determine its sole meaning. The civil contract
18 of photography assumes that, at least in principle, the
19 governed possess a certain power to suspend the gesture
20 of the sovereign power seeking to totally dominate the
21 relations between us, dividing us as governed into citizens
22 and noncitizens thus making disappear the violation of our
23 citizenship. (Azoulay, 2008: 23)
24
25 The lines dividing all the governed into two categories, citizens and
26 non-citizens, configure an unfair and flawed conception of citizenship.
27 Such structures of exclusion, Azoulay argues, can be subverted and
28 resisted through photography because it is a practice that constitutes
29 a space that functions without a single unique authority, a space that
30 is also borderless, ownerless and public (Azoulay, 2012: 243). It is in
31 this space of photography that everyone becomes a citizen, and where
32 private spaces and public spaces become one, thereby dismantling the
33 distinctions between citizens and non-citizens as much as those existing
34 between spaces (Azoulay, 2012: 244).
35 Here it is possible to begin to see more clearly the links between
36 what Azoulay is defending about the practice of photography and the
37 principles underlying Co-Creation, since the latter fosters bottom-
38 up approaches, a plurality of points of view and the equality of all
39 partakers. The hierarchies dissolved, or at least suspended, through the
40 civil contract of photography can also be suspended within the space
41 of relations formed in Co-Creation projects, where participants are
42 equal collaborators with a role and a voice that counts.
45
1 The emergence of relationships beyond the sanction of the nation-

2 state through the photograph entails the exercise of a particular kind
3 of gaze, what Azoulay calls the ‘civil gaze’ (Azoulay 2012: 70–1). This
4 civil gaze differs from the expert or professional gaze (but does not
5 exclude it) because, instead of focusing only on the photograph as a
6 finished product belonging to the photographer (who is the one who
7 determines its meaning), it is a gaze that is aware of the whole picture,
8 of all the relationships, the conditions and all the steps that lead to the
9 photograph. The civil gaze takes into account not just the elements that
10 the photographer intended to be captured within the frame, but also
11 all the participants in the event of photography, including those outside
12 of the frame, as much as all those elements that were not intended by
13 the photographer but that play a part within the photograph. Thereby,
14 the civil gaze conforms an open, collective and public space, a civil
15 space where everyone is (equally) responsible and active.
16 What Azoulay’s argument is pointing at is that all partakers in
17 the event of photography, but specially the spectators, have to ‘see
18 themselves as citizens’ who have ‘the ability to imagine a political state
19 of being that deviates significantly from the prevailing state of affairs’
20 (Azoulay, 2012: 3). This ability is no other than what she calls the skill
21 of ‘civil imagination’. According to Azoulay, an essential part of the
22 skill of civil imagination is precisely the activation of the civil gaze.
23 For this reason, civil imagination, she says, is ‘the interest that citizens
24 display in themselves, in others, in their shared forms of coexistence,
25 as well as in the world that they create and nurture’ (Azoulay, 2012: 5).
26 In this sense, ‘civil imagination’ constitutes the capacity to see those
27 divisive lines between citizens and non-citizens as blurred, and even
28 as non-existent.
29 In the case of the practice of Co-Creation, something similar occurs
30 to the extent that participants are encouraged to see themselves and
31 others as equal contributors to the project. In this sense Co-Creation
32 participants are also able to imagine (and even actualise) a state of
33 affairs where their individual voices, actions and contributions are
34 as relevant as those of others. Through imagining and configuring a
35 space of relations where there is no one unique leading figure, a non-
36 hierarchical space of relations, they also help to make visible and think
37 critically about the power relations and structures that sustain the social
38 disparities and exclusions present in their communities.
39 Azoulay is particularly concerned with spectators’ potential to
40 activate the skill of civil imagination and, hence, the civil gaze, because
41 she believes that within the event of photography it is the spectators
42 who, unlike the photographed subjects such as those portrayed in
46
1 photographs of the Palestinian population, tend to be privileged due to

2 their status as citizens of a particular nation-state. Their status as citizens
3 precludes them from imagining ‘what it is not to be a citizen or what
4 it is to be a second class citizen’, but this is not a failure of their own
5 particular imagination, rather this is ‘a structural failure that expresses
6 the inversion of the relations between the citizen and power that is
7 a feature of democratic sovereignty’ (Azoulay, 2012: 9). According
8 to Azoulay, spectators both have the potential and the moral duty to
9 activate their civil imagination and refuse to accept, in the first place,
10 the discourse that separates the governed between a category of citizens
11 and one of non-citizens and, in the second place, the identification
12 of disaster as the defining characteristic of populations that have been
13 denied citizenship by a certain regime. In this sense, civil imagination
14 does not only allow us to make visible the intolerable conditions and
15 the rights violations endured by populations excluded from citizenship,
16 but also this exercise of civil imagination has the potential to ‘help the
17 privileged citizens to identify and acknowledge the inherent flaw in
18 their citizenship, a flaw that makes them accomplices to the crimes of
19 a regime that does everything in its power to keep from appearing to
20 be criminal’ (Azoulay, 2012: 245).
21 This is an overview of the main arguments presented by Azoulay in
22 her two books. A more detailed and thorough discussion of the topics
23 and problems that she presents would be necessary in order to fully grasp
24 the nuances and the theoretical assumptions upon which her political
25 theory of photography and the concept of citizenship that is implied by
26 such a theory rely. Such a discussion would extend beyond the scope
27 of this chapter. However, one of the things that is worth pondering as
28 regards Azoulay’s theses of the civil contract of photography and the skill
29 of ‘civil imagination’ is the question of whether her proposal is utopic
30 and never entirely realisable, in the sense that it endorses the existence
31 of political relations that are not sanctioned by the sovereign power of
32 the nation-state (the citizenry of photography), but that nevertheless
33 are able to negotiate with this power and direct claims towards it. It
34 is the author’s view that qualifying Azoulay’s theory as utopic is not
35 necessarily an objection to her political theory of photography, because
36 a state of affairs and/or a theory that appear utopic open up horizons
37 of possibility; that is, they open up prospects towards which we can
38 work even if we would never fully reach them. It is in this sense that
39 Azoulay’s proposal is relevant: it is pointing towards the important fact
40 that we do have obligations towards those worse off, those without
41 citizenship or with a second-class citizenship. Her account also makes
42 evident the fact that the practice of photography and the exercise of
47
1 the civil gaze have the potential to make visible the conditions under
2 which these populations live, and thus to start shifting some of those
3 conditions. She makes the case that it is necessary to reconsider the
4 importance of the civil as that aspect that allows us to relate to others
5 in ways that are not regulated by the nation-state. The civil dimension
6 allows us to see, relate and participate with others beyond the divisions
7 between citizens and non-citizens.
8 Azoulay’s proposal of a ‘civil imagination’ can be extended beyond the
9 field of photography to the other arts and, in particular, to community
10 and socially engaged arts such as Co-Creation projects. Her concept of
11 ‘civil imagination’ as a skill that leads us to take interest in, solidarity
12 with and responsibility towards others and our coexistence implies
13 that there is no clear-cut distinction between the realms of politics,
14 of ethics and the arts. This blurring of the dividing lines between
15 ethics, politics and the artistic is one of the central ideas guiding all
16 Co-Creation projects. The next section argues how Azoulay’s ‘civil
17 imagination’ relates to what some scholars in the area of community
18 and socially engaged arts and activism call ‘artistic citizenship’, which
19 is the commitment to collaborative artistic ventures that aim to create
20 positive synergies among participants, such as the projects adhering to
21 the principles of Co-Creation seek to produce.
22
23
Civil imagination and artistic citizenship
24
25 In their book Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Activism and Ethical
26 Practice (2016), Elliot et al maintain that the idea that art has intrinsic
27 value regardless of its social, political or ethical implications is a
28 misled one that has its origin in the 18th century European thesis
29 that art should only be concerned with art, that is, the notion of ‘art
30 for art’s sake’. According to these authors, this notion ‘is implausible
31 and irresponsible, leading us to trivialize or marginalize some of art’s
32 most powerful contributions to our shared humanity. Social/ethical
33 responsibility lies at the heart of responsible artistic practice’ (Elliot et al,
34 2016: 3). For them, it is important to recognise art’s role in improving
35 people’s lives at local levels but also at regional and international levels,
36 because from its beginnings this has been art’s purpose and the source
37 of its value. Music and musical practices, for instance, have proven to be
38 crucial in promoting bonding and social cohesion. They then conclude
39 that the value of art ‘is a function of what it is good for the uses to
40 which it is put’ (Elliot et al, 2016: 6). This view entails a utilitarian
41 conception of art, which is clearly at odds with the view that art is
42 valuable for its own sake, that art is intrinsically valuable. This debate
48
1 is not pursued here, but the view advanced by Elliot et al is useful in
2 understanding the role that art plays in society and, especially important
3 for the argument here, the civil dimension that all the arts have.
4 Alongside this utilitarian position about what makes art valuable,
5 the authors hold three assumptions concerning the nature of art. First,
6 that art is a social and collective venture: ‘the arts are made by and for
7 people, living in real worlds, involving conflicts … As such, the arts are
8 also invariably embodiments of people’s political and ideological beliefs;
9 understandings and values, both personal and collective’ (Elliot et al,
10 2016: 5). It is for this reason, the authors say, that artistic enterprises
11 involve a particular kind of civil commitment, which entails actively
12 taking part in them with a focus on the social goods they foster. This
13 connects with the second assumption regarding art’s nature: since the
14 arts are linked to collective life and founded on social experience,
15 and since they cultivate social goods, the value and importance of the
16 arts stems from how effectively they attain the goods they intended
17 to achieve. Finally, the third assumption is that given that the arts are
18 social practices that make significant contributions on the political,
19 cultural, ideological, spiritual and economic areas of human lives,
20 they should be conceptualised and practised as exemplifications of an
21 ‘ethically guided citizenship’ (Elliot et al, 2016: 6).
22 Following from the thesis that the arts are forms of an ethically
23 guided citizenship, the authors propose the concept of ‘artistic
24 citizenship’, by which they mean an artistic practice that is
25 inextricably linked with a set of social, civic, humanitarian and
26 emancipatory responsibilities, and with a general commitment to
27 the promotion of social goods. This artistic practice is inclusive and
28 non-elitist in the sense that all participants (young or old, professional
29 or amateur) are considered artists making a contribution within an
30 art project where the main purpose is bringing positive changes
31 to people’s lives: [[I have made some small changes to the
32 requested correction for sense, please check that you are
33 happy with the sentence]]
34
35 Whereas artistic proficiency entails myriad skills and
36 understandings, artistic citizenship implicates additional
37 commitments to act in ways that move people – both
38 emotionally and in the sense of mobilizing them as agents of
39 positive change. Artistic citizens are committed to engaging
40 in artistic actions in ways that can bring people together,
41 enhance communal well-being, and contribute substantially
42 to human thriving. (Elliot et al, 2016: 7)
49
1 The concept of artistic citizenship requires that there is no separation

2 between the realms of politics, the aesthetics and also the realm of
3 ethics insofar as this artistic practice is aimed at promoting social goods
4 and communal improvement, and it is open to everyone regardless of
5 their technical skills or artistic experience. This artistic practice involves
6 interactions and exchanges through collective art projects that seek to
7 make changes in social realities for the benefit of all. As Bowman puts it:
8
9 [New] forms of cooperation, community, or citizenship need
10 to [emerge]. Chief among these … may be artistic practices,
11 shaped by and devoted to civic responsibility: ethical
12 resources that benefit not just artists but all who
13 acknowledge the need for such resources and engage with
14 them seriously. It is vital to the well-being of any social
15 collective that members care about and commit to the well-
16 being of that community – that there be a strong sense of
17 belonging … . The arts are potent influences for shaping
18 character, identity, membership, and belonging. Artistic
19 citizens acknowledge those influences and seek to use them
20 responsibly. (Bowman, 2016: 77)
21
22 Thus, ‘artistic citizenship’ implies a capacity to imagine a different
23 state of affairs as well as a commitment to actively contributing to the
24 betterment of the community. This capacity is no different from the
25 skill of ‘civil imagination’ of which Azoulay speaks, which involves
26 the creation of political and ethical relations beyond those sanctioned
27 by nation-state. In this sense, ‘civil imagination’ and ‘artistic citizenship’
28 are concepts that are deeply connected and require each other to be
29 understood and conceptualised.
30 The civil skill of imagining a completely different sociopolitical order
31 implies dissenting from a social order that establishes inclusions and
32 exclusions and seeks to maintain them, and this is something that the
33 artistic citizen aims to do. The implications of what this civil skill means
34 might be clearer if we turn to the work of Jacques Rancière. He affirms
35 that the social order, which he calls the ‘order of the police’ (Rancière,
36 2010: 139), constitutes a set of conventions and implicit rules that divide
37 a community into groups, assign the positions and functions that each
38 individual within a society must occupy and fulfil, and hence separate
39 ‘those who take part from those who are excluded’ (Rockhill, 2004: 3).
40 It is worth noting here that what Rancière means by the notion of ‘the
41 order of the police’ or the ‘police’ is thus different from what we ordinarily
42 refer to by this term since for him ‘the police’ is not a social function, nor
50
1 is it concerned with controlling or repressing the population, but rather

2 ‘the police’ is a symbolic configuration of the social. The assignation
3 of roles and functions to individuals in the society – and hence, their
4 separation – in turn presupposes a certain ‘distribution of the sensible’, ‘a
5 prior aesthetic division between the visible and the invisible, the audible
6 and the inaudible, the sayable and the unsayable’ (Rockhill, 2004: 3).
7 According to Rancière, politics essentially constitutes opposition to and
8 subversion of the order of the police by those who have been excluded,
9 with the intention of producing equality and a reconfiguration of the
10 distribution of the sensible, that is, a new partition of the sensible: ‘politics
11 invents new forms of collective enunciation; it reframes the given by
12 inventing new ways of making sense of the sensible, new configurations
13 between the visible and the invisible … new distributions of space and
14 time – in short, new bodily capacities’ (Rancière, 2010: 139). Politics in
15 this sense involves an understanding that the current sociopolitical order
16 is not necessary but arbitrary, and that the exclusions and inclusions that
17 this order establishes can therefore be challenged by those who have
18 been excluded.
19 It is important to say here that both Rancière and Azoulay think
20 that the realms of aesthetics and politics are not mutually exclusive, and
21 that therefore art can be political. The difference between these two
22 thinkers resides in what Azoulay understands as the ‘political’ and what
23 Rancière calls ‘politics’. Whereas for Azoulay all of our engagements and
24 exchanges with others are public and thus political, for Rancière politics
25 only takes place at the very specific moment and event when there is a
26 redistribution of the sensible, when there is a disruption of the current
27 social order. ‘Civil imagination’, therefore, as presented by Azoulay,
28 constitutes a skill that can lead to a new distribution of the sensible.
29 Understood in Rancière’s way, politics as the effort to reconfigure the
30 partition of the sensible in the name of equality, politics as resistance to
31 the established social order of exclusions and inclusions, coincides with
32 the skill of ‘civil imagination’, which outlines a new horizon of civil
33 relations that blur the dividing lines between those who take part and
34 those who have no part. It is in this sense that is possible to affirm that
35 ‘civil imagination’ and ‘artistic citizenship’ have the potential to lead
36 to a new partition of the sensible. This chapter now explains in what
37 sense Co-Creation fosters ‘civil imagination’ and ‘artistic citizenship’.
38
39
40
Co-Creation as key to promoting civil imagination
41 As a collaborative arts-based and creative practice aimed at creating
42 synergies among equal participants and thereby promoting more
51
1 cohesive urban spaces, Co-Creation is a methodology that puts into

2 practice both the exercise of ‘civil imagination’ and the formation
3 of ‘artistic citizenship’. The active participation of academics, artists,
4 policy makers and community members in such projects as equals,
5 without a single leading or authoritative figure, allows for a platform
6 where everyone makes a significant contribution to the collective work
7 regardless of their particular artistic or technical skills, but also regardless
8 of their actual citizenship status. This means that Co-Creation facilitates
9 the formation of relationships based on respect, trust, solidarity and
10 partnership, with a view towards producing a creative or artistic piece
11 which will contribute to making visible the participants’ conditions
12 of exclusion and eventually, through this process, start making positive
13 changes within the community. In this sense, Co-Creation practices
14 promote the construction of ‘artistic citizenship’. The question of
15 whether the artistic quality of the outcome produced is relevant or
16 even necessary for Co-Creation seems to be beyond the point because,
17 as mentioned before, what is at stake for all Co-Creation projects is
18 the opening of a space where all voices are equally heard and valued,
19 where there is no one single participant that takes prevalence over others
20 or that can claim exclusive ownership of or benefit from the artistic-
21 creative outcome generated. Furthermore, if Co-Creation entails the
22 activation of the skill of civil imagination and the exercise of the civil
23 gaze, then the expert artist gaze or the professional gaze is displaced,
24 and instead what acquires relevance is the gaze that is centred on the
25 creative process as a whole, on the connections developed through it
26 and on the steps that led to the final outcome. Hence, what is at stake
27 for Co-Creation is the configuration of a platform where relationships
28 of solidarity and respect are built, and not so much the artistic value
29 of the work produced.
30 Similarly, through sharing knowledge, skills and through producing
31 collective artworks or creative products, Co-Creation also provides
32 participants with opportunities to create their own stories and
33 narratives, as well as to become aware of their potential to reappropriate
34 their own space and thus, eventually, claim rights as a community.
35 The involvement of members of a community in a creative or artistic
36 project following the principles of Co-Creation allows them not only
37 to develop a certain artistic-creative skill but also to become aware that
38 they too can tell their own narratives that differ from and contest official
39 discourses and stereotypes. By resourcing their creative potential and
40 configuring a space where participants are encouraged to construct
41 their own narratives through inclusive artistic-creative practices, the
42 potential for agency of these people and their communities is enhanced.
52
1 In formulating their own narratives and refusing the discourses that have
2 been imposed from outside, by the ruling social order, Co-Creation
3 projects constitute exercises of civil imagination and can as well become
4 the stepping stone towards the reconfiguration of the distribution of
5 the sensible, as understood by Rancière. Indeed, being able to tell
6 their own narratives and histories enables the stakeholders to express
7 their claims and interests in their own terms and, in turn, this leads
8 these communities to build strong bonds and a sense of community
9 that could ultimately help them resist and fight against their oppressed
10 conditions. Therefore, the methodology of Co-Creation fosters civil
11 imagination, and ultimately contributes to the creation of an artistic
12 citizenry.
13 One could question here if this understanding of Co-Creation
14 is not too idealistic or utopic. However, it is worth noting that the
15 claim is not that Co-Creation projects are able to dissolve all social
16 disparities, destroy hierarchies and eliminate injustices. Instead, the
17 view presented is that Co-Creation opens up a horizon of possibilities
18 that operate as a guideline, a blueprint, towards which we can direct
19 our efforts. Producing the conditions of possibility for the skill of
20 civil imagination to be put into action and an artistic citizenship to be
21 configured constitutes the first step towards questioning and shifting
22 the conditions of inequality. It is this first step that Co-Creation aims
23 to achieve. As other chapters in this book will discuss, Co-Creation
24 projects can be more or less successful at attaining this first step. But
25 by setting the conditions for the equal contribution of all participants
26 and by encouraging the constant discussion and assessment of the
27 artistic-creative outcomes to be produced, Co-Creation projects always
28 remain open to adjustments and improvements.
29
30 References
31 Azoulay, A. (2008) The Civil Contract of Photography, translated by
32 R. Mazali and R. Danieli, Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books.
33 Azoulay, A. (2012) Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography,
34 translated by L. Bethlehem, London and New York: Verso.
35 Bowman, W.D. (2016) ‘Artistry, ethics and citizenship’, in D.J. Elliot,
36 M. Silverman and W.D. Bowman (eds) Artistic Citizenship: Artistry,
37 Social Responsibility and Ethical Practice, New York: Oxford University
38 Press, pp 59–80.
39 Elliot, D.J., Silverman, M. and Bowman, W.D. (2016) ‘Artistic
40 citizenship: introduction, aims and overview’, in D.J. Elliot, M. Silverman
41 and W.D. Bowman (eds) Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility
42 and Ethical Practice, New York: Oxford University Press, pp 3–21.
53
1 Meade, R. and Shaw, M. (2007) ‘Editorial: Community development

2 and the arts: reviving the democratic imagination’, Community
3 Development Journal, 42(4): 413–21.
4 Moore, J. (1998) ‘Poverty and access to the arts: inequalities in arts
5 attendance’, Cultural Trends, 8(31): 53–73.
6 Rancière, J. (2010) ‘The paradoxes of political art’, in J. Rancière
7 Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, translated by S. Corcoran, London
8 and New York: Continuum, pp 134–51.
9 Rockhill, G. (2004) ‘Translator’s introduction: Jacques Rancière’s
10 politics of perception’, in J. Rancière The Politics of Aesthetics:
11 The Distribution of the Sensible, translated with an introduction by
12 G. Rockhill, London and New York: Continuum, pp 1–6.
13
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15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
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1 4
2
3
4
5
Global North-South tensions
6 in international Co-Creation projects
7
8
9
José Luis Gázquez Iglesias
10
11
12
13
Introduction
14 Co-Creation as a collaborative approach to knowledge production
15 brings together a diverse range of participants and uses art to drive
16 out knowledge and challenge existing hierarchies and preconceptions.
17 While some Co-Creation practices can remain entirely local, many
18 involve North-South encounters either occurring between participants
19 of international workshops or taking the form of conflicts between
20 different traditions of knowledge production specific to the ‘Global
21 North’ and the ‘Global South’. In addition, hegemonic representational
22 practices inherited from colonisation may be present in Co-Creation
23 practices involving marginalised urban populations stigmatised for
24 originating from the Global South.
25 It is possible to trace processes of predominant knowledge production
26 (those of the Global North) back to the 15th century when Spanish
27 and Portuguese explorers ‘discovered’ new geographies and peoples
28 that were to be subjected by military force. This subjection was
29 largely justified by the emerging Enlightenment reasoning as the
30 main discourse establishing the right of European nations to dispose
31 of societies considered backward, pre-modern or unable to produce
32 their own knowledge. It has been argued for instance that the rise of
33 colonial anthropology both preceded and coincided with the expansion
34 of European colonisation of Africa (Moore, 1993 and Gruffydd, 2013).
35 Since then, Western knowledge about non-European societies has
36 been characterised mainly by creating hierarchical, dichotomising
37 and classificatory categories in order to justify attempts to control and
38 dominate them. In this sense, the Global North-South divide is the
39 result of evolving categories according to changing historical contexts
40 (the terminological shift from ‘uncivilised world’ to ‘Third World’ and
41 more recently to ‘Global South’ illustrates well this ‘evolution’) without
42
55
1 seriously questioning the processes that produced and naturalised these

2 kinds of representations of the world and the structures of inequality
3 that they imply.
4 This chapter seeks to address the challenges that Co-Creation, as
5 a methodology that aspires to be empowering and emancipating, is
6 likely to encounter in contexts of urban exclusion in cities of both
7 the ‘Global South and North’. In fact, social exclusion linked to
8 the colonial experiences of the past is not limited to urban spaces
9 pertaining to formerly colonised countries but is also strongly related to
10 contemporary migration and integration processes of their populations
11 into former metropolitan cities.
12 While not all Co-Creation workshops are international – several
13 chapters in this book actually deal with cases that only involve
14 participants from the same context – an important challenge specific
15 to international Co-Creation workshops is the asymmetric relation
16 between the actors involved. International researchers (of both
17 Northern or Southern countries) and members of non-governmental
18 organisations (NGOs) mostly based in the North are often more
19 mobile and therefore able to participate in multiple contexts and
20 activities held in Northern and Southern cities. While one may
21 think that being born in a ‘Southern’ country like Mexico and
22 working as a scholar at the National Autonomous University would
23 automatically place the author of this chapter in a ‘Southern’ role
24 within the workshop framework, this is not necessarily the case.
25 National universities are in fact institutional products of Northern
26 knowledge and scientific systems and cosmopolitan spaces rather
27 than communitarian ones. This is important because even if the
28 resources for mobility are more limited for researchers coming from
29 these universities, they allow scholars to travel and participate in
30 more activities of the project than people from local communities
31 where interventions take place. Actors representing marginalised
32 communities on the contrary seem to play leading roles at the
33 local level only, since their participation remains very limited or
34 even non-existent in Co-Creation activities organised outside their
35 home countries. This chapter argues that while international Co-
36 Creation workshops can produce empowering experiences that allow
37 certain members of marginalised communities in global cities to
38 challenge stigmatising representations made of them, they also run
39 the risk of producing only ephemeral results and of failing to disrupt
40 representational hegemonic practices in the long term due to the
41 unequal relationships between participants.
42
56
page 57 Global North-South tensions in Co-Creation
1
The Global North-South paradigm and the Co-Creation
2
3
framework
4 The Global North- South paradigm, which divides and classifies
5 countries of the world in terms of their economic development, is
6 the result of colonisation and the evolution of economic and political
7 thought that emerged to explain and justify it (Said, 1978). While
8 this theoretical development accounts mainly for the 19th century
9 processes of subjection of non-Western societies by European powers
10 and the dichotomising structures of knowledge that it produced, it is
11 possible to track the path leading to the creation of the North-South
12 divide to the decade of the 1960s, when most of the countries of the
13 former colonial world gained political independence and the question
14 of their future development was posed in the first place.
15 This was the context out of which modernisation theory emerged,
16 claiming both to diagnose the situation of these countries and to
17 provide them with a blueprint towards progress (Cohn, 2011).
18 Promoting liberal principles, modernisation theory suggested that the
19 adoption of open markets and liberal economic policies would allow
20 emerging and poor countries to ‘catch up’ with the more developed
21 ones. Another important tenet of this theory was the belief that the
22 elimination of backward ‘traditional’ elements in these societies was
23 also necessary for achieving modernisation.
24 When economic development did not occur after the implementation
25 of these policies, theoretical thought concerning the development
26 of poor countries was reoriented toward the elaboration of the
27 ‘dependency theory’. Given the historical context that gave birth to
28 postcolonial states and the vulnerability of most of them when they
29 obtained formal political independence, the dependency theory argued
30 that the underdevelopment of ‘peripheral’ countries is a product of
31 the development of ‘central’ ones (Frank, 1967). It is also important
32 to note that a decade before the emergence of dependency theory,
33 a new category had emerged for referring to poor countries: the
34 concept of the ‘Third World’. At the end of the Cold War in the early
35 1990s, economic theory and thought had to redefine their conceptual
36 apparatus to adapt it to the new world order dominated exclusively by
37 capitalism. This is how categories such as the Global North and Global
38 South and the divide between them rose at this juncture, trying to
39 produce a new framework suitable to describe this new world order.
40 Nevertheless, the North- South paradigm inherited much of the
41 structural character of its predecessors such as the dependency theory
42
57
1 and the ‘world-system heory’ in terms of the binary world view they
2 proposed.
3 In fact, what must be stressed about these theorising processes
4 describing international structures since the colonisation of the
5 Americas and later of Asian and African societies is not only their
6 Eurocentric nature but also the constitutive and productive character of
7 such representations. More recently, it has been argued that the Global
8 South perspective is a more enabling one than previous categorisations
9 like ‘Third World’ or ‘developing countries’ and better suited to resist
10 hegemonic forces (Duck, 2016).
11 In this sense, it is important to focus on the intellectual mechanisms
12 that have not only created the categories of Global North and South
13 and the system of classifications that determines which countries
14 belong to which category, but which has also configured the nature
15 of these categories and rules the way they interact with other
16 categories within and between themselves. As numerous authors
17 have shown (Chakrabarty, 2000; De Sousa Santos and Meneses,
18 2009; Seth, 2013;; Mignolo and Walsh, 2018), there has been a
19 direct implication of Western science, knowledge systems and
20 institutions not only in the development of theories and paradigms
21 of international relations to which the creation of these categories
22 has been attributed but also in the production of international society
23 itself. As Doty states:
24
25 Arguably one of the most consequential elements present
26 in all of the encounters between the North and the South
27 has been the practice(s) of representation by the North of
28 the South. By representation I mean the ways in which the
29 South has been discursively represented by policy makers,
30 scholars, journalists, and others in the North.
31 Thinking of North- South relations in ter ms of
32 representation reorients and complicates the way we
33 understand this particular aspect of global politics. North-
34 South relations become more than an area of theory and
35 practice in which various policies have been enacted
36 and theories formulated; they become a realm of politics
37 wherein the very identities of peoples, states, and regions are
38 constructed through representational practices. Thinking in
39 terms of representational practices calls our attention to an
40 economy of abstract binary oppositions that we routinely
41 draw upon and that frame our thinking. Developed/
42
58
1 underdeveloped, ‘first world’/‘third world,’ core/periphery,

2 metropolis/satellite, advanced industrialized/less developed,
3 modern/traditional, and real states/quasi states are just a few
4 that readily come to mind. While there is nothing natural,
5 inevitable, or arguably even useful about these divisions,
6 they remain widely circulated and accepted as legitimate
7 ways to categorize regions and peoples of the world. (Doty,
8 1996: 2)
9
10 A central feature of this domination by reference to hegemonic
11 discursive and representational practices is the idea of the South not
12 being able or not being capable of autonomous development without
13 the assistance or guidance of the North (Doty, 1996).
14 Of course, as stated before, authors belonging to the ‘postcolonial
15 theory’ tradition have engaged since the 1980s with a theorising process
16 of deconstructing and contextualising the categories through which
17 international society has been built. There have been, however, since
18 the last decade important developments around this issue. Not only
19 has postcolonial theory demonstrated the ‘provincial’ origin of the
20 discipline but has also posited that:
21
22 Postcolonial theory has at its heart an epistemological
23 concern, namely to question the universality of the
24 categories of modern social scientific thought, and of the
25 disciplines into which it is divided; it is an epistemological
26 challenge to, and a critique of existing disciplines including
27 IR [international relations]. For the insistence upon
28 centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern
29 world has, as its theoretical correlate, a call for rethinking
30 the categories through which we have hitherto narrated
31 and understood that history. The categories of civil
32 society, state, nation, sovereignty, individual, subjectivity,
33 development and so on, emerged in the course of seeking
34 to think through and understand a particular slice of history,
35 that of the region of the world we now know as ‘Europe’.
36 (Seth, 2013:2)
37
38 Nevertheless, this effort has remained astonishingly shy with respect
39 to the construction of the ‘international relations (IR)’ mainstream
40 theoretical body, which remains largely a Eurocentric, Anglo-Saxon
41 product.
42
59
1 Assuming as a point of departure continuity in the existence of

2 representational hegemonic practices at the local level of international
3 relations whether occurring in Global North or Global South cities, this
4 chapter questions the potential of the artistic-led/mediated approach
5 that the Co-Creation methodology proposes in different contexts of
6 socioeconomic exclusion. In other words, the goal of this chapter is
7 to explore whether this kind of intervention helps to break or mitigate
8 stigmatising representations based on binaries or if, on the contrary,
9 they contribute to reproducing or reinforcing them in spite of their
10 stated objectives.
11 In order to understand the issue of contemporary urban exclusion in
12 large metropolises in the Global South, it is necessary first to situate it
13 in the particular histories of colonisation of those countries. Whether
14 in Latin America, Africa or Asia, the presence of Europeans implied
15 the construction of dual urban development projects, consisting of a
16 neat separation between the residential and bureaucratic buildings of
17 the representatives of the colonial power and administrations and the
18 space reserved for the ‘natives’.
19 The crucial question here is whether Co- Creation initiatives
20 intervening in contexts of social exclusion or stigmatisation are
21 different from previous altruistic practices, most noticeably that of
22 international cooperation carried out by Western actors claiming
23 to contribute to the ‘development’ of less advanced nations. It is
24 important to acknowledge that one of the most important legacies of
25 the Enlightenment and Western ‘rational’ thought is this hierarchical
26 classification of non-European populations and societies. The work of
27 the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said (1978), who argued that the
28 construction of Orientalist knowledge was more an issue of creating
29 a cultural other in the process of construction of the Western identity,
30 represents a good example of how these representational structures
31 have been put to work since then. In this sense, while it is necessary
32 to take into consideration the diversity of historical contexts derived
33 from the colonial experience in Latin America, Asia or Africa, ‘the
34 racial signifier was always an essential and even constitutive structure
35 of what would become the imperial project’ (Mbembe, 2017: 62).
36
37
38
Challenging stigmatisation: Santa Marta and Co-Creation
39 According to Diouf (2013), the study of urban processes in zones of
40 social exclusion and stigmatisation is dominated by two contradictory
41 conceptions. On the one hand, pessimistic conceptions focus on
42 socioeconomic crises and the dysfunctional character of cities and
60
1 neighbourhoods while, on the other hand, optimistic studies celebrate

2 popular creativity in informal urban practices. While the former
3 approaches focus on capitalist development, political analysis and state
4 intervention, the latter are committed largely to studying the ongoing
5 effects of colonialism and to explore how urban spaces are constantly
6 being recreated or reshaped by a diversity of practices and actors
7 that contest and redefine the public space moving away from official
8 administrative and nationalist narratives (Diouf, 2013). Adopting the
9 latter view of urban processes, the goal in this section is to reflect on the
10 interaction between actors (and their changing roles or hierarchy status)
11 taking part in a Co-Creation intervention in a global urban context of
12 social exclusion. The underlying assumption here is that the framework
13 proposed by Co-Creation engages participants in interaction and
14 creative activities and enables them to express different perspectives
15 about the most pressing local issues. By doing this, it challenges negative
16 representations about the community and its exclusion from the rest
17 of the city and produces empowering or emancipatory effects.
18 In order to be able to discuss whether (local and international)
19 actors involved in Co-Creation international workshops can produce
20 alternative perceptions of marginalised communities through their
21 interaction, some background information about the Co-Creation
22 project’s pilot case study in Rio de Janeiro needs to be provided first
23 (see also Chapters 2, 5 and 15).
24 The workshop took place over five consecutive days in August
25 2019 in Santa Marta, a favela of 4–6,000 inhabitants located in the
26 Botafogo neighbourhood in southern Rio de Janeiro. As with many
27 other informal urban communities, it was founded during the first half
28 of the 20th century by migrants coming from the interior of Brazil
29 and, since then, has undergone a process of insertion (both formal
30 and informal) into the urban landscape of Rio de Janeiro (Duarte
31 Aquistapace, 2018; Perlman, 2010). Even if the quality of life and
32 services has improved over the last decades, Santa Marta and other
33 favelas are still experiencing urban exclusion and social inequalities
34 with respect to the city as a whole.
35 As for the Co- Creation workshop, it consisted of a five- day
36 programme addressing several topics related to urban inequalities and
37 stigmatisation such as tourism in the favela, public policies, cultural and
38 artistic representations, sports and leisure activities. Actors participating
39 in the workshop included international researchers from both Northern
40 and Southern universities, NGOs from the Global North, as well as
41 members of local NGOs and associations and some other members of
42 the community. Although the programme of activities was set up and
61
1 designed by a local community leader, Itamar Silva (see Chapter 15), the

2 principles guiding the collective activities were suggested by European
3 researchers and NGOs, as well as Latin American academics. These
4 principles included equality, respect, ethics, and engagement to produce
5 shared meanings and collective knowledge about urban development
6 and representations of the favela. While these were the main issues
7 discussed between participants of the workshop, the Co-Creation tools
8 employed to materialise the shared knowledge were ‘photovoice’ and
9 ‘affective mapping’ (Flatley, 2008). Both activities were carried out
10 collectively between the researchers, NGO members from the Global
11 North, and the local association (Eco). The photovoice activity was
12 designed by a young researcher from the local university who was
13 familiar with this method.
14 Photovoice methodology has been in use since the middle of the
15 1990s in social research for enhancing representations of actors in a
16 specific context (Nykiforuk et al, 2011). It was originally proposed as
17 a research technique mixing narrative and image. The main goals were
18 ‘enabling people to record and reflect their community’s strengths and
19 concerns, to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about important
20 issues through large and small group discussion of photographs and to
21 reach policymakers’ (Wang and Burris, 1997). Since then, photovoice
22 has gradually increased its validity as a social research tool (especially in
23 community-based participatory research, CBPR) to reveal community
24 perceptions. In fact, the main value of photovoice could be found in
25 the blurring effect that is produced in the role of actors participating in
26 a Co-Creation intervention context. From the community members’
27 perspective, active engagement with the intervention allows them to
28 think of themselves as valuable members of the research team and,
29 from the researcher perspective, it can allow the detection of alternative
30 voices and narratives that could help to break or to mitigate stereotyped
31 binary or negative representations of the community and its members.
32 In fact, it is possible to argue that one of the most noticeable results of
33 employing photovoice is the detection of the ambiguous and changing
34 roles played by the ensemble of actors participating in the Co-Creation
35 interventions and the possibility of developing alternative ways of
36 producing shared knowledge during the running of the workshop.
37 Thus, photovoice enables the expression of a plurality of expressions
38 about the meaning of inclusion in urban landscapes divided by spatial
39 and symbolic borders.
40 In the case of the photovoice and mapping activities, it could be said
41 that both work as complements to the other. In fact, while the mapping
42 dynamic was present during the visit of the favela with the tourist
62
1 guides allowing the emergence of an interactive collective dialogue

2 about places in the favela, in the case of the photovoice the mapping
3 dynamic was a prerequisite for the creation of a shared understanding
4 of certain problematic issues and spaces of the favela, such as garbage
5 collection or incomplete urban projects undertaken by the state but
6 abandoned due to political cycles and changes in office.
7 As a result of carrying out collective activities using these two
8 techniques along with political listening (Bassel, 2017), it could be
9 argued that they allow for a better understanding of the community
10 and its social dynamics beyond common places and stereotypes. The
11 case of political listening is particularly significant because of the
12 great subversive potential it carries as it demands an inversion of roles
13 between the usual speaker and the usual listener and thus enables more
14 participation of the usual subaltern voices of marginalised communities.
15 However, it must be stated that these views do not represent an overall
16 homogeneous vision of the community itself but only of the local
17 stakeholders and organisations such as Escola Bola (the tourist guide
18 collective), Brasilidade (the residents’ association), the samba squad
19 and Grupo Eco, or more precisely of their leaders. In this sense it
20 would be misleading to think that methodologies such as Co-Creation
21 automatically enable channels of participation for all the members of
22 the particular community where it is deployed. While collective Co-
23 Creative outcomes are achievements in themselves, providing a better
24 understanding of conditions and factors of exclusion, it could be argued
25 that they are limited in terms of representation of the diversity of social
26 actors of a given community because local participants were mainly
27 community leaders and stakeholders, like the tourist guides association
28 or the key local partner of the project, Grupo Eco.
29 As mentioned before, Co-Creation workshops contemplate several
30 kinds of actors: researchers from Northern and Southern universities,
31 representatives from NGOs of the North, members of local NGOs
32 representing communities targeted for intervention, and artists from
33 both the North and the South. For the purposes of this chapter, these
34 actors could be grouped together into two groups: ‘international
35 participants’ and ‘local participants’. The first would be composed
36 of researchers, representatives of Northern NGOs, and Northern
37 artists, while the second group would be composed of local artists and
38 members of local NGOs representing the communities of intervention.
39 While all actors involved in the Co-Creation workshop were supposed
40 to participate in their initial roles, all of them had to adapt their visions
41 and particular interests to the principles of the methodology. In this
42 sense, all participants had to live the duality inherent to adopting the
63
1 group’s agenda and their individual interests and thus also becoming
2 a parameter through which it could become possible to evaluate
3 Co-Creation by posing the question of whether there is a degree of
4 subversion of dominant narratives and representations or not.
5 Finally, to become an innovative methodology generating a specific
6 kind of knowledge with measurable impact across countries, cities
7 and populations, Co-Creation has to accomplish a central task, which
8 involves the narrowing down of its own definition. In this sense,
9 the question that arises is whether Co-Creation workshops should
10 be standardised in terms of the actors involved and methodologies
11 deployed or if they should allow more flexibility in their design and
12 more room for improvisation during its execution. While mapping
13 and photovoice were the privileged collective techniques of producing
14 participatory knowledge, other artistic and creative tools could and
15 should have been integrated into the framework of Co-Creation, such
16 as poetry, graffiti, digital art, and so on. While these were present
17 during the Santa Marta workshop, they were limited to illustrations
18 of the themes discussed and the artists involved were not all from
19 the local community. Related to this, a still-unresolved issue in the
20 definition of Co-Creation parameters concerns the number of actors
21 involved in each category of participant. As the identities and roles
22 of the participants tend to become blurred during the Co-Creation
23 workshop, new questions could arise about the number and kind of
24 actors participating in it. Ann equal number of international and local
25 actors might seem preferable but, if one of the central aims of Co-
26 Creation is levelling the interaction between international and local
27 marginalised communities, a greater number of the latter could imply
28 a more equitable interaction.
29 The most burning question that remains to be answered is less
30 concerned with whether Co-Creation leads to fairer representations
31 and the inclusion of subaltern social actors, and more whether this
32 methodology empowers the whole community or only the actors
33 involved in the intervention. Are collective perceptions really
34 constructed in a bottom-up fashion, synthesising multiple and diverse
35 visions or perspectives, or is the process since its inception conditioned
36 and undermined by the traditionally vertical models of North-South
37 cooperation and various other hierarchies, including the agendas
38 of some community leaders rather than those of the community as
39 a whole? In other words, does Co-Creation become a vehicle of
40 community empowerment or actor empowerment? While photovoice
41 and affective mapping are useful tools allowing the expression of
42 multiple perspectives or viewpoints, it remains an issue to verify if the
64
1 themes and issues discussed through this kind of collective exercise

2 are really a result of bottom-up processes rather than representations
3 of the particular interests of the most prominent local stakeholders
4 (Nykiforuk et al, 2011).
5 While theoretical and empirical links between artistic practice and
6 urban development are not new, what could be considered innovative
7 in Co-Creation methodology and interventions compared with other
8 practices and methods derived from CBPR projects is the emphasis
9 given to the ethical and equitable principles and dimensions. Of course,
10 the success of the future of Co-Creation interventions in global cities
11 will depend on the long-term engagement of all participants – local
12 or international – with the Co-Creation principles acting as a vehicle
13 for countering misperception of disadvantaged neighbourhoods and
14 stimulating social integration and cohesion in global cities of the 21st
15 century.
16 Overall, it is not clear however whether this kind of collective
17 creative practice will result in the reproduction of the dominant
18 knowledge structures (that is, the predominance of the epistemology
19 of the North) or, on the contrary, in the emergence of alternative
20 narratives representative of the agency of local participants. While
21 the hybrid character of narratives emerging from this kind of creative
22 exercise is undeniable, measuring their impact beyond their temporal
23 and geographical limits is one of the most problematic issues of the
24 Co-Creation project at large (this will be addressed in Chapter 17).
25
26
27
Actors’ identities and the Co-Creation experience
28 As an emancipatory methodology, a key benefit Co-Creation offers
29 to marginalised communities lies in its capacity to provide these
30 populations with opportunities for enlarging their world views,
31 horizons and networks beyond their secluded urban spaces. As recorded
32 by Clift, Silva and Telles in Chapter 15, the main challenge that
33 residents of the favela working in the tourism industry are faced with
34 are the stereotypes they try to disrupt. They have done this primarily
35 by establishing connections with actors involved in developing
36 community tourism in other favelas in Rio. While the local activists,
37 and in particular the leader of Grupo Eco, designed the programme
38 for the Co-Creation workshop at Santa Marta, the participation of
39 these actors in other contexts comprised in the project H2020 remains
40 limited. In this sense, it is possible to identify a highly mobile group
41 of international researchers and members of European NGOs that can
42 participate in Co-Creation activities in multiple contexts, while the
65
1 role of local actors belonging to marginalised communities is seriously

2 limited by the lack of economic resources that translates into lack
3 of international mobility. Even if participation of local actors is not
4 limited to the activities of the workshop (the leader of Grupo Eco co-
5 authored Chapter 15), the fact that the great majority of residents of
6 target communities do not travel to other cities and countries where
7 Co-Creation workshops and methodologies are deployed restrains the
8 impact the collectively produced knowledge could have had on them
9 and their communities in a broader context of cultural exchange.
10 Another ambivalent aspect of the Co-Creation workshop in Santa
11 Marta in relation to the interaction between local and international
12 participants and the opportunities provided for overcoming
13 dichotomising identities and the predominance of Northern
14 epistemologies is the language issue. On the one hand, local participants
15 had to adapt to the fact that most of the international participants were
16 not fluent in Portuguese and translation to English was needed during
17 all the activities of the programme. While this could be considered as
18 proof of the continued predominance of Northern epistemological
19 frameworks, in this context of interaction it is important to mention
20 that, on the other hand, local participants were able to express their
21 opinions and perspectives in their mother tongue (Portuguese) and
22 therefore were not restrained by their capacity to express themselves
23 in a foreign language, even if the workshop provided the context for
24 improving their skills in English.
25
26
27
Conclusion
28 This chapter intended in the first place to contextualise the theoretical
29 model of the Global North-South divide and the implications it has
30 in terms of the relational structure between countries assigned to each
31 category and as a hegemonic representational practice that reproduces
32 asymmetry and domination. Given this context of interaction, the Co-
33 Creation methodology is proposed as an innovative approach, with the
34 aim of constructing alternative representational structures that build
35 on a world view of human co-belonging to the world rather than
36 insisting in the reproduction of asymmetric differences that provide
37 the discursive context where the Global South is always subject of
38 intervention by the Global North.
39 Second, the analysis of the international workshop held at the
40 favela of Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro, was an opportunity to illustrate
41 the basic Co-Creation principles and provide examples of potential
42 methodological tools, including the techniques of photovoice and
66
1 affective mapping. It addressed Co-Creation’s capacity to use these

2 techniques for building shared meanings and collective knowledge
3 with the main goal of disrupting misperceptions and stereotypes that
4 produce stigma and exclusion of marginalised communities.
5 Finally, the chapter examined the roles and identities of participants in
6 this kind of workshop and explored whether or not the methodology
7 empowers local actors or communities in the process of producing
8 shared collective, participatory knowledge.
9 As for possible recommendations that could enhance Co-Creation
10 methodology and workshops in the future, first and foremost it is
11 important that project funding considers a greater implication of local
12 actors in the multiple international contexts where interventions are
13 carried out. While it could be argued that outcomes of individual
14 Co-Creation experiences can open new perspectives on collective
15 knowledge production and effectively challenge misperceptions and
16 negative visions of urban spaces of exclusion or relegation in the
17 short term and at the local level, impacts beyond these dimensions
18 remain limited. In fact, by promoting increased mobility among the
19 local participants of workshops, communitarian knowledge expressed
20 during these events could be transformed into a cosmopolitan one,
21 creating connections between members of stigmatised communities
22 across borders. This could, in turn, allow them to identify common
23 problems and possible solutions on a greater scale and participate in
24 the process of knowledge production on a more equal basis. In other
25 words, what would be needed is for favela knowledge to be taken out
26 of the favela by its own producers.
27 In fact, if Co-Creation projects do not consider the problem of
28 increasing the mobility of marginalised communities with the objective
29 of enlarging their participation in them, they run the risk not only
30 of not being able to achieve their stated goals of reducing inequalities
31 but would actually participate in reinforcing them. In this sense, even
32 if the workshops commit to the ethical principles that guide their
33 implementation, failure to include members of the neighbourhoods
34 or communities within the international dimension of the project
35 would (re)produce hegemonic representational practices that preclude
36 the effective emergence of alternative epistemologies to the dominant
37 North-South paradigm. In other words, what Co-Creation needs to do
38 in order to develop its full potential to reduce inequalities – at least at
39 the knowledge production level – is to foster international participation
40 in local communities to deprovincialise communitarian knowledge,
41 while at the same time provincialising Western dominant paradigms
42 through which reality has been studied and constituted.
67
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1 5
2
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5
Doing politics in uncertain times:
6 Co-Creation, agency and
7
8
the ontology of the city
9
10 Niccolò Milanese
11
12
13
14
15
Introduction
16 When and where is Co- Creation a useful strategy? While the
17 term comes originally from marketing and business studies, it has
18 been developed as a strategy in diverse economic, administrative,
19 governmental and artistic contexts, as part of what more generally has
20 been called the ‘usological’ turn (Wright, 2013). Each of these spheres
21 into which Co-Creation is deployed has its own discursive grammars,
22 embedded teleologies, power struggles, and institutional dynamics; part
23 of the point of introducing Co-Creation as a method in these spheres
24 is to displace, challenge or transform these. What happens, then, if
25 we deploy Co-Creation as a strategy or mot d’ordre for urban research?
26 In a Co-Creation methodology, the individuals who could have been
27 conceived as the objects of research (through interviews, surveys,
28 observation) are repositioned instead as its Co-Creators. Together with
29 this shift in authorship and authority, the form of knowledge produced
30 is also displaced and multiplied: the outputs of Co-Creation research
31 may include written articles, presentations, policy proposals and similar
32 paradigmatic forms of knowledge, but they would also include several
33 ‘embedded’ forms of knowledge such as artworks that remain in the
34 urban setting under study, the interpersonal connections and networks
35 created, the group dynamic and the empowerment of participants.
36 These forms seem to be further from theoretical knowledge, and
37 closer to the kind of knowledge involved in what has been called the
38 ‘imaginative dimension of society’, or ‘social imaginaries’ by authors
39 like Cornelius Castoriadis (1987) and more recently Charles Taylor
40 (2003). If we understand the city not only as a material space of
41 constructions but also as a lived symbolic space of relationships, it is
42 plausible to suggest that the Co-Creation methodology in an urban
71
1 setting is involved in both restaging the interactions that partly produce

2 the city itself and revealing forms of knowledge at the same time as
3 recreating the city through what aims to be a more egalitarian and
4 empowering process. Co-Creation thus intervenes in what Engin Isin
5 (2002) has called the ‘political space’ of the city, which arises from and
6 mediates the material and symbolic spaces.
7 This chapter will suggest that Co-Creation is a useful methodology in
8 contexts of political and social uncertainty, and specifically in contexts
9 where urban rescaling combined with geopolitical reordering in a
10 context of risk and unpredictability leads to the unity of the city itself
11 coming into question. Co-Creation is a useful strategy for research
12 in such scenarios because it potentially recuperates a civic capacity,
13 allowing participants to act as agents involved in the creation of the
14 city, even when formal kinds of political agency are weak or non-
15 existent, without ignoring or foreclosing the ambiguity, complexity
16 and uncertainty of political outcomes and futures.
17
18
The strategic hypothesis of Co-Creation
19
20 The vision of the city as an oeuvre of citizens, intellectuals and artists
21 has an obvious precursor in the work of Henri Lefebvre, along with his
22 attempt to reassert use-value in a context of the dominance of exchange
23 value (Lefebvre, 1996). Co-Creation as a research methodology could
24 go somewhat naturally in this direction, putting a stronger emphasis on
25 the autonomy of ‘creation’ than has become associated with Lefebvre’s
26 slogan ‘right to the city’, which perhaps lends itself to legalistic and
27 stato-centric interpretations (see Holston, 2008 and 2009, and Lopes
28 de Souza, 2010 for critical views). Seen in this way, using Co-Creation
29 would imply making several strong claims of different kinds: an
30 epistemological claim that the city can be known through a process of
31 interactions between individuals; an ontological claim that the city is in
32 some sense produced by these relations; and normative political claims
33 that the production of the city has become alienated, and this alienation
34 should be overcome by a specific form of practice which combines
35 intellectual, creative and practical collective work. The strength of
36 these claims would depend on how much we think can be explained,
37 known or transformed using the methodology. After all, even if social
38 scientists are pressured into pretending that their methods can explain
39 everything, there is no need for any methodology to claim exclusivity
40 and completeness.
41 Deploying Co-Creation as a slogan in an international comparative
42 research context ostensibly calls into question some of those
72
page 73 Doing politics in uncertain times
1 presuppositions we have just identified as natural to it. First, the

2 comparative question: if the city is an oeuvre, is each city produced in
3 broadly the same way, or are there radically different creations of the
4 city? This comparative question cannot be asked today without also
5 raising the issue of the interrelations between cities in a global context.
6 This leads inevitably to the question: if the city itself is an oeuvre,
7 what about the (international) relationships between cities? Do the
8 relationships between cities – those relationships of spaces – have the
9 same kind of meaning as urban spaces? Are they created in the same
10 way? Are they knowable in the same ways? By asking these questions,
11 we appear to be faced with the disjunction between the ‘everyday’
12 subjective experience of urban space and its more impersonal ‘structural’
13 processes and determinants: what is the articulation between these ways
14 of approaching and understanding the city? Variants of this question
15 are familiar to all social sciences. Co-Creation as a methodology does
16 not so much avoid these dilemmas as reposition them as a practical
17 reflexive consideration of participants: ‘what common space are we
18 at once creating and creating in (or being created by)?’ and ‘is there a
19 discordance between these spaces?’ are two questions participants in
20 Co-Creation need to ask.
21 Here again, a comparison with Lefebvre is useful. Lefebvre
22 (1996: 187) positions his theory of social space, The Production of Space,
23 precisely as encompassing, ‘on the one hand the critical analysis of
24 urban reality and on the other that of everyday life’. He says that this
25 ‘analysis of the whole of practico-social activities’ shows an ensemble
26 which ‘has nothing to do with a system or synthesis in the usual sense’
27 but rather seeks:
28
29 … by trial and error where can be located in time and
30 space the point of no return and of no recourse – not
31 on an individual or group scale, but on a global scale
32 … . It would be the moment when the reproduction of
33 existing relations of production would cease either because
34 degradation and dissolution sweep it away, or because new
35 relations are produced displacing and replacing old ones.
36 The possibility of such a moment (a perspective which does
37 not coincide exactly with the usual theory of revolution)
38 defines a strategic hypothesis. It is not an indisputable and
39 positively established certainty. It does not exclude other
40 possibilities (for example, the destruction of the planet).
41 (Lefebvre, 1996: 186)
42
73
1 In this dense paragraph are encapsulated several of Lefebvre’s most

2 insightful conjectures, which position the ‘right to the city’ firmly in
3 a revolutionary perspective.
4 As Neil Brenner (1999 and 2000) has emphasised, The Production
5 of Space explores the ‘superimposition and interpenetration of
6 social spaces’ (Lefebvre, 1996: 342) in contemporary cities, in a
7 context of global urban rescaling driven by capitalist restructuring
8 as capital seeks to free itself from constraint or friction (‘the
9 annihilation of space through time’, as Marx famously put it in
10 the Grundrisse [Marx, 1973, see Harvey 1990 for the classic urban
11 theory exposition of this notion]) and states struggle to attract, fix
12 and reterritorialise it. As Lefebvre says (1991: 86-7), ‘social spaces
13 interpenetrate one another and/or superimpose themselves upon
14 one another. They are not things, which have mutually limiting
15 boundaries’. This suggests that the ‘global’ does not intrude upon
16 or crush the ‘local’ but rather that hierarchies and relationships
17 shift and recompose. The urban space becomes at once what
18 Lefebvre (1991: 386) calls the ‘milieu’ and the ‘enjeu’ (stake) of
19 contemporary sociopolitical struggle because the city is both the
20 site and target of rescaling processes, due to its historical centrality
21 in the development of capitalism and the density of connections
22 and institutions concentrated in it. Lefebvre’s strategic hypothesis
23 is that, at some point soon, the production model will no longer
24 be tenable, and a systemic change will take place.
25 This hypothesis is only partly sustainable today for us, even
26 withholding judgement on its Marxist character. On the one hand,
27 the processes of scalar recomposition and the politics of space which
28 Lefebvre identified have accelerated to a point he most likely would
29 have thought untenable. Whereas in the 1970s, at least in the ‘first
30 world’, the Fordist model of production was still based on the
31 nation-state’s capacity to organise production, alleviate sociospatial
32 polarisation and preserve social cohesion, today’s highly financialised
33 and multi-polar post-Fordist economy has led to a situation in which
34 single nation-states often struggle to stabilise or fix any spatial scale in
35 which to contain, regulate or direct global circulations; rather they
36 constantly adapt, resize and rescale territorial policies, priorities and
37 geopolitical alliances as a function of circumstances largely out of their
38 control. If we continue to use Marxist terms, we could say that the
39 mode of production has changed, or is in the process of changing, and
40 has yet to find a settled new form, unless that new form is precisely
41 one of constant upheaval. This sense of constant upheaval is surely
42
74
1 part of what is referred to as ‘globalisation’ in everyday vernacular

2 conversation.
3 On the other hand, against what Lefebvre may have predicted and
4 hoped, the movements of urban sociopolitical struggle ‘from below’
5 have not yet shown a capacity to reappropriate the means of spatial
6 production on anything other than a localised and temporary scale.
7 Networks of some cities may be taking a lead in terms of environmental
8 policies, refugee welcome or housing policies, but we are still far away
9 from a situation where ‘mayors rule the world’ (to use the title of
10 Benjamin Barber’s [2014] provocative book), or where cities challenge
11 either the dominance of global capital or the security prerogative of
12 the nation-state.
13 Into this context of accelerated processes of global spatial
14 reorganisation, what is the ‘strategic hypothesis’ of Co-Creation as
15 a methodology of urban research? It cannot be the announcing of
16 an alternative system, let alone anything about how that alternative
17 might look, but rather that the unity of the urban space is constantly
18 in doubt and in some sense our common sharing of space in the
19 city is thereby constantly under threat; further, that the Co-Creation
20 methodology can modestly open up temporary spaces of collaboration
21 in which the shifting shape and time of the urban can be discerned
22 andmade accessible to knowledge. Another way of putting this is
23 that the questions ‘who are we, Co-Creators?’ and ‘what common
24 space(s) do we Co-Create (in)?’ are both unavoidable, with at best
25 temporary and provisional answers acutely sensitive to their own limits
26 (which means to say that the questions imply their inverse: ‘who is
27 not here, not part of Co-Creation?’, ‘what space are we in which we
28 do not Co-Create, over which we do not have agency?’ and ‘which
29 discontinuous spaces are we in? which spaces are we unable to make
30 common?’). The experimental conjecture that needs to be tested is
31 that by asking these questions in a specific kind of way, practically
32 and creatively as much as theoretically, we can gain agency rather
33 than inertia.
34 A comparative urban research with an international dimension (as in
35 the case of the Co-Creation project) only accentuates the pertinence of
36 these questions, but the questions would need to be asked in any setting
37 or scale, not so much because the economy or politics has become
38 more ‘global’ recently but because economy and politics everywhere is
39 going through a global reorganisation which shows no signs of settling
40 down into a stable form. In the next section of this chapter, we will
41 see how the deployment of Co-Creation as a strategic hypothesis in
42
75
1 a specific sociohistoric configuration leads unavoidably to the posing

2 of these questions.
3
4
5
Co-Creation in a context of uncertainty
6 The practical experience and application of Co- Creation as a
7 methodology which this chapter builds upon comes from fieldwork
8 looking into processes of urban marginalisation between mid-2018 and
9 early 2019 in four ‘world-cities’: London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and
10 Mexico City. The choice of these four cities comes partly from the
11 author’s own research interests, partly from the Co-Creation project
12 funded by the European Union – itself one of the most important
13 actors involved in both urban rescaling and geopolitical reordering
14 processes – which connected partners based in these cities and their
15 respective zones of influence. In all four of the cities, during this
16 timeframe, the everyday experience of space of many urban dwellers
17 could not be disassociated from anxiety concerning the future shape
18 and place of the city, and therefore from wider concerns about changing
19 geopolitical contexts. Headline news in each of the cities in the research
20 period touched directly on questions of urban centrality, mobility, scale
21 and change. Urban scholars have been talking about urban rescaling
22 in a context of geopolitical change for over three decades, but rarely
23 have such questions been so pervasive in the news cycles of multiple
24 countries and in the everyday concerns of residents. It is perhaps useful
25 to recite some of these stories to emphasise the sentiment not only of
26 the return of history but of the acceleration of history that it provokes,
27 and to attempt to bring out at least some family resemblances in terms
28 of the kind of change taking place between the different cities.
29 In London during this timeframe, public discussion was dominated
30 by the relationship of the United Kingdom to the European Union,
31 following the referendum to leave the European Union in 2016 and
32 in the context of the ongoing negotiations as to the nature of this
33 separation (‘Brexit’) where the outcomes were highly uncertain. It
34 became an unavoidable subject to which all social and political issues
35 were related. Brexit was seen to have potentially enormous implications
36 for the centrality of the city of London to the regional economy of
37 the European Union. To give examples as indications of what seemed
38 to be much more systematic processes of the relegation of London’s
39 normative power on a regional scale, the European Medicines Agency
40 was relocated from London to Amsterdam during this period, and the
41 European Banking Authority from London to Paris. Simultaneously,
42 discussions about whether London might reposition itself as a different
76
1 kind of global centre, with less regulation and taxes on capital, were
2 underway. Asides from these uncertainties concerning London’s place
3 in the world, everyone living in the country and UK citizens living in
4 the European Union had reason to be uncertain of the future of their
5 rights to move, to reside and to politically express themselves.
6 Paris, during this same period, in part as a historic rival to London,
7 was seeking to reinforce itself as a regional and global centre, but it
8 simultaneously found itself beset by sociopolitical conflict manifested
9 in the gilets jaunes movement from November 2018 onwards. This
10 attracted global media attention to the city, notably when violent
11 clashes with the police broke out on the famous Champs Elysées. This
12 movement positioned itself as the uprising of those excluded from
13 the metropolitan centre, and the public debate over the legitimacy
14 and limits of the movement was intense. Through an astonishing
15 coincidence, the Presidential response to a process of popular
16 consultation organised by the government to resecure social cohesion
17 was postponed and overtaken by the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral on
18 15 April 2019, at ‘kilometre zero’, in the very centre of Paris historically
19 and geographically, the day before President Macron was due to make
20 his announcements. This fire, followed live through broadcast and
21 social media throughout the world, led to a renewed sense of fragility
22 over the historical relationship between Paris as a national and global
23 centre and its peripheries.
24 Rio de Janeiro, during the same period, was experiencing high
25 political uncertainty running up to the October 2018 Presidential
26 elections, with highly popular former President Lula attempting to
27 run as a candidate from prison but ultimately being disqualified,
28 and then further uncertainty following the election of hard-Right
29 nationalist Jair Bolsonaro. This change dramatically influenced the
30 prospects and outlook for those most at risk of social exclusion in
31 Rio de Janeiro: notably those living in favelas, Afro-descendants and
32 indigenous populations, women and LGBTQI communities, all of
33 whom were explicit targets of violent hate speech. In the run-up to the
34 elections, the supporters of Bolsonaro attacked rallies held at universities
35 in opposition to his candidacy. Since its election, the government of
36 Bolsonaro has undermined universities through cutting funding and
37 continues to verbally attack the importance of scientific knowledge,
38 particularly in the humanities. The life and death of Marielle Franco,
39 the murdered Rio councillor – favela-born, educated at university, a
40 lesbian and a campaigner for the rights of minorities and against the
41 clientelism, corruption and violence – became during this time a
42 myth or parable by which many in Rio could interpret their historical
77
1 circumstances. This parable was dramatically represented in several of

2 the Rio Carnival parades in March 2019, most notably that of the
3 samba school Mangueira, which won the competition. As in Paris, fire
4 was again an internationally visible image of the country: the burning
5 of the National Museum in Rio in August 2018, and the burning of
6 the Amazon rainforest both highly mediatised and politicised events
7 globally.
8 During this same period in Mexico City, uncertainty over the
9 direction in which newly elected President Andrés Manuel Lópes
10 Obrador would take the country was significant. Elected in July
11 2018 and taking office on 1 December 2018, Obrador promised a
12 ‘fourth transformation’ of the Mexican state, coming after Mexican
13 independence, reform and revolution: the natural question many people
14 were asking was what direction and implications this transformation
15 would have. In the months preceding his formal investiture as
16 President, Obrador announced that plans for a new Iinternational
17 airport for Mexico City would be scrapped, following a referendum.
18 This decision had implications in terms of the international profile of
19 Mexico City, both as a transport hub and a place of investment, and
20 in the manner in which the decision was taken, which led to a debate
21 about government by direct democracy, its implications and risks of
22 instrumentalisation. During this period, an intense rhetorical attack
23 on both Mexicans and, specifically, on migrants crossing the Mexican
24 border into the US was being conducted by US President Donald
25 Trump, while a trade deal between Mexico and the US was being
26 negotiated. Simultaneously, the US military was touting the possibilities
27 for intervention in Venezuela, possibly using the Brazilian military as
28 proxies, and sustained comparisons between Obrador’s anti-neoliberal
29 rhetoric and that of the failed Chavez regime in Venezuela were being
30 made both by domestic opponents of Obrador and by Right-wing US
31 media, stoking anxiety both about the course of action of President
32 Obrador and about how international neighbours might react to it.
33 This necessarily incomplete and unsatisfactory run-through of some
34 of the main news stories of the period of research in the countries
35 and cities under study is intended on the one hand to illustrate the
36 thickness of the context in which any process of Co-Creation will
37 take place, but also to make some general points about this particular
38 configuration of cities at this time.
39 First, the sense of historical uncertainty was common to all cities,
40 albeit for different reasons. In each city, there was a sense of the
41 changing of an epoch, and this uncertain temporal horizon inevitably
42 has an influence on the way space is experienced. Second, the
78
1 internationalised character of each of the megacities under study –

2 three of which are national capitals and one of which is a former
3 capital city – implied that the sense of space of their inhabitants was
4 in a complex tension between ‘national’ framing and ‘international’
5 framing: the meaning of living in Paris, for example, was affected by the
6 gilets jaunes protests, not just for reasons which concern national politics
7 and social cohesion, but inextricably also because of the international
8 implications of the visibility of the protests and what it might imply
9 for the future development of Paris. Flames and fire – symbolically
10 an antithesis and risk of urbanity – were internationally visible images
11 and symbols of both Paris and Brazil during the period.
12 Third, the sense of crisis in the European cities under study was
13 sufficiently visible internationally that, to some extent, Europe was at
14 once provincialised, made less dominant as a role-model, and brought
15 nearer to non-European cities: often in the exchanges not only with
16 other researchers but with regular inhabitants in Rio de Janeiro and
17 Mexico City, there was a sense that, for all the enormous differences
18 and inequalities, some similar problems were being experienced in
19 metropolitan Europe to those experienced in Brazil and Mexico, and
20 that some similar processes of political reorganisation were taking
21 place (for recent context on Mexico City see Parnreiter, 2015, and
22 on Brazil see Barcellos de Souza, 2016). Analyses of globalising cities
23 show network patterns of global centres, which cut across North/
24 South divides, and in this network of global centrality cities may
25 experience promotion or demotion in various sectors and domains (for
26 empirical analysis, see Taylor et al, 2011). The trajectory of London
27 specifically in these globalised networks is of significance at once for
28 urban theory, for the social imaginary of its inhabitants and for the
29 social imaginary of citizens of other cities across the world: London
30 has been so central historically to processes of globalisation and the
31 spatial politics of capitalism that it is a paradigm city for urban studies
32 in this area (see, for example, Brenner, 1999, and Sassen, 1991), as well
33 as being known by people across the world as a centre, meaning that
34 the risk of its peripheralisation or demotion in capital centrality in the
35 context of Brexit creates novel historical circumstances.
36 Fourth, while travelling between these cities and conducting Co-
37 Creation workshops, discussions and collaborations, the participating
38 researchers were inevitably carrying this context with them: most
39 intensely that context closest to where they normally live (including
40 Paris), but as the project went forward and researchers travelled from
41 one city to the next, increasingly as messengers and representatives of
42 the contexts they were coming from and Co-Creating in. This last
79
1 point implies ethical and political responsibilities for the researcher, who
2 by having the freedom and privilege to travel between these contexts
3 in a symbolic way could be said to hold the ‘keys to the cities’ (much
4 like honorary citizens are sometimes ceremoniously given keys to the
5 city). The inequality of mobility rights and possibilities of different
6 Co-Creation participants, and the risk of imperial behaviours and
7 epistemologies of those closest to centrality, power and capital, need
8 to be at the forefront of every researcher’s mind, most importantly
9 those in privileged positions.
10 This rich world- historical and political context becomes an
11 inescapable part of interpreting some of the acts and exchanges
12 experienced in the process of Co-Creation: those approaching the
13 questions of ‘who are we Co-Creators?’ and ‘what common space do
14 we Co-Create in?’ must be aware of this context and the geopolitically
15 uncertainty of everyday local city life. In order to give a specific
16 example, this chapter lastly considers one episode that took place
17 within a Co-Creation workshop to articulate the ways in which
18 the methodology can concentrate ambiguities and vulnerabilities, is
19 sensitive to the fluid transformations in togetherness and otherness,
20 and thereby can act as a deep imaginative source of common cause
21 or agency.
22
23
Urban space, threat space and common space
24
25 The episode occurred in the context of a workshop organised in the
26 favela of Santa Marta, near to the wealthy and embassy-lined streets
27 of Botafogo in Rio de Janeiro in August 2018. The favela has until
28 recently had relatively low levels of violence as the first favela to undergo
29 ‘pacification’ in 2008, in advance of the global events hosted by the
30 city: the football World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Santa
31 Marta is a case study in the spatiality of the ‘grey zone’ that emerges
32 through the interaction of formal, informal and illegal economies in
33 global-market dynamics, and the ways different state and non-state
34 actors – most notably the police, militias and the drugs barons – attempt
35 to intervene in these dynamics, not so much to eradicate illegality or
36 reinforce legal forms of work, but to rebalance the benefits and profits
37 of these arrangements between different groups and interests, which
38 includes politicians, residents, multinational companies, global financial
39 institutions and transnational crime rings (Valenzuela-Aguilera, 2019).
40 In the recent months before the workshop, the levels of violent
41 exchange between drugs gangs and the Rio police had intensified.
42 Walking around the favela it was easy to stumble across visibly armed
80
1 young men, who nevertheless did their best to stay out of sight,
2 particularly of international visitors and tourists. As part of the Co-
3 Creation workshop, a small group of five people – comprising three
4 researchers from the UK and France (of whom the author was one),
5 one Santa Marta resident acting as a translator, and one younger resident
6 involved in a local NGO – explored the streets of the favela, conducting
7 the exercise of taking street photographs which would represent what
8 we understood as representing key local issues (‘diagnostic photos’) and
9 future opportunities (‘possibility photos’) in the favela. In parallel, the
10 group endeavoured to have conversations with local inhabitants about
11 how they saw the future of the favela in terms of its development. In
12 such conversations, the end of the Lula era and the uncertainty of
13 what was to come next were constant themes. The group decided
14 to knock on one door in a narrow street and started a conversation
15 with a resident who had recently moved to the area, explaining the
16 overall aims of the research into the future of the favela and where each
17 member of the group had come from. Very soon into the conversation,
18 several young armed men ran past, speaking hurriedly into their
19 walkie-talkies, clearly on manoeuvres which would imply either an
20 armed confrontation with other drugs gangs or, much more likely, a
21 confrontation with the police. Quite naturally, the resident invited the
22 group into her house to take shelter, where the conversation continued,
23 other family members having noted the new entrants to their house
24 but continuing their previous activity. This simple act of humanity,
25 an everyday reflex for inhabitants, and which surely would have been
26 shown to any stranger outside of that door at that moment, no doubt
27 responded to a reinforced sense of care for international visitors. The
28 space of Co-Creation thus suddenly changed, from the public street
29 to the private home, from the external city to the internal domestic
30 space, at the initiation of someone who had not been involved in the
31 group or project of Co-Creation at all until that moment, but was now
32 acting at once as a host, a participant and a protector of the research
33 project and those involved in it. The public space suddenly became
34 unsafe as a space for creative collaboration, because of the changed
35 activity of a set of actors who were previously present in the space but
36 until that point not threatening.
37 The resident who invited the group into her house had already
38 learnt where its members were coming from. She had televisions,
39 an internet connection, and newspapers in her house, and a level of
40 education which would suggest that she would not be totally unaware
41 of the contexts her visitors were from. The short conversation dealt
42 with the favela itself, its cleanliness, her hopes for the future as a new
81
1 resident, and did not touch on any international matters, but those
2 ‘international’ contexts were present in the room through the group’s
3 presence and through the need for translation from Portuguese into
4 French (the common language of the group). Once an assessment
5 had been made that the sound of gunshots was no longer close, and
6 that danger outside had abated, the group took a decision to take a
7 photograph of the group, the resident – and including the husband of
8 the resident, who had not been involved in the conversation – in the
9 mirror before leaving. Reunited with the larger group of Co-Creation
10 researchers, both local and international, later in the day, it was decided
11 that this photograph would be used as the ‘possibilities’ photograph
12 representing ‘uncertainty but hope’ in the favelas for an exhibition.
13 The significance of this simple episode as part of a Co-Creation
14 investigation is that the self-reflexive nature of Co-Creation obliged
15 a reflection on: the changing space in which Co-Creation was taking
16 place (moving from the street to the home); the changing composition
17 of the group involved in the common project (which came to include,
18 in a stronger way, the resident); the changing roles of those individuals
19 (from interviewee to host, from interviewer to guest); a reflection on
20 the place of individuals and groups external to the project, and the
21 way their actions changed the space and composition of Co-Creation
22 participation (whether it be the drugs gangs encountered, the police
23 they were most likely confronting, or the family members of the
24 resident who welcomed the group into their home and continued
25 their business); and the development of a common project (all of
26 those inside the home were in some sense committed to continuing
27 exchange, research and mutual learning). Each member of the group
28 was more acutely aware of the position of the other: the resident
29 imagining the concerns of ‘international’ visitors, the international
30 visitors more acutely aware of the meaning of being a resident of that
31 place. Surely in this process of imaginative ‘simulation’ in understanding
32 others (Heal, 2003), all kinds of stereotypes and misconceptions
33 continued to exist, but the episode started a process in which such
34 misconceptions could be discussed. Finally, the element of ‘creation’ in
35 the methodology meant that one of the means chosen to record and to
36 make communicable and knowable both the shared experience and the
37 shared space created through the incident was through a collectively
38 composed photograph (a modest artistic product) in which all appeared
39 as a group in a mirror, as if to fix the temporary unity in space created
40 through the conversation.
41 The episode in Santa Marta favela had all its local specificities, but the
42 actors involved, and the context of Santa Marta itself, all have ‘global’
82
1 relations: the local is not eradicated by the global, it is transformed, and

2 the city as a lived space is transformed each time by actors coming to it
3 and interacting in it with their own histories, contexts and relationships.
4 The episode shows that Co-Creation can be used to make conscious the
5 interaction of these relationships in changing urban scales. If the episode
6 involved a form of danger or risk which is not of the same degree as
7 to be found in other urban settings, this very present form of risk is a
8 more extreme form of the threat of violence, dissolution or lawlessness
9 which is always the alternative to the social unity of the city. What
10 the episode shows is that, in dealing with such risks, we recompose
11 social unities and that these social unities can be, and frequently are,
12 irreducibly ‘international’ and do not map to state borders. By self-
13 consciously Co-Creating a new urban space, in a context of threat, we
14 recuperate an urban civic agency in contexts where we may have no
15 formal political agency, and where we are physically weaker actors than
16 others. This urban civic agency has a quite different character to the
17 Hobbesian solutions of overbearing sovereignty, which may otherwise
18 be tempting in such a situation of ‘stasis’ (see Agamben, 2015). By
19 finding ways of recording, drawing, photographing or recounting
20 such encounters which create shared spaces, we are contributing in
21 small ways to the creation of common social imaginaries which are in
22 their way insurgent against the impersonal and structural violence and
23 expulsion which Saskia Sassen (Sassen, 2014 and Kaldor and Sassen,
24 forthcoming) among others has analysed as a major phenomenon of
25 the global economy.
26 Therefore, in answer to our initial question of where and when
27 Co-Creation is a useful strategy, we can say that it is useful in urban
28 contexts where the dynamics of change and of threat are strong and
29 disruptive, where multiplicities of different actors are involved in these
30 dynamics, as a way of small groups of researchers, inhabitants, artists
31 and others becoming consciously aware of their own individual and
32 collective involvement in these dynamics, to collectively produce forms
33 of knowledge which recall the memory, the present and the future
34 possibility of spaces of their common civic agency.
35
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35 Sassen, S. (2014) Expulsion: Brutality and Complexity in the Global
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37 Taylor, C. ( 2003 ), Modern Social Imaginaries , Durham: Duke
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5 Abbemuseum.
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1 6
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5
Co-Creation and bridging
6 theory-method divides
7
8
9
Annaleise Depper and Simone Fullagar
10
11
12
13
Introduction
14 This chapter explores the possibilities and challenges posed by Co-
15 Creation as a knowledge practice that is more than a ‘novel method’ for
16 addressing urban inequality, disadvantage and territorial stigmatisation.
17 Co-Creation is informed by a diverse range of disciplinary practices,
18 theoretical traditions and ways of collaborating with communities, artists
19 and academics. The chapter draws on examples from the authors’ own
20 and others’ work that explores the affective relations of stigmatisation,
21 place and urban inequality through Co- Creative, participatory
22 methods. This methodological banner of ‘Co-Creation’ has been cited
23 across a range of disciplines, such as children’s geographies (Stephens
24 et al, 2014), management and business studies (Voorberg et al, 2015),
25 health care research (Gill et al, 2011; Zanetti and Taylor, 2016), urban
26 and culture research (Carpenter and Horvath, 2018), feminist research
27 (Ringrose and Renold, 2014) and educational studies (Bovill et al,
28 2011). Across these disciplines, Co-Creation is commonly thought of
29 as moving beyond tokenistic participation and guided by fundamental
30 notions of participation, praxis, collective creativity and knowledge
31 exchange between two or more individuals that continues throughout
32 the inquiry and design process.
33 In this empirical research, the conceptualisation of Co-Creation
34 is supported by an inclusive approach, whereby young people were
35 invited to contribute insights through the relational production of
36 knowledge. Young people contributed their insights throughout the
37 design process – from initially exploring ideas and questions relevant
38 to them in their community to trialling and selecting creative practices
39 to tell their own stories and experiences of moving through everyday
40 spaces. This study involved creative, arts-based practices to explore
41 the social practices that young people enact through the affective and
42 material contexts of their everyday lives (their ‘embodied mobility’).
87
1 In this project there was no ‘artist’ involved, as both young people and
2 the researcher were understood to be actively Co-Creating knowledge
3 through a range of arts-based research practices.
4 The authors’ particular interest lies in exploring Co-Creation as a new
5 materialist approach to creative, participatory research. This chapter
6 draws upon Depper’s empirical PhD research, which used arts-based
7 practice and knowledge exchange to engage with young people (aged
8 ten to 17), families and local practitioners (health, childhood and family
9 services) in the exploration of inequality, affect and embodied mobility
10 in a large town in the South West of England. Co-Creation provided
11 an overarching process that utilised creative participatory methods, such
12 as ‘photovoice’, peer-led interviewing, mapping, postermaking and
13 film making. These creative artefacts were Co-Created with young
14 people to explore affective relations of leisure, class, gender, space and
15 place. Arts-based methods produced provocations to think differently
16 and intervene in the complexities of power and entanglements of
17 human and nonhuman relations that shaped young peoples’ embodied
18 mobility. While the main part of the empirical work involved engaging
19 with young people through creative practices, this inquiry provided
20 further opportunities to engage with young people’s parents, carers
21 and local practitioners in this research. For example, at the start of this
22 inquiry, local practitioners were involved through initial meetings to
23 explore their thoughts about the multiple challenges and complexities
24 around young people’s lives in Swindon. Later, practitioners were
25 brought together with young people and their families through the
26 exhibition event, which showcased young people’s creative outputs
27 and facilitated the exchange of ideas about their everyday challenges.
28 Throughout this chapter, the authors share specific examples from
29 this wider empirical research, turning, in particular, to young people’s
30 stories and experiences of embodied mobility through photovoice and
31 poster-making creative practices.
32 This chapter discusses how the conceptualisation of a ‘creative
33 research assemblage’ extends traditional ways of Co-Creating and
34 co-constructing research within interpretative traditions that have
35 previously rested upon dualisms of real/representation, self/world,
36 self/other, mind/body. A creative research assemblage brings together
37 different kinds of knowledge, for example, techniques, artefacts,
38 researcher bodies, young bodies, human and nonhuman contexts.
39 Rather than position the humanist subject at the centre of Co-Creation,
40 assemblage models approach ‘creativity as relational, emerging through
41 human and nonhuman encounters and affects’ (Fullagar and Small,
42 2018: 125). Throughout, this chapter thinks through some of the
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page 89 Co-Creation and bridging theory-method divides
1 onto-ethico-epistemological assumptions that underpin the ‘doing’

2 of Co-Creation as inventive post-qualitative practice.
3
4
5
The creative research assemblage: thinking through
6 theory and method
7 Moving beyond a primary concern with a methodological technique
8 and process, Co-Creation was enacted in this study as a material-
9 discursive knowledge practice to ‘produce’ different ways of knowing
10 and (re)presenting young people’s affective stories of stigmatised spaces.
11 New materialist theories pursue a rhizomatic, rather than linear,
12 movement of ideas and practices. Central to new materialist work is
13 disrupting the method/theory binary assumed in interpretative research
14 that seeks to understand and ‘capture’ lived experiences (Coleman
15 and Ringrose, 2013; Taylor, 2016). Such humanist traditions often
16 reduce ‘qualitative methodology to a matter of technique, instrument
17 or toolkit’ to represent the ‘real’ world (Fullagar, 2017: 249). Post-
18 qualitative inquiry refuses a neat separation of theory and methods, and
19 ‘encourages researchers to deconstruct what QR [qualitative research] is
20 and destabilize taken for granted assumptions’ (Kuby et al, 2016: 141).
21 In moving beyond humanist assumptions about individual creativity
22 and essentialist categories of identity, Co-Creation can be thought
23 of as a creative research assemblage that brings into relation a range
24 of objects, desires, bodies and contexts to disrupt, reimagine and
25 contest the normative (for example, stigmatising of groups and
26 places, and the invisibility of privileged perspectives). This creative
27 assemblage helped the authors to rethink what research ‘does’ and the
28 role of creativity in this process, as both the human and nonhuman
29 informed the process of social inquiry. According to Fox and Alldred
30 (2017: 153), new materialist social inquiry ‘treats the researcher and
31 research event … as an assemblage that produces a variety of material
32 capabilities in its human and nonhuman relations’. As Fox (2013: 495)
33 emphasises, ‘Creativity is an active, experimenting flow within a
34 network or assemblage of bodies, things, ideas and institutions’. This
35 present study engaged young people in a creative research assemblage
36 that made visible the affective dimensions of inequality, human and
37 nonhuman relations in order to produce change-oriented cultural
38 artefacts. Filming, photographs and a public exhibition were used to
39 produce a social change-oriented ‘creative research assemblage’. This
40 was comprised of both nonhuman and human elements and relations
41 (young people, researchers, organisations and charities, parents/
42 carers); research ‘tools’, methodology and methods (film equipment,
89
1 photovoice, arts and design materials, recording devices); the spaces

2 and physical locality of research events; and the theoretical frameworks
3 and ideas guiding and informing social inquiry. As this chapter will
4 explore, there were different ways in which meaning materialised
5 through young people’s experiences and the texts, images and stories
6 produced through this creative research assemblage.
7 In contrast to conventional humanist research that often ignores
8 affective relations in the desire to ‘represent’ people’s lives, this post-
9 qualitative inquiry examined flows of affects and emotions as productive
10 of Co-Creative methodologies. The turn towards affect throughout
11 the humanities and social sciences has been particularly inspired by the
12 work of Deleuze and Guattari (1988) and moves beyond individualised
13 emotion to flows of affect as sensations, desires, power relations and
14 embodied becoming (Deleuze, 1995). Affects have been articulated
15 as ‘sticky’ (Ahmed, 2004); they ‘travel as well as stick in points of
16 fixation’ (Kofoed and Ringrose, 2012: 5). Affect and emotion, as
17 sensations, are always bound up with discursive frames and cannot be
18 separated (Ahmed, 2004; Kumm and Johnson, 2018). As Ahmed (2004)
19 further emphasises, emotion and affect cannot be divided; emotions
20 become entangled and circulate through the affective economy of
21 everyday social relations (including inequality). Rather than privileging
22 discourse, affect is considered important in terms of the capacity
23 to disrupt, move and rework the social (Massumi, 1995). Affective
24 relations connect young people’s bodies and practices through complex
25 assemblages, which are bound up with broader economic, technological
26 and sociological forces and contexts (such as sport and physical culture,
27 see Fullagar and Pavlidis, 2018). As such, young people are moved by
28 the forces of affect within a broader ‘affective economy’ (Ahmed, 2004),
29 which ‘connects bodies in leisure contexts (gyms, sports fields, pools)
30 with power relations that produce social inequities (class, ethnicity,
31 gender, age, sexuality, disability)’ (Depper et al, 2018: 7). Thinking
32 with theoretical concepts of assemblage and affect was central to this
33 study, in order to enhance a new materialist social inquiry with layers
34 of meaning, nuance and ontological complexity. The authors were
35 interested in exploring what role affect plays in the micropolitics of
36 working with different desires, bodies, and techniques to effect change.
37 Post-qualitative ways of thinking further helped the authors to
38 theorise ideas around ‘voice’ within Co-Creation processes. Departing
39 from representational approaches to voice that seek a so-called truth
40 (Berbary and Boles, 2014), the authors explored complex and embodied
41 notions of voice within Co-Creation processes. Previous participatory
42 approaches have often relied upon problematic notions of ‘giving’
90
1 ‘a voice to those being researched’ (Coad, 2012: 12) or attempting

2 to retrieve an authentic voice (St Pierre, 2014). These claims often
3 position young people as a homogenous group, where ‘voice’ becomes a
4 transparent means through which young people communicate an inner
5 ‘truth’. New materialist ideas were central to exploring questions of
6 what claims are made about participatory approaches in voicing issues
7 of marginalisation, and what forms of accountability are evident in the
8 knowledge claims made by Co-Created research in the representation
9 of the lives of others (Barad, 2007).
10 This inquiry embraced the materiality of embodied voices and
11 experiences that are negotiated through the process of Co-Creation.
12 This notion of embodied voice disrupts binary oppositions between
13 the mind/ body, subject/object, method/theory, interior/exterior
14 (Coleman and Ringrose, 2013; St Pierre et al, 2016). New materialist
15 notions of embodied voice are central to understanding human and
16 nonhuman relations as ‘complex, co-constitutive, and co-constructive’
17 (Hroch and Stoddart, 2015: 295–6). Voice, therefore, can be understood
18 ‘as an assemblage, a complex network of human and nonhuman
19 agents that exceeds the traditional notion of the individual’ (Mazzei,
20 2013: 734). In this way, the research assemblage produced embodied
21 voice in particular ways through the participatory and creative methods.
22 This study thus extends Co-Creation in new directions, by embracing
23 various theoretical perspectives that reconfigure voice, the subject,
24 agency and embodiment.
25
26
27
Co-Creative practices
28 Through Co-Creation, young people reimagined, intervened and
29 performed critical ideas about the complexities in their everyday
30 lives. Co-Creative, arts-based practices created an embodied space
31 to challenge normative categories of knowing and being ‘young
32 and active’. The authors conceptualise Co-Creation as a democratic
33 process, involving multiple partners and voices, including young people,
34 researchers, communities and practitioners who come together through
35 creativity and interaction. In the present study, photovoice, peer-led
36 interviewing, mapping, poster making and film making methodologies
37 were used during and alongside workshops to explore young people’s
38 affective relationalities and experiences of everyday, stigmatised
39 spaces. This chapter now turns to these specific creative, participatory
40 methodologies adopted and to Swindon where this inquiry took place.
41 The project was located in Swindon, a large town in the South
42 West of England and explored young people’s affective practices of
91
1 mobility in low-income areas. Swindon was purposefully selected as

2 a site where the micropolitics of inequality and disparity played out
3 for young people and their families. In comparison to other places in
4 the UK, Swindon has reported relatively high levels of inequality and
5 poverty, with 16 per cent of children living in low-income families
6 (Swindon Borough Council, 2017) and specific communities facing
7 poverty, deprivation, social exclusion and high unemployment rates
8 (Swindon Borough Council, 2016). Poverty can be understood as
9 households with a relative low income, based upon a local measure of
10 ‘children in families in receipt of either out of work benefits, or tax
11 credits where their reported income is less than 60% median income’
12 (NHS Swindon, 2011: 5). Particular families living in marginalised
13 and low-income areas of Swindon have been subjected to stigmatising
14 depictions within the media. Swindon has been labelled the ‘ugliest
15 town in England’ (Grant, 2015) and elsewhere Swindon was once
16 stigmatised as the ‘fattest town’ in the West of England (Mackley, 2014).
17 Particular communities have been depicted as a ‘no-go zone’ (Cross,
18 2015) and ‘a run-down sprawling council estate on the outskirts of
19 Swindon, home to hundreds of unemployed lone parents’ (McDonald,
20 2002). Through this research, young people reimagined stigmatising
21 depictions of Swindon and actively performed a different sense of place
22 in highly affective ways.
23 This qualitative inquiry took place in Swindon over the course
24 of a year and involved three participatory projects with three
25 different groups of young people, an exhibition event and semi-
26 structured interviews with both the young people’s parents or
27 carers and practitioners who worked within children and family
28 support services in Swindon. This research engaged with young
29 people through three different organisations; each of the three
30 organisations supported children, young people and their families
31 who have been identified as ‘disadvantaged’ in multiple ways. These
32 services support children and young people living in Swindon’s most
33 vulnerable communities who are faced with significant challenges,
34 including: living in low-income households; experiencing learning
35 and communication difficulties; living in care; and having care
36 responsibilities for family members. As this research involved data
37 collection with young people, who can be defined as a vulnerable
38 group due to their age, formal safeguarding and ethical procedures
39 were followed to ensure that the welfare of young people was
40 supported at all times. All participants received a study information
41 sheet and were required to sign an adult consent or young person’s
42 assent form to confirm their willingness to take part. The names
92
1 of the participants, organisations and any specific locations within

2 Swindon have been replaced with pseudonyms.
3 Over a period of nine months, Depper facilitated three projects
4 (with the collective title Your Space, Your Say), over different durations
5 with young people in the different groups engaging with creative
6 practices in varying ways. The Co-Creation of qualitative data involved
7 participatory photovoice, peer-led interviewing, mapping, poster
8 making and film making to help Co-Create youth-oriented accounts
9 of mobility through stigmatised community spaces. These innovative
10 methods ‘on the move’ enabled young people to walk through
11 community spaces, while creatively and critically exploring spaces
12 and issues that were important in their everyday lives through visual
13 methodologies. The process of Co-Creation brought into relation a
14 range of affects (fear, shame, pleasure, belonging), produced through
15 relations of stigmatisation that shape experiences of place and urban
16 inequality. Co-Creation became a process of doing, inventing, and
17 creating knowledge together, guided by Depper’s focus on questions
18 of inequality.
19 This chapter draws upon specific examples from the study; in
20 particular, it looks at photovoice and poster-making practices as ways to
21 explore young people’s experiences and stories of embodied mobility.
22 Most of these activities took place during the first phase of the project,
23 when young people started to share their ideas and experiences through
24 creative practices. In these particular examples, a group of five young
25 people aged ten to fifteen worked both individually and collectively to
26 explore different places in Swindon, accompanied by the researcher,
27 to take pictures of objects and places that were significant to them.
28 Following these outings, young people then created posters and collages
29 of their printed photographs, adding their own drawings and words
30 to describe their experiences and feelings of these particular places.
31 At the end of the projects, young people presented their creative and
32 critical artefacts at a public engagement exhibition in Swindon. The
33 aim of the exhibition was to disseminate young people’s findings, as
34 well as to highlight ways in which communities can engage with policy
35 discourses to effect social change. The exhibition event emphasised
36 the health and social challenges in Swindon, while inviting local
37 practitioners to consider more responsive and inclusive approaches to
38 address inequality. As part of the creative assemblage, the exhibition
39 mobilised a ‘politics of imagination’ (Latimer and Skeggs, 2011).
40 Through watching the films, listening to the views of young people on
41 the panel talks, walking through the exhibition spaces to see the posters,
42 and even contributing their own ideas through an interactive exhibit,
93
1 attendees were invited to imagine and make sense of young people’s

2 lives in different ways. The Co-Creative practices of the exhibition
3 invited the attendees to both move through and be moved by the affective
4 imaginaries (Dawney, 2011) of the exhibition space. The exhibition
5 invited new conversations about recognising and responding to issues
6 of inequality that manifest in young people’s everyday lives. The Your
7 Space, Your Say project disrupted the limited notion of agency and
8 encouraged a more critical and creative engagement with young people
9 about the affective relations of leisure spaces in Swindon. Following
10 the exhibition, Depper facilitated semi-structured interviews with
11 the young people’s parents, carers, and local practitioners in children
12 and young people’s services, to explore their thoughts and ideas about
13 the young people’s projects and their perspectives of the complexities
14 of inequalities.
15
16
Thinking-making-doing: Mapping young people’s spaces
17
18 In what follows, the authors draw upon a specific example from this
19 inquiry that explored affective relations of stigmatisation of urban
20 places through specific arts-based practices. Arts-based drawings,
21 poster making and photovoice helped the ‘thinking-making-doing’
22 of the banal and often taken for granted moments of young people’s
23 everyday, stigmatised spaces. In particular, the photovoice practice
24 helped to evoke the vivid, sensory and embodied nature of these spaces
25 of multiplicity. The photovoice method involved young people visiting
26 specific places in Swindon that were significant to them and taking
27 pictures of objects, people, places and materials in order to visually
28 represent their local environment and then facilitating discussion around
29 their images. After the photovoice outing, young people used their
30 printed pictures to make collages and posters to illustrate the multiple
31 feelings they experienced in these places. Young people were drawn
32 to particular moments of remembering; they spoke to these ‘lively’
33 images with an affective intensity. For example, Megan created a poster
34 (see Figure 6.1).
35 As active ‘Co-Creators’ of space, young people shared their stories
36 of embodied mobility, voicing those moments that were fearful, risky
37 or pleasurable. Meaning about everyday spaces was produced in both
38 singular and collective ways through this process of photovoice. From
39 moving through the busy spaces of the high street, relaxing at the
40 park, to meeting new people or waiting at stop signs, young people
41 emphasised the complex affects circulating through the urban milieu:
42
94
1 Figure 6.1: Youth organisation, Megan’s poster from the photovoice outing.
2
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Source: Annaleise Depper.
21
22
23 Researcher: So Megan, would you say you preferred being in the
24 town centre or being at the park?
25 Megan: Park.
26 Researcher: Why’s that?
27 Megan: Because it’s calm and chilled and there’s no traffic,
28 like constant traffic.
29 Researcher: Mmm.
30 Megan: And it’s a place where you can just sit and relax, it’s
31 weird, it’s a weird feeling, although it makes me, it’s
32 just the looks of it, it just makes you feel calmer,
33 and … yeah, than like Sports Direct. It’s like you’re
34 always, even if you’re in your favourite shop, you’re
35 all constantly … not nervous or …
36 Nicole: You’re always walking.
37 Megan: You’re just like, it’s a weird feeling, cause you’re where
38 everyone is and you feel constantly like watched
39 and there’s other people there so you go into your
40 favourite shop, still you’re not really relaxed, are you?
41 Researcher: Mmm.
42
95
1 Megan: But when you’re in parks like this with, like you know,
2 you’ve got your birds …
3 Nicole: And there’s teenagers in the town and stuff.
4 Megan: Yeah, you’re not relaxed, cause like Greggs can be your
5 favourite shop and MacDonald’s, but there’s loads of
6 teenagers there and you never relax so … But when
7 you’re here, it’s all calm, it’s just nice to sit and chill.
8 (Extract 1: Youth organisation group,
9 workshop 7, 12 April 2017)
10
11 Young people welcomed the more tranquil spaces of the park, and
12 they emphasised the multiple senses that intermingled as they moved
13 through and between the shops and park. Both the materiality of
14 spaces and human relations become entangled in young people’s
15 everyday assemblages, which produced significant affects (fear, shame,
16 anxiousness) of seeing, or being seen, by particular groups of people
17 in the busy town centre. As young people moved through mundane
18 spaces, they were also moved by different affects, memories and events
19 connected with them; the park became “a place where you can just
20 sit and relax”.
21 For young people space-time relations were constantly changing
22 and negotiated, as they moved through urban areas in Swindon.
23 Uncertainties, desires and worries coexisted in relation to fears about
24 harassment or shaming. For example, young people articulated how
25 they wanted to escape from the uncertainties, anxieties and business
26 of certain leisure spaces where they constantly felt like they were
27 being “watched”. The previous extract evoked the anxious affects
28 and effects of being watched as young people moved through the
29 busy shops, feeling like they were under constant surveillance. Power
30 relations work to produce these affects for young people, who negotiate
31 stereotypical positioning of young bodies as ‘trouble’. These multiple
32 relations circulated in young people’s everyday spaces as young people
33 feared other groups of young people. They had to constantly negotiate
34 these shifting space-time relations, moving through urban areas and
35 spaces as they felt anxious, or in the case of Laywick Park, a place
36 where they felt safe.
37 While young people emphasised the affects that circulated in this
38 park to make them feel at ease and relaxed, at the same time there
39 was still ambivalence in their affective responses to Laywick Park.
40 For example, in the following extract, young people reflected on the
41 ubiquity of crime that circulates in multiple spaces in Swindon, even
42 in the idyllic, seemingly ‘safe’ space of Laywick Park:
96
1 Researcher: … Do you think crime happens in parks though?

2 Megan: Yeah, obviously, like crime happens everywhere.
3 Nicole: Yeah.
4 Megan: No matter how nice or anything, crime happens
5 everywhere.
6 Nicole: Yeah.
7 Researcher: Was it that particular park that felt more safe?
8 Megan: No, it’s just that it seems safe, although nowhere’s safe
9 if you think about it.
10 Nicole: Yeah.
11 Megan: … like gangs and stuff. Because no matter where you
12 go or how nice the area is, there’s always them people.
13 (Extract 2: Youth organisation group,
14 workshop 7, 12 April 2017)
15
16 The Co-Creative methods moved young people in particular ways, as
17 they felt comfortable to take pictures in this space that “seems safe”,
18 without the onlooking gaze of other young people or busy spaces of
19 the high street. This emphasised the multiple and highly relational
20 meanings of “safe”. For young people, Laywick Park was not just a
21 ubiquitous “safe” space; there were still ambivalences and discursive
22 relations that young people negotiated as they moved through multiple,
23 everyday spaces in Swindon. The fear of crime and “gangs” stayed
24 with young people, even as they moved into the seemingly tranquil
25 spaces of Laywick Park.
26 The practice of photovoice produced insights into the ways in which
27 young people negotiated the everyday affective flows within these ‘risk
28 assemblages’, comprised of bodies, class-based discourses and material
29 events such as crime, violence and embodied movement through
30 community spaces. As Megan explained, “no matter where you go or
31 how nice the area is, there’s always them people”. This particular group
32 of young people resided in areas associated with stigmatising discourses
33 around high levels of poverty, crime and limited labels of ‘working-
34 class’ residents who resided there. Young people navigated their own
35 discursive positioning in relation to “them people”, as Megan strived
36 to distance herself from the groups of people she was referring to.
37 Previous literature on health and inequality has highlighted the
38 ways in which people from working-class backgrounds strive to resist
39 and protect themselves from such discourses of stigma and shame
40 (Popay et al, 2003). According to Lamont (2009: 156), resisting
41 spatial stigma can be significant in negotiating social inequalities,
42 as individuals strive to ‘draw group boundaries – who is “in” and
97
1 “out” – and define the meaning they give to their group – who is
2 “us” and “them” ’. Elsewhere, Thomas’s (2016: 2) study found that,
3 ‘Young people produce multiple meanings of place and can resist
4 stigma by Othering certain districts and social groups’. These findings
5 indicate that the stigmatising discourses of spaces have significant
6 consequences for young people, as ‘place and identity are inexorably
7 linked’ (Thrift, 1997). As Megan emphasised her own positionality
8 as separate to “them people”, this example is laden with ‘sticky
9 affects’ (Ahmed, 2004). Both the high street shops and Laywick Park
10 became a complex assemblage of affects, materials and discursive
11 relations which, bound with the dynamics of power and regulatory
12 gaze, constantly shifted within young people’s everyday spaces. These
13 relational understandings of power, place and identity speak back to
14 simplistic views of encouraging young people to be more active in
15 public spaces that ignore space-time relations of power.
16
17
Conclusion
18
19 This chapter has brought together multiple theoretical and
20 methodological ideas that call for alternative ways of thinking about
21 young people’s everyday, urban spaces. Through new materialist ideas,
22 the arguments here have reoriented thinking about young people’s
23 everyday spaces beyond merely ‘containers’ for action; they are instead
24 made up of materials, sensations, human and nonhuman relations.
25 This involved enacting a theory-method approach whereby theoretical
26 sensibility was entangled in the process of Co-Creation. This empirical
27 research engaged with young people, their families and practitioners
28 through specific creative practices that enabled ideas to be materialised
29 in ways that conventional research methodologies may not have been
30 able to evoke.
31 Co-Creation involved a process of challenging and contesting
32 conventional ideas about young people’s mobility through low-
33 income communities. The possibilities of Co-Creation with young
34 people have been largely under-theorised and, indeed, still require
35 further attention. In particular, this project turned to the possibilities
36 for arts- based practices and events to become provocations for
37 intervening in the complex power relations of everyday, stigmatised
38 spaces. In moving beyond representational logic and constructionism,
39 this chapter has explored Co-Creation not just as a methodological
40 technique, but also as a material- discursive knowledge practice
41 with young people. Thinking about a ‘creative research assemblage’
42 has helped the authors to enact a theory-method approach that
98
1 reconfigures traditional ways of Co-Creating knowledge within

2 interpretivist approaches.
3 Co-Creation was both a material means of mobilising change and
4 (re)presenting research, as young people worked individually and
5 collectively to produce creative artefacts that enabled an exploration
6 of the affective relations that entangle leisure, class, gender, space and
7 place. Ripples of change were produced in various ways: the exhibition
8 created a community space for listening-learning with young people
9 to disrupt stereotypes and make issues visible; in turn, the local
10 youth forum pursued key issues and a youth agency incorporated
11 report findings into their strategic discussions. There is a need to
12 intervene in adult-designed spaces to create more youth-friendly
13 spaces, where young people are able to participate in reimagining and
14 creating such spaces through arts-based practices. As class divisions
15 play out in communities, these neglected areas are not just a matter
16 of apolitical aesthetics, they are bound up with an economy of affect
17 that intensifies shame, stigma and exclusion. There was significant
18 value in engaging in aesthetic, artistic creations such as films and poster
19 displays that moved beyond the limitations of language. Carpenter and
20 Horvath (2018: 12) remind us that Co-Creation ‘does not consist of
21 a fixed set of tools and techniques’, but rather it is a process of mutual
22 understanding, Co-Creating ideas and dialogue between individuals.
23 It is thus important to consider the ways in which spaces for Co-
24 Creation can be disruptive, alter relations and produce circulating
25 affects that cannot be separated from the young people’s experiences
26 of place and space.
27
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page 103
1 7
2
3
4
5
Does space matter? Built
6 environments and Co-Creation
7
8
in Mexico City
9
10 Pamela Ileana Castro Suarez and Hector Quiroz Rothe
11
12
13
14
15
Introduction
16 This chapter seeks to understand the role of the built environment
17 in the processes of collaborative projects associated with the concept
18 of Co-Creation. It explores the ways in which space can be not only
19 the product of social and cultural processes developing in a certain
20 area, but also a place as well as a process in which marginalisation
21 and stigmatisation occur through the morphological characteristics of
22 the place itself. What starts as an initiative of a group of residents to
23 improve social cohesion in their neighbourhood, for example, evolves
24 into actions that always happen somewhere: in a square, in a park, a
25 market, in a public building or simply in the street or within the walls of
26 a forgotten alley. Usually, this space factor seems to be ignored by social
27 studies; however, space matters – urban spaces and social interactions
28 cannot be disassociated from one another.
29 The urban form and architectural dimensions of specific facilities
30 will be explored over other political, organisational or financial aspects
31 that are usually considered in sociological research. It is also important
32 to mention the transcendence of digital platforms in the development
33 of virtual Co-Creative projects; however, these should be studied in
34 further research.
35 This text considers the authors’ experience as both academics
36 and urban planners in Mexico City, enriched with feedback from
37 conferences and workshops organised by the Co-Creation project.
38 Specifically, the authors have deepened the analysis of the case study
39 with an investigation of artistic and cultural venues in Mexico City and
40 with semi-structured interviews with staff members of these facilities.
41 The approach employed considers the built environment as a useful
42 medium to achieve the social benefits that Co-Creation promoters
103
1 from the arts sphere are aiming for, through diverse participatory
2 methodologies that are shared with urban planning practice (Miessen
3 and Basar, 2006; Kitao, 2005). In this sense, the definition of Co-
4 Creation here favours the process in which various agents participate
5 to produce information and knowledge about their current situation
6 and expectations about the built environment through the use of
7 arts-based methods to improve their environment, rather than only
8 being interested in producing a collective work of art as a unique goal
9 (Gómez, 2004; Sánchez, 2008, 2015; Palacios, 2009; Bishop, 2012).
10 The authors intend, then, to illuminate the relationships between the
11 location and characteristics of art and cultural venues, social keys for
12 successful Co-Creative projects, and agents involved in these processes.
13 This interest responds to the assumption that these spaces have the
14 potential to implement and improve collective projects based on the
15 principles of Co-Creation that this book suggests.
16
17
Conceptual frames: spatial and socially engaged art
18
19
practices
20 Several authors agree that public spaces and social interactions cannot
21 be disassociated from one another. These are part of the social
22 structure which helps to develop social interactions but, at the same
23 time, they are the result of these interactions (Giddens, 1984; Shotter,
24 1984; Krupat, 1985; Soja, 1989; Lefebvre, 1991; Bentley, 1999;
25 Harvey, 2006). Lefebvre (1991: 33, 38) refers to spatial practices as
26 processes that mediate the production and reproduction of particular
27 social formations in different spatial sets. Urban space facilitates the
28 development of social practices and the experimentation of the use
29 of the space in different manners, such as traditional emotional and
30 religious manners (Lefebvre, 1991). According to Giddens (1984: 33,
31 258), public spaces are a medium of material production and a produced
32 good. This opens the opportunity to think that space intervenes in
33 the production and reproduction of social practices, including artistic
34 practices which influence the space constituted in turn. Participatory
35 and collaborative projects are frequently placed in public open spaces.
36 Squares, parks and the walls of public facilities (schools, markets, social
37 centres, and so on) are the obvious places which enable and enhance
38 participation of diverse agents. These public spaces, however, do not
39 always offer the best conditions to develop long-term projects based
40 on Co-Creation principles.
41 This chapter focuses on two core elements – first, spaces or places
42 where collaborative processes can take place in better conditions, and
104
page 105 Built environments and Co-Creation
1 second, socially engaged art practices. On the one hand, there are
2 public spaces where some arts practices take place and buildings that
3 offer basic comfort and security conditions to all participants, including
4 those who in their daily life suffer environmental and social risks in
5 their marginalised neighbourhoods. These buildings, public or private,
6 already host creative, and sometimes collaborative, activities based on
7 art methods and their staff have experience of projects that touch on
8 the set of Co-Creation principles.
9 On the other hand, according to the theory of the ‘third place’
10 (Oldenburg, 2002), common spaces in museums and social centres
11 could be ideal locations to host social encounters and build dialogues
12 through Co-Creation principles. How should these spaces be shaped?
13 What are their qualities and limitations that need to be addressed? What
14 kinds of art practices are more common in Mexico? To answer these
15 questions, it is necessary to study the operational conditions of arts and
16 cultural venues. The next section will explore some of these questions.
17
18
A long tradition of socially engaged artists
19
20 The links between cultural institutions, official and independent
21 aesthetics, artists involved in political activism and diverse collective art
22 experiences throughout the city can be situated along the last century’s
23 cultural history in Mexico. Most of them are interwoven and deeply
24 rooted in the marginalised neighbourhoods of Mexico City. Hijar
25 (2007) offers a chronological review of artistic collectives that have
26 had an impact in contemporary Mexican culture, which is used here
27 to explain this sometimes contradictory process. Hijar’s (2007) review
28 is concentrated around four moments.
29 First, during the decade of 1920–30, the social and political post-
30 revolutionary context favoured the creation of popular arts and crafts
31 schools and the participation of young artists to produce a new art
32 for the people. The emblematic expression of this time is the Mural
33 Art that undertook a pedagogical role spreading the national history
34 and values of the Mexican Revolution. In this way, the walls of many
35 public buildings (town halls, markets, libraries and public schools)
36 were covered with mural paintings that today are proudly part of the
37 artistic heritage of many communities. Nowadays, it is not uncommon
38 for communities to still vote for the use of public or common funds
39 to produce such types of artworks (murals), appealing to local history
40 and traditions despite sometimes doubtful narratives.
41 Second, around 1940, the once revolutionary-inspired art became too
42 official and less provocative. As Hijar (2007) has demonstrated, many
105
1 artists, dissident or contestant, were finally coopted by the system. In

2 this period, two main national art and culture institutions were founded,
3 the National Institute of Anthropology and History and the National
4 Institute of Fine Arts (INAH and INBA are their acronyms in Spanish).
5 Since then, these institutions have had a strong influence on art and
6 culture projects as the main sponsors and managers of the national
7 art schools, museums and theatres, as well as providing funding and
8 scholarships in any Mexican art domain. Their buildings are landmarks
9 on various scales of the urban landscape and usually noted by people as
10 identity places. There is alternative thinking inside of these institutions
11 that allows experimentation and innovation in artistic practices close
12 to the principles of Co-Creation.
13 Third, the 1960s were also a period for social contestation against
14 the status quo in Mexico, as in a number of other countries. The
15 1968 Mexican student movement is considered a turning point for
16 diverse opposition movements, including a new generation of socially
17 engaged artists. During the 1970s, the underground scene was fortified
18 with new individuals and art collectives linked frequently to political
19 opposition parties and creating a new aesthetic in plastic arts, graphics,
20 theatre and even architecture based in deprived urban peripheries. This
21 process still goes on today.
22 Finally, from 1988, the neoliberal model was adopted by the
23 Mexican government. In the cultural context, subtle assimilation of
24 a mercantilist conceptualisation of the historic and artistic heritage
25 took place. Since 1997, Mexico City has been a national exception,
26 because Left- wing mayors have managed the city favouring –
27 perhaps more in the discourse than in practice – alternative cultural
28 expressions, through long-term programmes and projects. One of
29 the most interesting has been the creation of six schools of arts and
30 crafts called FAROS (acronym in Spanish of arts and crafts factories)
31 located in deprived zones of the city. This innovative cultural project
32 has reversed the location logics of culture and art venues imposed
33 for nearly two decades. However, the current city government is
34 favouring a new programme, called PILARES (Spanish acronym of
35 points for innovation, liberty, art, education, and knowledge). This
36 project is different from FAROS, but both have the same goal of
37 restructuring the social fabric. Out of the planned 300 PILARES
38 facilities, 150 have been put into operation in neighbourhoods
39 with high concentrations of social vulnerability. The programmes
40 focus on sports, basic online education, social economy and culture,
41 offering activities including book and film clubs, collaborative
42 transformations like community work, artistic painting, percussions,
106
1 and ‘pantomime for life’ according to the official web page (Gobierno
2 de la Ciudad, 2019).
3 So, at least since the 1920s, positive examples of public and collective
4 art have been identified that are deeply rooted in official narratives
5 and truly appreciated by local residents. Among them, murals are
6 the most common art form in the official and independent domains
7 of art production. The agents participating in the process include
8 official or independent artists, authorities of different levels, academic
9 and independent researchers, and various local stakeholders. As these
10 collaborative art projects happen over longer time periods that overtake
11 the logics of public authorities or academic timetables, not all the
12 agents participate at the same time. But what they all share is the
13 confidence in the potential of art or arts-based methods to reconstruct
14 positive relationships between stakeholders and new perspectives in the
15 perception of common public spaces (Jiménez, 2016).
16 Sometimes the resulting artwork transforms the perception of a
17 place in a permanent way and the outcomes include a fresh, collective
18 aesthetic experience based on diverse arts methods. Overall, this is a
19 collective process that produces positive social effects, such as improved
20 communication between agents, acknowledgement and inclusion of
21 others, and awareness about common problems in a shared space. In
22 short, this collective aesthetic process is more valuable than the resulting
23 work of art following the authors’ definition of Co-Creation and
24 according to their experience and the evidence found in Mexico City.
25
26
27
About the research
28 Based on the previous historical review, and to take into account
29 recent artistic and cultural experiences in Mexico City, research was
30 carried out focusing on local collaborative art projects during 2017–19.
31 Between January and May 2017, literature and documentations were
32 conducted, and the authors also undertook informal interviews and
33 fieldwork to identify: individual artist’s projects, such as Fe Publica,
34 Carpa orgánica or Casa Refugiados; collective projects, such as
35 Campamentos Unidos, Calmecac Miravalle, ATEA, Galería La Buena
36 Estrella, Green Virus; and official programmes, such as Central de
37 Muros, Lienzo Capital, Ciudad y Palabras.
38 Analysis of this information made it possible to understand that
39 these practices are pinpointed in time and space and it is difficult to
40 track their social effects in the long run. This is why it was decided
41 that the following phase of the research would focus on the built
42 environment, exploring types of arts and cultural venues that offered
107
1 the best conditions for the development of participative projects based

2 on the Co-Creation criteria. The geographical analysis, fieldwork and
3 empirical data collection were carried out in 2018–19. A series of 31
4 semi-structured interviews were recorded with the venues’ managers,
5 staff and visitors. Cultural facilities were classified according to their
6 type of management and dimensions. As a result, six categories were
7 established: international cooperations, large public national facilities,
8 large metropolitan and private venues, public universities, local
9 public venues, and small independent private venues. The number
10 of interviews dedicated to each category was determined by various
11 factors, including staff availability. Thus, privately financed institutions
12 such as international cooperations or large private cultural facilities
13 were not included in this phase, while six interviews were recorded
14 with staff from both large national public facilities and public university
15 facilities, 14 with the collaborators of public local facilities, and five
16 with those of independent private centres.
17
18
Cultural venues in Mexico City
19
20 Data analysis allowed the authors to identify three key components
21 that were relevant to collaborative projects: artistic practices;
22 infrastructure or types of facilities for art and culture; and the types of
23 agents operating facilities. This section will present the characteristics
24 of each of these.
25
26
Collaborative artistic practices
27
28 Research found that artistic practices corresponding to the authors’
29 definition of Co-Creation have been operated by: groups of professional
30 artists with a permanent place working in public and private spaces;
31 individual artists with projects in public open space; institutional
32 projects of social development with groups of artists and residents
33 and/or volunteers in public facilities; and, groups of self-taught artists
34 together with residents with self-managed cultural projects in low-
35 income neighbourhoods. Examples of these practices are shown in
36 more detail in Table 7.1 and a brief summary of each type is presented
37 as follows.
38
39
Collective groups of professional artists with a permanent place
40
41 These groups are composed of professional artists and practitioners of
42 other disciplines who usually work in specific neighbourhoods that are
108
1 their main sphere of action. They have their own stable working place
2 that allows them to develop activities and long-term projects, which
3 implies attachment to and stable relationships with the community.
4 In those places, it is possible to offer courses and workshops to the
5 community. They can have public or private external funding and/or
6 be self-financing. They can also become gentrifying agents; however,
7 this issue cannot be addressed in this chapter. The artists and other
8 professionals are knowledge producers as well, and they work directly
9 with residents of the neighbourhood.
10
11
Individual artistic projects in public open space
12
13 Professional artists with a regular output mostly use the methodologies
14 of participatory or collaborative art, with major or minor involvement
15 of inhabitants. These are specific interventions in public spaces with
16 the participation of the residents or users of the neighbourhood.
17 The public space is used as a stage or platform, the impact is one-
18 off and of short duration. When dealing with specific events or
19 interventions, it is difficult to measure their impact. These processes
20 include recordings and detailed documentation for formal art media
21 (galleries and associated museums). Funding can be public or private
22 from foundations, through scholarships or prizes.
23
24
Institutional social development projects in public facilities
25
26 These are publicly funded programmes that use participative arts
27 methods as tools to enhance the townscape and the perception of
28 security through improving public spaces associated with public
29 facilities (schools or markets). Artists or advisers are contracted to
30 develop projects with community participation and the resulting
31 artwork is usually a custom-made mural. Generally, institutions are
32 the initiators of the participation process and they work with the
33 community, landlords or users of the spaces.
34
35
Artists and residents with self-managed projects in low-income
36
neighbourhoods
37
38 These are projects integrated into self- managed urban planning
39 processes. They accompany the construction and consolidation of
40 popular neighbourhoods of informal origin. The groups are formed of
41 professional and self-taught artists, who participate with partners from
42 other disciplines and are backed by community leaders and political
109
1 parties. The artists are usually very attached to the neighbourhood

2 where they are located, and they are well-known among the residents.
3 The project can include the self-production of multipurpose working
4 places, including cultural facilities. These projects combine purposes
5 of community development with artistic training and creativity (plastic
6 arts, dance, theatre, music), as well as creative artistic practices like
7 tools for neighbourhood participation and integration of community.
8 The participation of researchers or academics in the set of mentioned
9 art practices is a constant; sometimes they act as partners, sometimes
10 as observers.
11
12
The location of collaborative arts practices
13
14 It seems to be a trend for the first two types of collaborative arts practices
15 to be in central areas of the city; in contrast,the other two are mostly
16 located in social or territorial peripheries. Table 7.1 provides examples
17 of each type and their web page for more details.
18
19
Characteristics of the culture infrastructure for
20
21 Co-Creation
22 The capital city of Mexico has been an emblematic example of a Global
23 South metropolis in Latin America. It was founded by the Aztecs about
24 700 years ago in a valley already occupied by older human settlements
25 with at least 3,000 years of history. It was later conquered by the
26 Spaniards in the 1500s and became the capital city of the New Spain
27 Viceroyalty for three centuries, remaining the jewel of the Spanish
28 Empire due to the existing rich silver and gold mines. The population
29 of the city remained stable at around 100,000 inhabitants until the end
30 of the 1800s. The Porfiriato period (1880–1910) represents the start
31 of industrialisation and development of modern urban infrastructure
32 financed with foreign investments. The first suburban neighbourhoods
33 appeared around 1860.
34 During the next decades, the urbanisation process accelerated and
35 reached its peak around 1970. The demographic transition then entered
36 a stabilised stage that defines present-day urban dynamics. Nowadays,
37 Mexico City is a city of eight million inhabitants, the centre of a
38 metropolitan zone containing 22 million inhabitants, governed through
39 a structure of three levels of government, three states and more than
40 80 municipalities.
41 In morphological terms, at the metropolitan level, the city is a mix
42 of four main residential types: planned developments of middle and
110
1 Table 7.1: Examples of collaborative arts projects in Mexico City

2
3 Type of Artistic Project Description Reference
4 practice collective
5 Collective La Buena Memoria Recuperation http://www.labuenaestrella.
groups of Estrella 06470 of collective info/memoria-06470
6
professional memory
7 artists with through digital
8 a permanent resources using
place QR codes, with
9
information
10 widespread
11 through the
12 neighbourhood
13 Individual Santiago Carpa Shared meals https://www.santiagorobles.
artistic Robles orgánica with homeless info/
14
projects de la people and https://repositorio.
15 Soledad sex workers in unam.mx/contenidos/
16 public space todos-cocinamos-todos-
17 comemos-proyectos-de-
arte-colaborativo-en-
18 el-espacio-publico-de-
19 la-ciudad-de-mexico-
20 68517?c=pNEKoB&d=fals
e&q=santiago_._robles_._
21
bonfil&i=1&v=1&t=search_
22 0&as=0
23 Institutional Actitivies Central Mural to http://centraldemuros.org.
24 projects collectively de muros improve the mx/
25 of social sponsored public image of http://www.onunoticias.
development by the city the market mx/nuevos-murales-sobre-
26
Wholesale cambio-climatico-en-la-
27 Market central-de-abasto/
28 Board and https://coolhuntermx.com/
UN 2030 arte-julio-2018-central-de-
29
Agenda muros-central-de-abastos-
30 cdmx/
31
Collective Centro Diverse Independent https://es-la.facebook.
32 groups of de artes workshops self-managed com/pages/category/
33 self-taught y oficios and social centre Community-Organization/
artists and Escuelita festivals in Pedregal de Centro-de-Artes-y-Oficios-
34
residents Emiliano Santo Domingo Escuelita-Emiliano-Zapata-
35 with self- Zapata 179765332066567/
36 managed
37 cultural
projects
38
39
40 upper class, social housing estates, working-class neighbourhoods of
41 legal and illegal origin, and the remains of conurbated historic towns.
42 It also includes large facilities, industrial parks and green areas that
111
1 shape a metropolitan puzzle. All areas are connected by corridors of

2 commercial and service uses. Historically, the population with higher
3 incomes have been concentrated mainly to the west and south of the
4 city, which has been fully consolidated with all urban services like
5 running water, street lighting and a sewage system since the early
6 1900s. The population with lower incomes have been located mostly
7 to the north and east of the metropolitan zone. It is important to
8 mention that the origin of more than 50 per cent of Mexico City’s
9 neighbourhoods are illegal urbanisations which have been consolidated
10 over time, reaching acceptable levels of habitability (Abramo, 2011).
11 Beyond the criticism produced by the hegemonic aesthetics and
12 urbanism discourses, low- income neighbourhoods have been a
13 platform for innovation in social organisation and housing architecture.
14 Without a doubt, the experience of a more sustainable, inclusive and
15 fairer city is found here than in the ‘green’ certified skyscrapers and
16 shopping malls produced by financial institutions.
17 Mexico City contains 456 cultural venues: 170 museums, 46
18 public art galleries and 240 cultural centres (SIC México, 2018). In
19 addition to this universe, 150 out of 300 programmed new PILARES
20 were inaugurated between 2018 and 2019 and added to the cultural
21 infrastructure. Mexico City has the largest offer of cultural facilities in
22 the country per inhabitant. However, there are scarcity and deficiencies
23 in the running of cultural facilities of the city.
24 The built space is a container of Co-Creative practices and the
25 community that it aims to engage. It is difficult to ensure the continuity
26 of a cultural or artistic project that seeks to improve social relations
27 within and outside of a community, without the guarantee of a limited
28 space that can accommodate its members and its public users with
29 minimum conditions of comfort. However, in the documented cases,
30 the promoters and users consider important spatial aspects as: having a
31 cover that protects their meeting space from the sun or rain, a toilet, and
32 a door or similar that delimits the appropriate space for the members
33 of the collective. The latter is especially important in those marginal
34 neighbourhoods where insecurity and crime determine many activities
35 in public space.
36 To understand the universe of these facilities in Mexico City, six
37 types have been identified. They are described as follows. In Table 7.2,
38 details and examples of each category are presented.
39
40 • International cooperation cultural venues have an outstanding presence in
41 the city cultural agenda. The German, French and Spanish embassies
42 lead this offer.
112
1 • Large national public cultural facilities are generally localised in

2 prestigious central areas with appropriate spaces and professional
3 staff for the development of Co-Creative projects.
4 • Large metropolitan private cultural facilities conceived as cultural
5 businesses sponsored by the private sector and sharing the prestige
6 of big national facilities.
7 • Public universities’ cultural facilities managed by the National,
8 Metropolitan and the City’s autonomous universities and the
9 National Polytechnic, with diverse locations throughout the
10 metropolitan area, some in deprived areas.
11 • Local public facilities managed and financed, totally or partially, by the
12 government of Mexico City. Includes museums, cultural centres,
13 artistic schools and theatres, all located in the south-west privileged
14 districts of the city. The offer is completed with the FAROS and
15 more than 200 centres and houses of culture that service basically
16 the needs of the neighbouring population. Currently, the PILARES
17 programme is planned by the authorities to double these numbers.
18 • Independent private cultural centres are a heterogeneous category by
19 way of their finance, cultural offer and approach over the social
20 function of art. Created by the initiative or individuals or collectives,
21 sometimes with family ties, that can collaborate with organisations
22 of neighbours to fight for improvement of surroundings at the local
23 level. In some way, they are the heirs to the socially engaged artist
24 tradition (see also Table 7.2).
25
26
27
Urban form and architecture considerations
28 In spatial terms, the geographical distribution of culture venues is
29 uneven and concentrated in the centre-west of the city. Hundreds of
30 them are distributed following a clear trend of concentration in four
31 main centrally located districts: Historic Centre, Roma Condesa,
32 Coyoacan centre and Chapultepec Park, which all together comes
33 to 136 facilities (around 30 per cent of the total of cultural venues).
34 Accessibility is another morphological condition that relates location of
35 the enclosure in residential or mixed-use areas and public transportation
36 and main avenues. Most of the lines of the underground converge in
37 the centre. This situation ensures the flow of public and users to the
38 central zone of the city from the periphery at low cost. Some facilities
39 managed by local governments have direct access to subway stations.
40 On the contrary, some other venues are located in isolated peripheral
41 neighbourhoods which struggle to attract the public from remote areas
42 due to the quality and specificity of their cultural offer. This is the
113
1 Table 7.2: Examples of art and cultural facilities in Mexico City

2
3 Type and Name of Description Reference
4 subtype the venue
5 International Cultural The cultural centre of the http://ccemx.org/
cooperation Centre embassy of Spain. Hosts a envia-tu-proyecto/
6
cultural España very active programme with
7 venues exhibitions, workshops and
8 projects focused on participative
and collaborative art with
9
deprived communities
10
Large Children’s A kind of franchise sponsored by https://papalote.org.
11
metropolitan museum, private business conceived as an mx/
12 private Papalote interactive space for children to
13 cultural learn about science, ecology, art.
facilities Also located in the Chapultepec
14
Park, without neighbouring
15 residential areas
16
Public The Chopo Managed by the UNAM http://www.chopo.
17 universities Museum (university), a reference for unam.mx/
18 cultural alternative art events associated
facilities with minorities. A landmark in the
19
neighbouring area
20
Local public FARO The first FARO created around https://www.cultura.
21
facilities Oriente 1999, a model replicated in other cdmx.gob.mx/
22 areas of the metropolis offering recintos/faro-oriente
23 a wide range of arts and crafts https://es-la.facebook.
courses, workshops, festivals, and com/faro.deoriente/
24
so on
25
Independent ATEA A pioneer hipster venue located https://www.facebook.
26
venues in a deprived area of the Historic com/ateacdmx/
27 Centre
28 Calmecac In a self-built building, a complete https://mivaledor.com/
29 Miravalle example of a cultural venue and documental/asamblea-
30 offering resulting in long-term comunitaria-miravalle/
participatory processes. Located
31
in a highly deprived area of the
32 Iztapalapa borough
33
34 case with the FAROS and some independent venues which operate in
35 the same way despite their isolated location. Therefore, one is almost
36 overcrowded while the other presents a lack of users. The explanation
37 of this difference is still not clear but could be related to the quality
38 of their programming and promotion. It should also be recognised
39 that there is a new offer of spaces focused on serving residents and
40 marginalised populations in other locations, continuing the tradition
41 of socially committed artistic creation.
42
114
1 The management of cultural facilities, public or private, has

2 little influence in strengthening the ties between the venue and its
3 surrounding community. It depends mainly on its location. But, there
4 is a strong correlation between cultural venues and built heritage. In
5 every type there are facilities located in prestigious but old buildings.
6 Maintenance of these buildings increases operation costs considerably,
7 which provokes the exclusion of non-profitable groups.
8 Alternative art practices such as Co-Creation are not only neglected
9 by official budgets but also placed in ‘backyard’ spaces. Despite the
10 international discourse for the recognition and strengthening of the
11 qualities of public open spaces in neoliberal urbanism in Mexico,
12 nowadays social conflicts and violence cannot be ignored as they restrict
13 the use of streets, parks and public transport for common citizens in
14 the context of Mexican cities.
15 At the architectural scale, there are two main aspects to be
16 considered: architectural design project and size. In the set of culture
17 venues, morphological differences between public and private
18 independent facilities are considerable; some have a formal architectural
19 project purpose while housed in adapted facilities. The FAROS are
20 the only type of buildings that were specifically designed for art and
21 culture activities. In fact, equipment there has high quality standards
22 that contrast with other shortcomings usually found in low-income
23 neighbourhoods (Secretaría de Cultura, 2015).
24 The unique self- build and self- managed venue belongs to the
25 independent venue type. Other cases of this type are adapted buildings
26 frequently associated with irregular ownership conditions. The use of
27 historic buildings to house cultural facilities is very common. In federal
28 and public university venues, it is even the main trend. In terms of
29 size, the bigger facilities belong to the public federal type, going from
30 2,400 m2 to 20,000 m2, in contrast to independent venues that occupy
31 buildings of less than 500 m2.
32 On the other hand, open spaces are considered important amenities
33 for the functionality and success of art practices among audiences in all
34 types of venues. Plazas and forecourts, included in the original design
35 or adapted, are multipurpose spaces for massive events allowing projects
36 to enlarge the cultural offer beyond the limits of their walls.
37 Additionally, local cultural managers, who have moved away from
38 doing arts and crafts as part of collaborative social projects in any kind
39 of public spaces, realised that a closed space is a basic requirement to
40 accomplish the objectives. Best intentions can be blocked in the long
41 term by the absence of basic facilities such as a toilet, a storehouse or
42
115
1 simply a fence that allows users to see the difference between a common
2 place dominated by violence and insecurity and a delimited ‘shelter’
3 where participants can meet and work together. This condition is even
4 more important as children, seniors, women and disabled people have
5 specific requirements that can hardly be fulfilled in public spaces, at
6 least in the current conditions of most Latin American cities.
7 Although Co- Creation is conceived as a tool to fight social
8 segregation and spatial stigmatisation, the authors believe that in the
9 current context of Mexico City it is first necessary to improve the
10 spatial conditions for participatory activities, at least in the initial
11 stages. Therefore, art and cultural facilities, official or independent,
12 offer alternative locations for the development of projects based on
13 Co-Creation principles in safer conditions because of the security and
14 services they provide.
15
16
The impact of cultural agents
17
18 As mentioned, to better understand the operational conditions of art
19 and culture venues, managers and staff members of 30 facilities were
20 interviewed. This section briefly summarises the relevant issues.
21 In most of the analysed facilities, collaborative art projects associated
22 with the Co- Creation concept have been considered in former
23 annual programmes, attending to the needs of residents, minorities
24 or vulnerable groups. Specific spaces or programmes to encourage
25 Co-Creative projects were not identified. In fact, managers and staff
26 members of the venues did not have a precise definition of Co-Creation.
27 In their experience, Co-Creation initiatives were managed by artists,
28 professional or self-taught, who look to promote the participation
29 of residents or vulnerable groups such as indigenous people, LGBT
30 collectives or disabled groups in art projects. There is a generalised
31 acknowledgement about the social value and transformation potential
32 of Co-Creative experiences (Jiménez, 2016).
33 The positive influence of the FAROS in their communities cannot
34 be denied. However, their impact is not reflected in the statistics
35 regarding social conflicts and violence deeply rooted in the boroughs
36 where they are located. It is clear that art cannot solve complex social
37 problems that affect those deprived communities.
38 In the case of facilities managed by public universities, their educative
39 and leisure offerings tend to be exclusive, considering the cost and
40 academic requirements. On the other hand, their programmes include
41 the most innovative practices, methodologies and aesthetic subjects
42 generated by highly qualified artists and researchers. Facilities managed
116
1 by the national government are in most cases museums that may

2 consider spaces to offer some educational or recreational activities.
3 Nevertheless, their offering is restricted to opening time schedules and
4 available staff members. A public budget ensures basic maintenance
5 of their infrastructure and permanent professional staff. Strengthening
6 links with residents or other social groups is not a priority in their
7 annual programmes when they exist. Openness for innovation and the
8 continuity of alternative projects depends on the empathy of managers
9 and the staff more than because of an established policy.
10 Finally, despite their contributions to the cultural and artistic realm
11 of the city, the legal and financial fragility of the independent venues
12 draw attention. Their staff are oriented to operate in pressurised
13 conditions and the current city government seems not to be interested
14 in supporting them. As previously mentioned, some cases have
15 developed strong links with their resident communities (in particular
16 the self-managed ones).
17
18
Conclusion
19
20 At the national level, Mexico City has a diverse endowment of cultural
21 facilities that offer good conditions to develop new Co-Creation
22 projects. Different moments and contexts show the relevance that
23 people have found for their involvement in community projects,
24 including cultural or artistic ones. Even superficial interventions,
25 such as the painting of murals on abandoned walls, are positively
26 appreciated by the inhabitants of neighbourhoods mired in the
27 violence associated with organised crime. These are experiences that
28 improve communication between neighbours, training in dialogue
29 and the elaboration of agreements that strengthen essential values for
30 a peaceful coexistence: respect, tolerance and solidarity. It is in the
31 popular neighbourhoods of irregular origin that it is possible to find
32 the most complete and consolidated experiences of participation and
33 collaboration in all types of urban improvement projects, ranging from
34 the organisation of cultural events to the consolidation of venues for the
35 realisation of training activities, recreational and artistic. Formal culture
36 facilities documented in this text are, or should be, the privileged
37 location for the enhancement of these virtuous processes.
38 Assessing the social impact of these projects is a pending task that
39 requires the construction of indicators and monitoring over time.
40 For the time being, it is just possible to adhere to the conviction that
41 several generations of creators have been guided by the social function
42 of art and its capacity to transform lives and neighbourhoods even
117
1 though its tangible and quantifiable effects can be short-range and very
2 localised. But also, it has been seen that artists have been employed
3 by the government to consolidate politically oriented narratives using
4 pre-hispanic and colonial values as common ground to build a national
5 identity.
6 The challenge is more complicated; the existence of facilities is not
7 enough. What is needed is a platform of intertwining relationships
8 between the budget, commitment by the authorities, tangible benefits
9 for the population, continuity of the activities, and the facility to be
10 successful. In this process, premises are very important for continuity in
11 the case of the independent groups; but it seems that the most important
12 element is a policy able to open formal places to Co-Creative initiatives.
13
14 References
15 Abramo, P. (2011) La Producción de las Ciudades Latinoamericanas: Mercado
16 Inmobiliario y Estructura Urbana, Olacchi: Quito.
17 Bentley, I. (1999) Urban Transformations: Power, People and Urban Design,
18 London; New York: Routledge.
19 Bishop, C. (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of
20 Spectatorship, London: Verso.
21 Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of
22 Structuration, Cambridge: Polity Press.
23 Gobierno de la Ciudad de México (2019) ‘Puntos de innovación,
24 libertad, arte, educación y saberes (PILARES)’ [online], available
25 at: https://pilares.cdmx.gob.mx.
26 Gómez, F. (2004) ‘Arte, ciudadanía y espacio público’ in On the w@
27 terfront, 5, March: 36–51.
28 Harvey, D. (2006) Spaces of Global Capitalism, London: Verso.
29 Hijar, A. (ed) ( 2007 ) ‘Presentación’ in Frentes, Coaliciones y
30 Talleres: GruposVisuales en México en el Siglo XX, México: Conaculta,
31 Fonca, pp 9–26.
32 Jiménez, L. (ed) (2016) ‘Educar en artes y cultura para la convivencia y
33 a paz’ in Arte para la Convivencia y Educación para la Paz, México: CFE,
34 Conaculta, pp 19–33.
35 Kitao, Y. (2005) Collective Urban Design: Shaping the City as a Collaborative
36 Process, Delft: Delft University Press.
37 Krupat, E. (1985) People in Cities: The Urban Environment and its Effects,
38 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
39 Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
40 Miessen, M. and Basar, S. (eds) (2006) Did Someone Say Participate?,
41 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
42
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1 Oldenburg, R. (ed) (2002) Celebrating the Third Place, Cambridge,

2 MA: De Capo Press.
3 Palacios, A. (2009) ‘El arte comunitario: origen y evolución de las
4 prácticas artísticas colaborativas’ in Arteterapia, Papeles de Arteterapia y
5 Educación Artística para la Inclusión Social, (4): 197–211.
6 Sánchez de Serdio A. (2008) ‘Prácticas artísticas colaborativas: el artista
7 y sus socios invisibles’ in Revista Duharte, 3, July–September, available
8 at https://app.box.com/s/lc7n36xcestq3m21sceyz7y067twcjw9.
9 Sánchez de Serdio, A. (2015) Prácticas artísticas colaborativas: comprender,
10 negociar, reconocer, retornar’ in A. Collados y J. Rodrigo (eds)
11 Transductores 3: Prácticas Artísticas en Contexto, Granada: Centro José
12 Guerrero. Diputación de Granada, pp 39–44, available at https://app.
13 box.com/s/40qgpahs06t59n14duw551jyga0j69yk.
14 Secretaría de Cultura (2015) Fábricas de Artes y Oficios de la Ciudad de
15 México, Quince Años de Navegar el Siglo XXI, México: Trilce.
16 SIC México. Sistema de información cultural (2018) ‘Espacios
17 culturales’ [online], available at https://sic.cultura.gob.mx [accessed
18 13 April 2019].
19 Shotter, J. (1984) Social Accountability and Selfhood, Oxford: Blackwell.
20 Soja, E. W. (1989) Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in
21 Critical Social Theory, London: Verso.
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
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page 121
1 8
2
3
4
5
Co-Creation, social capital and
6 advocacy: the Neighbourhood
7
8
and Community Improvement
9 Programme, Mexico City
10
11
12 Karla Valverde Viesca and Dianell Pacheco Gordillo
13
14
15
16
Introduction
17
18 This chapter suggests that community social capital generated in
19 public programmes is one of the key inputs for advocacy actions and
20 therefore is a determining factor that impacts communities, either
21 through the results of its application or via the redesign of policies and
22 programmes. Based on this premise, the authors suggest that a cohesive
23 process in a city should involve participatory action, engaging with
24 communities and making their inclusion in the decision-making process
25 possible. These could include Co-Creation, in two aspects. The first
26 is as a method that, with different actions, can promote a process of
27 cohesion. In this sense, as some contributors to this book analyse it, Co-
28 Creation uses art as a catalyst and involves different actors to promote
29 knowledge production. Through the development of community
30 social capital as described above, the authors believe, however, that
31 Co-Creation has a second sense: that is, as a participatory process that
32 includes distinct actors and distinct actions to have an impact on social
33 cohesion in marginalised communities through the implementation
34 of governmental plans. The core aim of this chapter is to explore this
35 second aspect of Co-Creation, through analysing the experience of
36 the Neighbourhood and Community Improvement Programme in
37 Mexico City. Although the main focus of this book is on the first
38 aspect, this chapter will argue that – given the important benefits that
39 marginalised communities can gain from advocacy resulting from
40 programmes implemented in close collaboration with the state – this
41 second aspect is not to be dismissed.
42
121
1 Currently, the crisis of representative democracy and the weakening

2 of institutions in the world encourages citizens to seek involvement
3 through discussing public problems directly (Mounk, 2017; Martino,
4 2018). In this context, the idea of involving citizens in making decisions
5 becomes relevant. In terms of participatory democracy, the notion of
6 citizen participation aimed at inclusion, empowerment, articulation
7 and sustained dialogue between multiple and plural actors assumes a
8 fairer distribution of power and the construction of a balance between
9 civil society and the state. Some contributors to this volume consider
10 that one of these options is Co-Creation, understood as a process
11 that includes the participation of civil society to achieve changes in
12 public policies and programmes in public spaces by bringing different
13 stakeholders together and using artistic tools and expressions. That
14 is, in other words, one possible method to advocate for civil society
15 gaining some power and influence over decision makers, ensuring
16 that they really respond to the social interests or dynamics that society
17 needs to resolve.
18 Some examples of advocacy in Mexico and in other countries
19 of Latin America include community development, participatory
20 citizenship, participatory development, community intervention,
21 citizen’s participatory budget and co- production initiatives.
22 Although these processes are not referred to as Co-Creation, they
23 can be found in some political advocacy campaigns in Mexico
24 and could be identified as Co-Creative actions. These processes
25 involve communication and negotiation actions, but also decision
26 making involving different actors. It is crucial for this book to
27 look at, and discuss, experiences like the Neighbourhood and
28 Community Improvement Programme in Mexico City to identify
29 social capital-making processes promoting actions that support the
30 articulation of stakeholders in a community. The core aim of this
31 chapter is to examine whether such advocacy processes can be
32 explored as Co-Creative initiatives on a larger scale of action to
33 generate greater impact.
34
35
36
Participatory citizenship and setting agendas
37 One of the dichotomies established in philosophical and political
38 traditions is the contrast between the public and private spheres
39 (Bobbio, 1989). Often these adjectives are used, in both common
40 and specialised language, as opposites that refer to property and
41 collective life. According to Nora Rabotnikof (1998), who draws
42 on Habermas’ (1987) reflection about the public sphere, there are at
122
page 123 Co-Creation, social capital and advocacy
1 least three meanings that refer to what is ‘public’. The first, related to
2 the common or the collective, is opposed to private property or the
3 logic of the market. The second is closely linked with an idea of
4 the state authority. The third refers to what is considered to benefit
5 the community.
6 Knowing what happens in the public sphere and the issues that should
7 be addressed is an important task. A problem, in general, is defined
8 in its own terms and in that sense a public problem would be linked
9 to the idea of the community in which it is defined. In the same way,
10 as a dynamic process, the participation and the definition of public
11 policies depend on that community and their context. Globalisation
12 as part of the current context has modified the forms in which public
13 problems and policies are defined, especially through new interactions
14 between organisations, individuals and the ways of daily life, such as
15 basic infrastructure, social security, health, and public security, among
16 others. Political actors then change the ways and conditions in which
17 they publicly manifest and manage their actions to define public
18 problems and policies.
19 Therefore, the constantly changing nature of social and political
20 problems today requires new strategies from the actors, whether they
21 are located inside or outside the circles of power, to be able to seize
22 the challenges and opportunities that arise in the public and in the
23 political arenas to move and renew structures of power. One group of
24 these actors is civil society organisations. They can be composed of
25 homogeneous or heterogeneous groups or sums of individuals with
26 specific and differentiated powers, but in general they can act in the
27 political arena and are able to call for action around a specific issue or
28 community.
29 In Latin America, especially, the history of governments and the
30 transition to democracy has long delayed the understanding of the
31 concept of advocacy and the emergence of civil society organisations.
32 Yet, over the past 30 years, (De Sousa, 2010; Elizalde et al, 2013) these
33 questions have resurfaced with such force that citizens have rethought
34 their own role in the construction and representation of interests,
35 objectives and problems through new channels of participation that
36 question the order, structure and social processes, echoing the dynamic
37 nature of civil society.
38 What does civil society do? It is very important to determine the
39 actions in which civil society is related to the government. As groups
40 or organisations, civil society forces are constantly working to set
41 the agenda, to increase the benefits of public action, and to make
42 the government listen to their complaints or needs. In the Mexican
123
1 Congress there is a specific time to set the agenda and, in order to

2 do so, civil society organisations can protest, advocate, lobby or use
3 institutional mechanisms to exert pressure. The success of their actions
4 can determine to what extent the community will be able access their
5 rights.
6 Different organisations may use different ways to approach a problem.
7 Sometimes civil society groups are asked to be involved through
8 government initiatives, while in other cases they advocate getting
9 involved. The extent of their participation in political decision-making
10 processes can be an indicator of how well a problem can be resolved
11 through the collaboration of all types of community actors. Faced
12 with institutional crisis and the eclipse of the state (Evans, 2007), some
13 government programmes involve citizens in the solution of social
14 problems. In that sense, they constitute top-down initiatives. One
15 example of these is the Neighbourhood and Community Improvement
16 Programme in Mexico City.
17
18
Neighbourhood and Community Improvement
19
20
Programme in Mexico City
21 This chapter aims to explore the making of community social capital
22 (Durston, 1999) in the Neighbourhood and Community Improvement
23 Programme, both as an input in the decision-making process and
24 as a Co-Creative process involving different kinds of agents and
25 attempts to get their issues on the agenda. In this context, it is very
26 important to understand the relationships between the wider society,
27 local communities and the government, bearing in mind that ‘the
28 community social capital consists of the structures that form the
29 institutionalisation of community cooperation. It resides not only
30 within the set of interpersonal dyadic relationships networks, but
31 also in the sociocultural system of each community, in their legal,
32 administrative, and sanctioning structures’ (Durston, 2003: 160)
33 [authors’ translation].
34 The Neighbourhood and Community Improvement Programme
35 or Programa de Mejoramiento Barrial (PCMB) is community
36 driven and since 2007 has been carried out by the Ministry of Social
37 Development of Mexico City’s government. The creation of the
38 Programme itself is an interesting example of a great coordination of
39 effort by social movements and civil organisations. The Programme’s
40 main aim is to promote citizen participation in disadvantaged,
41 marginalised or vulnerable neighbourhoods. Another important
42 objective is to develop a participatory process of improvement and
124
1 recovery of the public spaces of the towns and neighbourhoods of

2 Mexico City, especially those that, according to the Marginalisation
3 Index of Mexico City (established by The National Population
4 Council), have a high degree of urban degradation or those
5 suffering from medium, high or very high levels of marginalisation.
6 Over 500 million pesos (US$26 million/23 million euros) have
7 been disbursed to date and the Programme is ongoing, with 600
8 projects completed by 2012. In 2011, PCMB gained international
9 recognition, winning the World Habitat Award sponsored by UN-
10 Habitat (World Habitat, 2011).
11 Projects within PCMB work on street lighting, paving the streets,
12 sports and recreational facilities, rain collection and sewage systems,
13 parks and recycling, among others. It facilitates social infrastructure
14 projects, for example establishing community centres, houses of culture,
15 parks, recreational and sports areas, improvements of the urban image,
16 museums, ecological projects, skateboarding tracks, service works,
17 expansion or improvement of existing works, among many others,
18 depending on the needs of the community.
19 The proposals that are funded seek to develop links between people
20 who want to be involved in social actions. After receiving training in
21 financial and project management, the funds are distributed directly to
22 the local communities, who then become fully responsible for delivering
23 the projects selected, together with the support of the municipality.
24 This Programme has funded almost 2,000 projects between 2007 and
25 2017, with more than 500 million pesos (US$26 million/23 million
26 euros) involved (see Table 8.1).
27 Table 8.2 shows the kind of projects the Programme has funded
28 in ten years. Their comparison allows us to appreciate that most are
29 oriented toward improving the urban image (693), retaining walls
30 (288) and constructing community centres (259). It is important to
31 explain that proposals for these projects come from neighbourhoods
32 with high indexes of marginalisation. In this sense, the infrastructure
33 problems and access to libraries, cultural centres and other community
34 activities are also issues that need to be solved. Also, new topics have
35 been included in the calls for projects. For example, in 2017 urban
36 orchards and the rehabilitation of damage after an earthquake appear
37 as options to choose.
38 The approved projects have focused on the construction of
39 community centres, and the restoration, renovation, rehabilitation
40 and rebuilding of other centres or public equipment. This does not
41 necessarily mean that they have also resulted in building and reinforcing
42 citizen networks and social capital. The Evaluation Report, however,
125
1 Table 8.1: Neighbourhood Improvement Community Programme: number of

2 projects approved, 2007–17.
3
4 Year Proposals Approved
5 2007 139 48
6 2008 273 101
7 2009 549 183
8 2010 752 199
9
2011 750 200
10
2012 780 249
11
12 2013 908 196
13 2014 999 208
14 2015 667 169
15 2016 758 185
16
2017 877 215
17
Total 7452 1953
18
19 Source: Own elaboration based on Hernández (2012: 77); Report on Internal Evaluation of the
Neighbourhood and Community Improvement Programme 2014. Evaluation Report 2019 in which they
20 report 2018 results being processed and not yet published. [[please check this figure source for sense, I’m
21 not sure I understand the meaning]]
22
23 provides some evidence in this sense. For example, in figures it has
24 been reported that almost 40 per cent of beneficiaries consider that
25 the Programme promotes participation in decision-making processes,
26 80 per cent are considered satisfied, 81 per cent believe it attends to
27 more than half of their needs and they generally give the Programme
28 a score of 7.69 out of 10 (Evaluation Report, SIDESO 2019).
29 A closer look at some examples such as the ‘Chavos Banda’ [Youth
30 Band] Sports Centre, also called Consejo Agrarista Mexicano [Mexican
31 Agrarist Council] or the ‘Modulo Bosques’ [Forest Module] allows
32 for a better appreciation of the Programme’s impact. In the first
33 case, the sports centre is located in a marginal area in the Iztapalapa
34 municipality. Local gang members and community members have
35 participated in the Youth Band which asked for space in a wasteland
36 to be turned into a recreation area to contest violence (Mejora tu
37 barrio CDMX, 2017). Members have links with a social organisation
38 that promotes social and cultural activities in different areas of the city.
39 Today, after having obtained resources from the Neighbourhood and
40 Community Improvement Programme, the citizens and the Council for
41 Community Development [Consejo para el Desarrollo Comunitario
42 A.C.] (CODECO) have a space in which to offer sport and music
126
page 127
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
15
42
41
40
39
38
37
36
35
34
33
32
31
30
29
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
19
18
17
16
14
13
12
11
10
Table 8.2: Neighbourhood and Community Improvement Programme: type of intervention in community public spaces, 2007–17.
Type of project, according to the intervention of public

community space projects
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Total
Construction of community centres: libraries, multipurpose 16 22 39 41 17 49 9 11 9 36 10 259
rooms and cultural centres
Construction of outdoor forums 1 2 2 5 3 1 0 5 2 1 2 24
Construction of greenhouses 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Construction of auditoriums 1 2 0 0 1 7 0 0 0 0 0 11
Retaining walls 3 2 4 31 48 52 58 38 41 11 0 288
Ridges rehabilitation 4 3 3 8 19 11 13 9 4 4 2 80
127
Public places rehabilitation 3 4 4 7 6 8 22 17 13 19 21 124
Rehabilitation/construction of sports fields 9 6 16 13 11 7 5 2 1 17 32 119
Rehabilitation of common areas, green areas, parks, gardens, 7 27 38 32 27 49 26 31 33 17 25 312
play areas
Urban image (fixtures, furniture, arrangement of facades, 4 32 77 62 68 65 63 95 66 74 87 693
Co-Creation, social capital and advocacy
hallways placement)
Urban orchards 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 2 8
Rehabilitation of damaged spaces after the 2017 earthquake 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 34 34
Source: Author’s elaboration based on Hernández (2012: 77), Valverde and Gutiérrez (2018) and data from Gaceta Oficial de la Ciudad de México (2019). Órgano de Difusión del Gobierno de la
Ciudad de México, January 18. Ciudad de México: 253–88.
1 activities, graffiti and aerographic workshops, computer services and

2 a radio station. There is even a drug addiction prevention programme
3 run here.
4 The second example is a project that was studied by Liliana González
5 (2019) in the framework of a larger study on social innovation in the
6 Neighbourhood and Community Improvement Programme. In her
7 work, she emphasised the project ‘Modulo Bosques’ [Forest Module]
8 as an initiative funded by the Programme in which we can appreciate
9 how social relations have changed the life of citizens and how the
10 community reports benefits from it. The project is located in the
11 Bosques del Pedregal neighbourhood in the southwestern area of
12 Tlalpan. As the interviews with the beneficiaries of the project quoted
13 here show, what was seen as the major benefits by members of the
14 community included the economic cost of workshops, the services for
15 adults and children, and the offer of activities and events responding to
16 the demands of the residents (González, 2019: 72, 73, 97):
17
18 It helps a lot. There is nothing here of workshops or
19 anything. So, it does help children reinforce some things.
20 For example, in the case of my child [reinforce] English
21 or to do sport so they don’t have a sedentary life. The fact
22 of not having to pay private classes helps a lot, because
23 I pay ten pesos … . (Interview with Claudia Hernández
24 in González, 2019)
25
26 Here I give a tattoo workshop. It is very common here for
27 boys to go around in gangs. Let them come to the Module
28 and see that not everything in life is drugs. Let them see
29 that they can do more things and earn some money and
30 be more useful in society. (Interview with Luis Alberto in
31 González, 2019)
32
33 At one point, I used the facilities. They lent them to me
34 so that my daughter could rehearse the dance for her 15th
35 birthday. It is satisfying to see that there is such a place.
36 And just like me, there are several people who request it
37 and lend it to us. That is, it has been for our benefit … .
38 (Interview with Guadalupe Martínez in González, 2019).
39
40 In her case study, González (2019) reports on some initiatives that
41 sought to address different types of vulnerability. These built a
42 recreation space and, at the same time, improved the safety of the area
128
1 and the image of the neighbourhood, as before it was a wasteland

2 that was used as a garbage dump. The activities and services offered at
3 low cost help families on a low income, while some of the activities
4 taught by neighbours generate extra income for the workshop leaders.
5 The activities also bring greater cohesion among the residents of the
6 neighbourhood or, at least, more contact between them.
7 In relation to the type of dynamics and organisation that arose for
8 and from these initiatives (changes in social relations), as González
9 (2019) observed, leadership was fundamental for the organisation and its
10 operation. Although there was some leadership in the neighbourhood
11 before, this initiative helped to consolidate it and allowed coordination
12 with other neighbourhood leaders in order to access resources and
13 increase their social capital through their new connection with the
14 civil society organisation ‘House and City’.
15 In general, the Programme encourages the participation of
16 community organisations in the decision-making processes, the use
17 of public spaces for community development (accessibility, inclusion,
18 opportunities, motivation for skills improvement), and promotes
19 an improvement in quality of life of the community members who
20 become active participants in the transformation process of their public
21 spaces (Hernández, 2012). The focus here is on social capital, but it
22 is important to mention embeddedness as part of the new relations
23 and networks made by the Programme. In this sense, and as a result
24 of the Programme, a renewal of social embeddedness and a boost to
25 cohesion can be observed. This was not part of the initial objectives of
26 the Programme but rather a welcome, although unexpected, outcome
27 that has transformed the reality of these places.
28 In a recent evaluation of the Programme (Design Evaluation of the
29 Neighbourhood and Community Improvement Programme, 2014),
30 citizen participation is highlighted as a key factor in linking the social
31 dimension (generating social capital, empowerment, new leadership,
32 sharing identities and ending social conflict) with the architectural
33 dimension of neighbourhood renewal (construction design and
34 neighbourhood reconstruction).
35
36
37
The voice of the community
38 The evaluations of the Neighbourhood and Community Improvement
39 Programme have shown that community involvement has resulted,
40 among other achievements, in the construction of ties and networks
41 that benefit the community itself and allow it to participate in problem
42 solving. It can require a considerable amount of time for the community
129
1 to build ties necessary for a stable level of communication with decision

2 makers. This type of communication can be carried out through
3 advocacy actions or campaigns.
4 Advocacy suggests a series of systematic efforts with specific political
5 objectives. It could be suggested that advocacy is an integral part of
6 politics and that, by not referring to any particular political sphere,
7 it touches on a range of issues such as environment, health, work,
8 religion, rights and democracy. Andrews and Edwards (2004) present
9 advocacy groups as organisations that publicly claim certain interests
10 or demands, either promoting or resisting social change, which, if
11 carried out, may generate conflict with other social, cultural, political
12 or economic interests or values of other constituted groups.
13 In a 2012 study, Obar et al point out that, ‘The advocacy group has
14 distinguished itself from the political party or conspiracy group in the
15 sense that advocacy groups try to influence politics, but do not seek
16 to exercise governmental power’ (Obar et al, 2012: 4). This difference
17 helps us to understand the ways of organising, the strategies and the
18 scope of advocacy.
19 Participation in public challenges may be an engagement exercise if
20 people are organised into an advocacy group or they mobilise through
21 advocacy actions. This type of transformation depends on the human
22 resources, networks, alliances, time and structure that materialise. In
23 that sense, the strengthening of social cohesion is key to understanding
24 how different actors in a community participate.
25 It is important to consider that advocacy is not the same as influence.
26 The first responds in order to articulate a position and mobilise support
27 towards that position. The second could be direct action and implies
28 immediate power or capacity. If we see it from a practical point of
29 view, influencing a policy can be simpler and faster than ensuring that
30 a wide range of opinions and viewpoints are expressed and considered.
31 Perhaps that is why Jenkins (2006), as a key reference in advocacy
32 studies, defends the idea of distinguishing between advocacy and the
33 influences on an institutional or governmental decision to create and
34 execute a policy.
35 Jenkins (2006) first refers to advocacy, taking a restricted definition,
36 with reference to Hopkins (1992) as an act of advocating or declaring
37 for or against a cause, as well as being in favour of or recommending
38 a position in relation to the cause (including lobbying in the sense of
39 addressing legislators with the intention of influencing their vote).
40 Later Jenkins also refers to Boris and Mosher-Williams (1998) when
41 they speak of a rights-advocacy that includes legal and court activities,
42 surveillance in government programmes and civic involvement around
130
1 lobbying, attempts to influence public opinion, processes related to

2 educating and involving the community, and participating politically.
3 Finally, Jenkins turns to Reid (2000) to differentiate a political party
4 from advocacy, saying that while the first version focuses on those
5 who make the governmental decisions, the second attempts to have an
6 impact on public opinion, encourage civic and political participation
7 and influence the policies of private institutions or organisations.
8 These highlight how advocacy implies multiple meanings depending
9 on the context and the moment in which it is used. For example, if
10 advocacy is referred to in legal terms, it will be related to certain types
11 of activities that are reported and therefore regulated. On the other
12 hand, if used in research, it requires the description of various aspects
13 with regards to the representation, participation or effectiveness of
14 the processes. Or, if it is part of the discourse or the objectives of the
15 organisations themselves, then it will focus on the mobilisation of
16 resources, capacities and influences.
17 Even recognising that it has multiple understandings, the advocacy
18 concept faces several problems. One of them is measurement. Given
19 the variety of actions that can be undertaken, it is difficult to quantify
20 the intensity or magnitude of the effort that has been made. Another
21 issue turns out to be that of the multiplicity of actors that participate
22 in the same activities and the areas in which these actions are executed.
23 Therefore, determining the direct results of the advocacy undertaken is
24 complicated. Defining the effects of advocacy actions is difficult and,
25 in that sense, evaluating the success of the activities and participating
26 actors can be problematic. In addition, within the dynamics of advocacy,
27 there is the question for an organisation of whether to take direct
28 action or to look for other groups that can represent their interests.
29 This last point is very important in the case of countries with unstable
30 participation structures like Mexico because organisations or groups
31 have limited or unfavourable political contexts to carry out advocacy
32 actions within or through less visible channels than those provided in
33 countries with a democratic society that is stable and regulated. This
34 is why governmental initiatives that seem stable are questioned and
35 inspected more frequently.
36 In the Neighbourhood and Community Improvement Programme,
37 we clearly see the actions in which organisations and communities
38 mobilise their efforts to advocate for a proposal or to make their project
39 work. For example, they can rebuild a community centre, but their
40 actions continue until the community centre is in constant use. They
41 advocate for problems or issues that they consider important for the
42 neighbourhood and look for solutions. The channels of communication
131
1 between stakeholders and all the actors in the community are open
2 and stable, and the way in which they interact with the government
3 is demonstrated through the Programme that they themselves have
4 created. In that sense, the Programme has built a unique opportunity
5 to advocate for the interests of the community and has allowed efforts
6 and actions to be taken on a higher scale.
7
8
Decision making and agenda building: a Co-Creative
9
10
process?
11 In the case of the Neighbourhood and Community Improvement
12 Programme, it has been shown that the Programme has consolidated
13 the networks between neighbours and the community. The social
14 fabric demonstrates greater cohesion and users report benefiting from
15 the Programme. In terms of Co-Creation, this process underlines two
16 fundamental aspects: there is a push from the authorities to create a
17 mechanism in which citizens participate around a problem in their
18 community, and there is a participatory decision-making process.
19 If Co-Creation means a participatory mechanism, there is no doubt
20 that the Neighbourhood and Community Improvement Programme
21 includes this principle. If Co-Creation means having an open dialogue
22 between the community and the decision makers, the Programme
23 facilitates this by allowing civil society to advocate for their proposals
24 and their needs. And if Co-Creation means a group of actions that
25 involves culture, creativity and social aspects, we can see that the
26 approved projects aim to create a new solution for public issues that
27 involves all perspectives of community life, including creative and
28 cultural dimensions.
29 In Latin American countries, Co-Creative processes are common,
30 either through governmental programmes/initiatives (top-down) or
31 in participatory exercises promoted by local organisations (bottom-
32 up). The challenge is to install these initiatives in the social fabric so
33 that they transform social interactions, integrate all kinds of actors
34 and solve community problems. In that sense, the Neighbourhood
35 and Community Improvement Programme is an example of such
36 initiatives, which facilitates Co-Creative processes on a larger scale by
37 installing bottom-up processes with lasting dialogue and interventions
38 that depend on a renewed social fabric where all the actors of a
39 community converge.
40
41
42
132
1 References
2 Andrews, K.T. and Edwards, B. (2004) ‘Advocacy organizations in the
3 U.S. political process’, Annual Review of Sociology, 30(1): 479–506.
4 Bobbio, N. (1989) Estado, Gobierno y Sociedad: Por una teoría general de
5 la política, Ciudad de México, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
6 Boris, E. and Mosher- Williams, R. (1998) ‘Nonprofit advocacy
7 organizations: assessing the definitions, classifications, and data’,
8 Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 27(4): 488–506.
9 CODECO- OJR. (2011) ‘Qué es CODECO? Consejo para el
10 Desarrollo Comunitario AC’ CODECO, available from http://
11 codeco-ojr.com/codeco.htm.
12 Design Evaluation of the Neighbourhood and Community
13 Improvement Programme (2014): 60, available at http://data.evalua.
14 cdmx.gob.mx/docs/evaluaciones/externas/2014/inf_mbarrial_2014.
15 pdf.
16 De Sousa Santos , B. ( 2010 ) Refundación del Estado en América
17 Latina: Perspectivas desde una Epistemología del Sur, Lima see: Instituto
18 Internacional de Derecho y Socieda .
19 Durston, J. (1999) ‘Building community social capital’, CEPAL Review
20 (69): 103–118.
21 Durston, J. (2003) ‘Capital social: parte del problema, parte de la
22 solución, su papel en la persistencia y en la superación de la pobreza
23 en América Latina y el Caribe’, in R. Atria, M. Siles, I. Arriagada,
24 L.J. Robison and S. Whiteford (eds) Capital Social y Reducción de la
25 Pobreza en América Latina y el Caribe: En Busca de un Nuevo Paradigma,
26 CEPAL Universidad del Estado de Michigan, Santiago de Chile, pp
27 147–202.
28 Elizalde, A., Delamaza, G. and Córdova Rivera, M.G. (2013) ‘Sociedad
29 civil y democracia en América Latina: desafíos de participación y
30 representación’, Polis, 36.
31 Evans, P. (2007). ‘El eclipse del estado: reflexiones sobre la estatalidad
32 en la era de la globalización’ in Instituciones y desarrollo en la era de la
33 globalización neoliberal, Bogotá, Colombia: ILSA, pp 97–129.
34 Gaceta Oficial de la Ciudad de México (2019) Órgano de Difusión
35 del Gobierno de la Ciudad de México, January, 18. Ciudad de
36 México: 253–88.
37 González, L.D.V. (2019) ‘Políticas para la innovación social: análisis
38 de dos casos en el marco del Programa de Mejoramiento Barrial y
39 Comunitario’ Master’s thesis in Gobierno y Asuntos Públicos.
40 Habermas, J. (1987) Teoría de la Acción Comunicativa, Madrid: Taurus.
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42
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1 Hernández Sánchez, J.A. (2012) ‘Capital social comunitario: una

2 herramienta útil en la relación gobierno sociedad: Programa de
3 Mejoramiento Barrial del Distrito Federal’, Thesis, UNAM, México.
4 Hopkins, B. (1992) Charity, Advocacy and the Law, New York: Wiley.
5 Jenkins, J.C. (2006) ‘Nonprofit organizations and political advocacy’,
6 in W.W. Powell and R.S. Steinberg (eds) The Nonprofit Sector: A
7 Research Handbook (2nd ed), New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
8 Martino, A.A. (2018) ‘Crisis de la democracia representativa: alternativas
9 participativas o democracia directa con medios electrónicos’,
10 EUNOMÍA. Revista en Cultura de la Legalidad, pp 9–32.
11 Mejora tu barrio CDMX (2017) [For a better neighbourhood] [Archivo
12 LabCDMX 2013–2018], 27 March 2017, #MEJORATUBARRIO
13 (CONSEJO AGRARISTA MEXICANO, IZTAPALAPA) [video
14 archive] available from https://vimeo.com/210343813.
15 Mounk, Y. (2017) ‘Signs of deconsolidation’, Journal of Democracy,
16 January.
17 Obar, J., Zube, P. and Lampe, C. (2012) ‘Advocacy 2.0: an analysis
18 of how advocacy groups in the United States perceive and use social
19 media as tools for facilitating civic engagement and collective action’,
20 Journal of Information Policy, 2: 1–25.
21 Rabotnikof, Nora (1998) ‘Público-Privado’, Debate Feminista, 18: 3–13.
22 Reid, E.J. (ed) (2000) Structuring the Inquiry into Advocacy. Volume 1 of
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24 DC: The Urban Institute.
25 SIDESO (2014) Evaluación del diseño del Programa Comunitario de
26 Mejoramiento Barrial 2014, Ciudad de México.
27 SIDESO (2019) Evaluación Interna Integral 2016–2018 del Programa
28 Mejoramiento Barrial y Comunitario, Ciudad de México.
29 Valverde Viesca, K. and Gutiérrez Márquez, E. (2017) ‘The Community
30 Programme for Neighbourhood Improvement in Mexico City’, in
31 G. Tonon (ed) Quality of Life in Communities of Latin Countries,
32 Phoenix: Springer.
33 World Habitat (2011)’World Habitat awards: winners and finalists’,
34 available at https://www.world-habitat.org/world-habitat-awards/
35 winners-and-finalists/community-programme-for-neighbourhood-
36 improvement/#award-content [Accessed 12 September 2019].
37
38
39
40
41
42
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page 135
1 PART II
2
3
4
5
Co-Creation in practice
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
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page 137
1 9
2
3
4
5
A top-down experiment in
6 Co-Creation in Greater Paris
7
8
9
Ségolène Pruvot
10
11
12
13
Introduction
14 This chapter explores how Plaine Commune, the local authority in
15 charge of urban development in an area north of Paris, has implemented
16 a ‘top-down’ arts-based collaborative process, which may be regarded as
17 Co-Creation. The local authority commissioned artists to coordinate a
18 citizen consultation process, via a series of arts-based activities, about a
19 major urban development project. This chapter will analyse whether
20 and how a process initiated by a public authority can be understood
21 as part of the Co-Creation method defined in this book.
22 This reflection will be anchored within the debates on Creative Cities
23 (Florida, 2002; Landry, 2003), investigating under what conditions
24 Co-Creation could be used as a tool for building (more) just ‘Creative
25 Cities’(see the first section for a more detailed explanation). The chapter
26 will look at how the project ‘The Football Pitch, the Player and the
27 Consultant’, an experiment set within the frame of Plaine Commune’s
28 strategy of becoming a ‘territory of culture and creation’, fits with the
29 ten principles this book suggests for Co-Creation.
30 The project ‘The Football Pitch …’ was a two-year arts-based
31 project, led by the artists’ collective GONGLE (2017) and the cultural
32 operator CUESTA in the Pleyel neighbourhood in Saint-Denis,
33 France. The neighbourhood is facing major redevelopment, driven by
34 the construction of a large train hub of metropolitan scale and of the
35 Olympic Village and swimming pool for the 2024 Olympic Games.
36 After the two first stages of the project had been implemented, the
37 author’s active involvement took place in its last stage: a participative
38 evaluation process. This analysis is based on qualitative interviews
39 and informal conversations with the artists and curators, civil servants
40 working for the local authority and other researchers, as well as on a
41 review of extensive artistic documentation and local authority policy
42 documents.
137
1 The chapter will argue that, beyond its impact on the local
2 community and on the urban development project itself, the Co-
3 Creation experience can be a methodology that local authorities could
4 use within Creative City strategies, as a first step towards innovation
5 and changes in urban development processes.
6
7
8
Co-Creation as a tool for (more) just Creative Cities
9 This first section will investigate whether and how Creative City
10 strategies can be made inclusive while simultaneously exploring Co-
11 Creation’s potential as a method to enforce a more creative relationship
12 between artists and local authorities.
13
14
Defining the Creative City
15
16 There is extensive criticism within the academic community about
17 Creative City strategies – understood in international urban policy
18 circles as the implementation of the Creative City (Landry and
19 Bianchini, 1995, Landry 2003) and Creative Class (Florida, 2002)
20 concepts within the policy field. Several comprehensive literature
21 reviews (Boren and Young, 2013, Nathan, 2015) have scrutinised
22 different aspects of Creative Cities, drawing attention to the fuzziness of
23 the concept (Evans, 2005; Markusen, 2006; Pratt, 2008) or reproaching
24 it for hiding presuppositions and political conceptions (Evans, 2005;
25 Krätke, 2010) and for being exclusionary, notably when it comes to
26 diversity and gender (Gill and Pratt, 2008; Leslie and Cantugal, 2012;
27 McLean, 2014; ). Others argue that Creative City policies may have
28 adverse side-effects on creativity (Peck, 2005; Martí-Costa and Pradel
29 i Miquel, 2011) and may create new inequalities (Hutton, 2017).
30 This chapter takes stock of these criticisms and argues that exploring
31 the concept of the Creative City further is useful, notably since it
32 continues to be highly influential in policy circles (Boren and Young,
33 2013). Some researchers suggest that the ‘Creative City model’ (Jakob,
34 2010) could be revisited and that a new one, which builds on the
35 potential to create (more) sustainable and just cities can be proposed
36 (Kirchberg and Kagan, 2010; Kagan and Hahn, 2011; Pratt, 2011;
37 Ratiu, 2013; Leslie and Catungal, 2012; Boren and Young, 2013).
38 However, Creative City strategies are more diverse than the initial
39 assessments of it as a mere repackaging of neoliberal policies suggest
40 (Peck, 2005) and the 2008 financial crisis may have pushed local
41 authorities to change their practices due to limited resources available
42 to cities (Vicari-Haddock, 2010; Miles, 2013). This chapter argues
138
page 139 A top-down experiment in Greater Paris
1 that there may even be specific potential for Creative City concepts
2 in stigmatised urban areas, since artistic activity can help reappropriate
3 and rework symbolic representations of place. The term ‘(more) just
4 cities’ is based on the concept of justice developed by Amartya Sen
5 in the Idea of Justice (Sen, 2009). In very practical terms, Sen calls
6 for an understanding of justice that goes beyond ideal, and suggests
7 trying to achieve justice means enforcing ‘more just’ situations, while
8 acknowledging that other conceptions of what is ‘just’ rationally
9 coexist.
10
11
The Creative City in Plaine Commune
12
13 Most of the early literature on Creative Cities comes from the US and
14 the UK, countries where the national context can be considered closer
15 to a ‘neoliberal’ model and which are marked by the withdrawal of
16 the state and cuts in municipal funding as well as by increased reliance
17 on private funds for urban development. Compared with these two
18 countries, a larger state intervention in urban development projects
19 and more public funding for culture are still characteristics of the
20 French context. Creative Cities literature also often focuses on inner
21 city neighbourhoods and creative quarters.
22 Plaine Commune has developed a complex and inclusive
23 understanding of the Creative City – at least on paper. Plaine
24 Commune is a type of area that is currently under-researched in
25 the literature about Creative Cities. Located within the deprived
26 periphery of a large metropolis, the local authority is a grouping of
27 nine smaller municipalities in the northern ‘first ring’ around Paris,
28 in one of the poorest areas of the metropolis, the department of
29 Seine-Saint-Denis, which continues to experience impoverishment
30 (IAU, 2019) (see Figure 9.1). Historically a working-class area, it is
31 also known as the Red Belt as it has been characterised by a strong
32 communist presence in local government since the 1920s, which
33 continues today. The area currently acts as an entry point for newly
34 arrived migrants. In the city of Saint-Denis, about 40 per cent of
35 the population was born outside France (against 18 per cent in the
36 whole Ile de France region) and 30 per cent of the population is of
37 foreign nationality (against 13 per cent in the whole Ile de France
38 region) (INSEE, 2013).
39 The area is complex. Nationally it is highly stigmatised for including
40 some of the poorest housing estates or cités, which have experienced
41 civil unrest movements since the 1980s. It is known for drug trafficking,
42 violence in high schools and has more recently been depicted as a
139
1 Figure 9.1: Saint Denis, Plaine Commune and the Greater Paris Metropolis.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
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Source: Olga Suslova, based on Metropolegrandparis.fr.
26
27 place where extremist Islam and terrorism develop, as exposed in the
28 controversial book published by two journalists, Inch’Allah (Davet
29 and Lhomme, 2018). Culturally, Seine-Saint-Denis is known as the
30 birthplace of some of the most famous French rap bands from the 1990s,
31 as demonstrated by songs such as ‘Seine-Saint-Denis Style’ by NTM
32 (1998) and ‘Saint-Denis’ by the slammer Grand Corps Malade (2006).
33 Economically, the area is changing rapidly. Seine-Saint-Denis is
34 the third biggest area in terms of the concentration of businesses in
35 the Greater Paris metropolitan region. Despite showing high levels of
36 unemployment, it hosts 10 per cent of enterprises and jobs in Ile de
37 France (Lebeau, 2018). In terms of urban development, due to the
38 pressure on land for mega projects within Paris metropolitan area, Saint-
39 Denis is likely to undergo radical change in the coming years. Several
40 projects of metropolitan or national scale have already transformed,
41 or are in the process of transforming, the area significantly. In 1998,
42 driven by the building of the Stade de France, a new neighbourhood
140
1 hosting tertiary activities grew up around the stations of the suburban

2 metropolitan rail network (RER) in the southern part of Saint-Denis,
3 la Plaine. The area now hosts a new metro station, adjacent to the
4 new University hub named Condorcet. Opening to its first students
5 in September 2019, the latter aims to become an international hub of
6 knowledge generation and exchange.
7 The two main driving forces for change in the area are now
8 the construction of the Grand Paris Express – the new transport
9 infrastructure of Greater Paris whose main interchange hub in the north
10 of Paris will be located in the Saint-Denis Pleyel neighbourhood – and
11 the Olympic Games, with the construction of two major infrastructure
12 projects both located in the immediate vicinity of Pleyel: the Olympic
13 Village and swimming pool.
14 Within the new conceptualisation of the Greater Paris metropolis
15 by the state and local public authorities, Plaine Commune has been
16 positioned as a ‘territory of culture and creation’. Policy documents
17 suggest that Plaine Commune took up the proposal from the state to
18 concentrate fully on creative industries and turned it into a project
19 that better reflected the political interest of its elected representatives.
20 The start of the process can be situated around 2010. It was boosted
21 by a double movement, initiated simultaneously by the local authority
22 and by the state. Plaine Commune commissioned the ‘Mission
23 Nuage’ (Cloud Mission), incorporating an artist and a specialist in
24 cultural policies. The objective was to identify cultural places and
25 to make recommendations on how to stimulate arts and creation.
26 Concomitantly, after the creation of Greater Paris metropolis (under the
27 2010 law) and the finalisation of a transport plan for the metropolitan
28 region (Grand Paris Express), the state proposed to focus on creative
29 industries. The final contract between the state and the local public
30 authority includes a larger conception of creation and uses the terms
31 ‘culture and creation’:
32
33 From an urban development project limited to perimeters
34 around the train stations, accompanied by the ambition
35 to develop a ‘cluster of creative and cultural industries’ in
36 the area, the partners have gradually evolved into a much
37 broader project, covering the entire area. … Culture
38 and creation have been identified as some of the main
39 characteristics of the area but also as tools that have a
40 transversal leverage power to strengthen its development.
41 (Territorial Development Contract 2014, 9) [author’s
42 translation]
141
1 The area links the objectives of creation and culture with that of social
2 justice: ‘the objective is to aim for a city that is more participative,
3 more united and more ecological through culture and creation’ and
4 insists on enhancing participation: ‘Plaine Commune makes culture
5 and creation a medium to develop the participation of inhabitants
6 and citizens in projects of renewal and urban transformation’. (Call
7 for Tender, 2016: 3) [author’s translation]. This objective is closely
8 connected with the issues of sustainability and the implementation
9 of Agenda 21 (the UN action plan on sustainable development) in
10 policy documents.
11
12
13
‘The Football Pitch …’ and local authority led Co-Creation
14 The project ‘The Football Pitch, the Player and the Consultant’ can
15 be understood as an example of Co-Creation initiated by a local
16 authority, with the objective of changing the way urban development
17 is implemented. One can draw from this that Co-Creation is a tool
18 implemented as part of the Creative City strategy of Plaine Commune.
19 This section provides an overview of the project and explains why it
20 can be considered as Co-Creation. The author was actively involved
21 in the participative evaluation process of the project and led qualitative
22 interviews and informal conversations with the artists and curators,
23 public servants working for the local authority and other researchers.
24 The arts-based project ‘The Football Pitch …’ was commissioned
25 as part of the urban development project. The originality of the
26 project process lies in the fact that it was supposed to inform and
27 accompany the urban planning of a large area of strategic interest, the
28 Pleyel neighbourhood. The call for proposals asked for an ‘artistic and
29 cultural approach for the implication of the inhabitants in the urban
30 project of the sector Pleyel’ (Call for Tender, 2016). The project that
31 was selected aimed to make stakeholders’ voices heard in a different
32 way using the resources of sports and theatre. For a duration of two
33 years, it was co-managed by the theatre collective GONGLE and
34 an innovative cultural operator, the cultural cooperative CUESTA.
35 All the stakeholders interviewed pointed out that this was a first
36 experiment, in which the local authority was taking risks because it
37 had no clear control of the process, which was left in the hands of
38 the artists. The choice of the cultural operator was not consensual
39 within the administration: it did not receive the support of all elected
40 representatives.
41 The Pleyel neighbourhood had been earmarked for ambitious
42 development projects of metropolitan and national significance. It is
142
1 a low occupation area, with some small housing units. Today it hosts
2 7,200 inhabitants and more than 13,000 employees, including those
3 of large employers such as EDF (an ex-national electricity company
4 that employs 3,000 people) on site. The neighbourhood is to be
5 almost completely redeveloped. The new plans include a new highway
6 interchange and a new train station – to be designed by the Japanese
7 star-architect Kengo Kuma and which will receive an estimated 250,000
8 users per day. Around the train station the new development project
9 ‘Pleyel Lights’ will host 143,000 m2 of offices (45 per cent of new
10 constructions, including 10 per cent for the cluster ‘creation’). The
11 nearby Olympic Village will be turned into up to 2,400 housing units
12 and 119,000 m2 of offices after the Olympic Games.
13 According to the project website, ‘The Football Pitch …’ was ‘based
14 on the practice of sports commentaries proposed to use “games” and
15 voices to grasp and invent possibilities for Pleyel’ (TUMBLR of ‘Le
16 terrain, le joueur et le consultant’, translation by author). The project
17 had two objectives, according to the artists: first, to collect narratives on
18 the space and the urban development project from various stakeholders
19 (from residents to architects, from local authority civil servants to social
20 actors), and second, to inform the urban development project.
21 The project unfolded in three stages, which involved 67 workshops
22 and a major final event called ‘Big Encounter’. During the first stage,
23 the artists met with more than 200 local stakeholders in the area. The
24 objective was for them to understand the issues at stake and to meet
25 stakeholders. The second stage was the artistic competition, during
26 which ‘football’ teams were composed. Co-Creation, in the sense
27 of active and creative involvement of participants, happened at this
28 stage. The football teams reflected the diversity of the area’s users and
29 inhabitants: one was composed of employees from EDF, another of
30 young users of the local facility for youngsters. The others included
31 teams of public servants, architects and developers, residents of an area
32 with small detached houses, parents from the school and so forth. Each
33 team created its own song and sports outfit. All teams met at the ‘Big
34 Encounter’ (see Figure 9.2), a one-day artistic-sports competition.
35 The third stage was an ‘after-game’ period, in fact, a collaborative
36 evaluation process.
37
38
39
The 10 Co-Creation principles and ‘The Football Pitch …’
40 This section will discuss how Co-Creative this project was, in terms
41 of its fit with the ten Co-Creation principles identified in this book
42 (see Figure 1.1), and will explore whether this project can be regarded
143
1
Figure 9.2: La Grande Rencontre (The Big Encounter).
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19 Source: GONGLE.
20 as an example of a successful Co-Creation process initiated by a local

21 authority.
22 The fit with the Co-Creation principles is necessarily imperfect since
23 there was no link with the project at the time. The parties involved
24 did not expressly use the term Co-Creation but rather those of co-
25 construction, involvement and participation. Therefore, the analysis
26 focuses on the principles that seem the most relevant among the ten
27 Co-Creation principles outlined here: (1) Equal; (2) Respectful;
28 (3) Ethical; (4) Shared property; (5) Trust-based; (6) Embedded;
29 (7) Aware; (8) Plurivocal (9) Active; (10) Creative. The chapter also
30 provides an analysis of how the project seemed to score regarding the
31 objectives formulated by the artists and the local authority.
32 The attention to the inequality (1) of voices (8) between those of the
33 local authority, planners and residents was taken into account from the
34 beginning of the project. As the call for tender states: ‘Plaine Commune
35 wishes to implement a co-constructed artistic and cultural project, to
36 involve the inhabitants and users in the definition and implementation
37 of the urban project, as fully-fledged actors. This approach will feed
38 the programming of the future district and some aspects of local life’
39 (Call for Tender, 2016: 3) (translated by author).
40 The artists were called upon by the local authority to create
41 new participation dynamics, to change power relationships in the
42 preparation of the urban plans, and to give participants a ‘fully fledged’
144
1 role in the process. Thus, the artistic project becomes a medium for the
2 confrontation of ideas on new grounds. According to the main artist-
3 curator, she took on a role as ‘mediator’ between the different teams.
4 She highlights that being engaged in playful artistic projects allowed
5 ideas to be expressed and to be listened to differently by all parties.
6 The teams take part in the game on equal footing and the dynamics of
7 power are transgressed, at least temporarily, due to the change of setting
8 and the different use of the participants’ bodies. The local authority
9 civil servant then in charge of the project highlights that sitting on the
10 floor in a sports facility dressed in sportswear and on an equal footing
11 with the youngsters created for him the opportunity to listen to voices
12 that he would not have been able to hear otherwise. The game allows
13 confrontation and criticism to be expressed and heard.
14 One of the most informative outcomes of the process is the book
15 of songs. Some of the songs are directly critical of the project, such
16 as the song ‘Let’s unite, join us’ with its lyrics: ‘The project proposed
17 by the public authority team destroys classified landscaped areas. The
18 hubbub of the world, chaotic traffic, of all of this our eyes are tired
19 … let’s get together, join us, we will change the terms of the debate!’
20 They can also express cynicism: ‘How long will it take to wait for
21 Metro line 16? We will see the winners and the losers. … Buildings,
22 a football pitch, barbecues, hotels. Tomorrow, no more problems,
23 we have villas’. Beyond confrontation, the songs also express positive
24 comments: ‘There will be dust but for a good cause. Solid, pleasant,
25 beneficial for children’. This was pointed out as unusual by the civil
26 servants. Even the local authority civil servants felt free to express
27 their doubts and hopes: ‘Working today to go towards tomorrow,
28 without being overtaken … do we have the means of our ambitions?
29 Associating, consulting and building bridges. Are we all there for this
30 new challenge?’ The main artist-curator highlights that the project may
31 have acted as a space for the formation of political ideas, by creating
32 groups that identify and articulate ideas, which are neither in line with
33 that of the local authority nor with the artist-curator’s own views.
34 Even if the number of directly involved participants in the ‘players’
35 teams (around 40) may appear limited, there was an ongoing
36 involvement of many actors, which went beyond the ‘usual suspects’
37 attending regular consultation meetings about urban planning
38 development projects.
39 Embeddedness (6) and Awareness (7) are also at the core of the
40 project, thanks to the long preparatory process, the first stage of
41 the project, during which the artists met a large number (200) of
42 stakeholders in the neighbourhood. To ensure embeddedness, many
145
1 of the events were organised to coincide with usual meetings, such as

2 the traditional start-of-the-year cake-eating celebration in January or
3 the neighbourhood festival, and existing events of local associations.
4 The ‘Football Pitch …’ also chose the local facility for youngsters as
5 a home and placed new information there regularly.
6 The principles of Trust (5), Shared property (4) and Creative
7 outcomes (10) are more problematic. In terms of Trust, the participants
8 did have several occasions to share informal times together, the ‘Big
9 Encounter’ being a celebration as well as a competition. However, with
10 the artists engaging in the project for two years, their involvement was
11 inevitably limited in time. Discontinuity was bound to happen at the
12 end, once they had finished the project. The curation and animation
13 of the project were largely left to them, even if they benefited from
14 the organisational back-up of Plaine Commune in terms of access to
15 facilities and use of the local authority contact book.
16 The main Creative outcomes (10) of the project are available for
17 free online on the project’s website, including audio postcards, reports,
18 photos, songs. However, some of the content produced within the
19 project, notably during the evaluation, wasturned down for the final
20 publication by the local authority. For instance, the use of the concept
21 of ‘aestheticisation of public policy’ in one of the texts did not please
22 the local authority, a misunderstanding on the meaning of the concept
23 according to its author.
24 In terms of Ethics (3), from the beginning the expectations for the
25 artistic process sounded quite ambitious for a two-year creative project
26 with a relatively low budget – 76,000 euros for the whole period.
27 The artistic team had to rely on interns and contributed much of its
28 time for free.
29 For the local authority, there were:
30
31 … three objectives for this artistic and cultural process: 1) To
32 tell the story of the neighbourhood and to project oneself
33 into the neighbourhood of tomorrow; 2) To feed the urban
34 project through an experimental in situ approach; and 3) To
35 contribute to strengthen the links between the inhabitants,
36 the users, the actors of the district and to create attachment
37 to the district and the city. (Call for Tender, 2016: 3)
38
39 As regards ‘telling the story of the neighbourhood’, this objective seems
40 to have been achieved: visual (photos and photomontages, maps),
41 audio (audio postcards), and written and digital tools have been used
42 to capture the reality of the neighbourhood at the time of the project.
146
1 The songs written by the teams testify to the achievement of helping

2 people to ‘project oneself into the neighbourhood of tomorrow’.
3 However, no measure has been developed to assess the achievement
4 of the third objective, to ‘strengthen links … and to create attachment
5 to the district’. The main limitation here actually relates to the second
6 objective. There was a disconnection in terms of timing between the
7 urban planning study and the artistic process, due to the failure to
8 recruit an artistic team at the end of the first call for tender. There
9 was, in the end, little space for the needs expressed by residents
10 and users to be taken into consideration in the preliminary urban
11 development study.
12 The urban planner in charge of the development project within
13 the local authority does mention that he gained from the process new
14 elements of understanding of the area, such as the significance of the
15 Pleyel Tower. This old tower – considered an outdated asbestos-filled
16 tower by the local authority – was pinpointed as a landmark in the
17 neighbourhood by residents. “I’m against [destroying the Tower]
18 because it is our emblem, when the young take pictures, there is always
19 the tower in the background; when my children were young and we
20 were coming back from the countryside, they saw the tower, they used
21 to say ‘We are home’”, reported a resident (quoted in the workshop
22 report #12 (GONGLE, CUESTA, 2017: 112). The urban planner
23 also mentions that, in the short run, the local authorities would be
24 more attentive to the expectations of the resident population during
25 the urban transformation, instead of focusing only on the final output
26 of the urban project. But the artistic team did mention on several
27 occasions that they were doubtful about how much of the process
28 would actually be used in the final development. The local authority
29 says that the documentation of the project will be attached to the
30 documents passed on to the final teams realising the urban projects.
31 Its actual take-up will depend on the interest, intentions and obstacles
32 met by these teams.
33 The scale of the redevelopment has quite severely constrained the
34 potentialities of the artistic project from the beginning, as has the
35 deadline imposed by the Olympic Games. There was little the artists –
36 and even Plaine Commune – could do to influence a process that
37 involved powerful and complex actors such as the state, the Olympic
38 Games Committee and a major developer.
39 The final project, Pleyel Lights, as presented on the website of the
40 developer looks closer to a ‘neoliberal’ Creative City development,
41 focusing on expensive, beautiful landmarks and buildings rather than
42 a space for a (more) just city. Simulations made by the developers
147
1 show an imagined city that does not cater for the existing population
2 of Saint-Denis but is directed to attracting a new population (mostly
3 young and white). Further contacts with the developers would be
4 needed to explore that issue in more depth.
5
6
Co-Creation and innovation in public policy making
7
8 This chapter has asked whether the new approach developed by
9 Plaine Commune could lead to a (more) just city. The reference to
10 the ‘different’ Creative City concepts presented by Plaine Commune
11 in policy documents in the context of this project seems to only have
12 a limited impact on the actual content of urban development. From
13 those public documents available, it appears to be a quite classical
14 neoliberal revenue-making development, in which culture is used as
15 a cool and beautiful accessory. For example, the project includes two
16 glass ‘bubbles’, one of which is to be used for cultural and artistic
17 events. A group of artistic institutions and collectives is developing an
18 artistic project for the space but no reference is made to the process of
19 Co-Creation or co-construction, despite it being at the core of Plaine
20 Commune’s strategy as a ‘territory of culture and creation’. Different
21 visions of the Creative City are at play and stakeholders do not have
22 the same power of influence on major urban development projects.
23 The pressure of the Olympic Games and the involvement of powerful
24 and complex stakeholders, such as the state and Grand Paris Express on
25 the development of the new train station, make this particular artistic
26 project one of secondary importance.
27 To make Co-Creation processes initiated by public authorities a
28 useful methodological tool for policy making means addressing the
29 obstacles that ‘The Football Pitch …’ came up against. Within Plaine
30 Commune, there were several obstacles to making the artistic project
31 a full component of the urban development project. A lack of political
32 commitment is one of them. One elected representative came to
33 the ‘Big Encounter’ but he did not stay for long, nor did he seem
34 to listen to the inhabitants, according to the artists. The relationship
35 with and involvement of other stakeholders is also a key issue. It may
36 have been possible to engage the developers and state actors in more
37 in-depth involvement. The low budget allocated to the project is
38 another limitation. The question of the instrumentalisation of artists
39 is also relevant. In this case, despite low financial return, the project
40 allowed the curator to pursue her own artistic research, so she accepted
41 the terms of the contract. The limited impact of the participatory
42 process on urban development remains an issue, and the legacy and
148
1 usefulness of such Co-Creation actions must be thought through in

2 the long term.
3 The willingness of local authority planners to change the way
4 they plan cities in the future may be one of the most interesting
5 prerequisites and outcomes of ‘The Football Pitch …’ and of the
6 experiment as part of the local authority’s implementation of becoming
7 a ‘territory of culture and creation’. With ‘The Football Pitch …’,
8 the local administration took a risk. It is process-based and leaves
9 no physical trace – no new artistic space to promote, no new public
10 space installation, no major street level activity. The most interesting
11 outcomes are quite intangible and difficult to measure: the participants
12 from the local authority mention that it changed the way they were
13 now leading urban project development processes, that it gave them
14 the feeling “for once” of being really in touch with the area, of being
15 able to listen to the people. They felt that the process gave “meaning
16 and humanity” to the planning process.
17 The local authority has tried to address the difficulty of transferring
18 such experience from one person to another and from one project to
19 another. The civil servants involved in the project have made several
20 presentations to their peers to share their learning. The local authority
21 has a team dedicated to the implementation of the strategy transversally
22 and organises regular sectoral training. The objective is to reach out
23 beyond the civil servants who are the most inclined to change their
24 own practices. Plaine Commune has, after this experience, changed
25 and adapted the way it issues calls targeted to artists, and as a result of
26 a call in another area of Saint-Denis, a new collaboration is beginning
27 with the same artists’ collective, but with a different planning team.
28 The local authority has started a collective reflection process on these
29 issues, which led it to organise a workshop in the Architecture Biennale
30 in Venice in 2018, which gathered artists, developers, promoters and
31 local authority representatives.
32
33
34
Conclusion
35 This chapter proposed an understanding of Co-Creation that includes
36 projects initiated by stakeholders other than researchers, as long as the
37 objective is the co-production of knowledge about a deprived and
38 stigmatised area.
39 This book has defined Co-Creation as a method that brings together
40 different communities in a neighbourhood (researchers, residents,
41 artists and stakeholders) to use arts-based methods to generate creative
42 outputs that are relevant to the local community, and that act as a catalyst
149
1 for reflection on understanding around urban and neighbourhood

2 challenges, and address these to build more socially just places for the
3 future (see Chapter 1).
4 The project analysed in this chapter, ‘The Football Pitch …’ – an
5 experiment set within the frame of Plaine Commune’s strategy of
6 becoming a ‘territory of culture and creation’ – does not fully comply
7 with this definition, notably in that researchers did not actively take
8 part in all stages of the project. However, ‘The Football Pitch …’ did
9 include many of the elements of Co-Creation. Participants from all
10 key groups – local residents, artists, stakeholders involved in decision-
11 making, and researchers – were actively involved at different stages of
12 the project. The main objective was the co-production of knowledge
13 about a deprived and stigmatised area. This chapter has shown that
14 ‘The Football Pitch …’ put into practice several of the ten principles
15 this book suggests for Co-Creation, more particularly the following: (1)
16 Safe; (2) Respectful; (3) Ethical; (6) Embedded; (7) Adapted; (8) Voice.
17 The key challenge remains the application of the principles linked to
18 co-ownership and trust.
19 In this case study, the actual impact of the artistic process on the
20 urban development plan remains uncertain, and the local politicians
21 and most powerful actors, such as the state, have been relatively absent
22 from the project. In many ways, these pitfalls are similar to those of
23 classic residents’ consultation and participation in urban planning
24 developments. If Co-Creation was to be used as a tool for building
25 (more) just Creative Cities, the stakeholders should pay specific
26 attention to these principles when implementing artistic and creative
27 projects with residents.
28 This case study provides an example of how involving artists can
29 change the dynamics of listening to each other in an area, can disrupt –
30 at least temporarily – the relations of power,and how an artists’ led
31 project can have a strong impact on local authority civil servants’
32 practices of urban planning. Charles Landry, one of the authors who
33 formulated the Creative Cities theories, suggested that Creative Cities
34 were those able to implement innovative ‘organisational structures’
35 and ‘creative thinking’ (Landry, 1995, 2003). From the experience
36 of ‘The Football Pitch …’, it appears that this form of Co-Creation,
37 involving artists and local authorities, could trigger changes in local
38 policy making in the long run, potentially making them more inclusive
39 and sensitive to other ‘voices’.
40 This chapter has shown how artists can act as seeds of innovation
41 and displacement, how they can act as mediators between stakeholders.
42 Co-Creation could be a method for inclusive Creative City strategies
150
1 by calling in artists to help develop new ways of making the city

2 together, by opening spaces of listening between urban planners and
3 other stakeholders.
4
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1 Territorial Development Contract (2014), available from https://

2 plainecommune.fr/ fileadmin/ user_ upload/ Portail_ Plaine_
3 Commune/ LA_ DOC/ PROJET_ DE_ TERRITOIRE/ Projet_
4 metropolitain/CDT_2014.pdf
5 TUMBLR of Le terrain, le joueur et le consultant, available from https://
6 leterrain-lejoueur-leconsultant.tumblr.com.
7 Vicari-Haddock, S. (2010) ‘Branding the creative city’, in S. Vicari
8 Haddock (ed), Brand-building the Creative City: A Critical Look at
9 Current Concepts and Practices, Firenze: Firenze University Press.
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Can literary events use Co-Creation
6 to challenge stigmatisation?
7
8
9
Christina Horvath
10
11
12
13
14
Introduction
15 This chapter takes a comparative approach to two initiatives, one from
16 the Global North and one from the South, that have been developed
17 by writers to bring literary events to peripheral neighbourhoods. The
18 Dictée des Cités, a spelling competition organised by Rachid Santaki
19 in French cities since 2013, and the Literary Festival of the Urban
20 Periphery (FLUP), curated by Julio Ludemir and Écio Salles in Rio
21 de Janeiro’s favelas since 2012, were not conceived as Co-Creation
22 events but are founded on similar principles and processes, insofar as
23 they promote art and creativity in marginalised urban areas and seek
24 to challenge the perception of these neighbourhoods as places devoid
25 of the production and consumption of literary texts.
26 The aim of this chapter is therefore to compare the two artist-
27 driven events and explore their respective strategies to engage with
28 local communities and broader audiences. Based on interviews and
29 ongoing dialogue with the organisers of both events, this chapter seeks
30 to tap into their extensive experience of knowledge production with
31 communities to see what Co-Creation can learn from their practices
32 and how it can inspire them in return. A secondary aim is to evaluate
33 how collaborative literary events adapt to specific local challenges in
34 the Global North and South.
35 Chikako Mori (2012) sees the persistent overlooking of scriptural
36 practices in the urban margin as a deliberate denial of highbrow cultural
37 forms in stigmatised areas. She reminds us that French banlieues are
38 often represented in public (political, media and academic) discourses
39 as places that fall short of a written culture recognised and validated by
40 the establishment. According to Mori, the non-recognition of banlieues
41 as places of reading and textual production comes from a desire to
42
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1 reaffirm a longstanding divide between high- and lowbrow cultures,

2 based on the understanding that writing is not quite a cultural practice
3 like the others, insofar as it has always been perceived and used to mark
4 the line separating ‘us’ and ‘them’, both inside the French Republic
5 (fight against regional languages) and outside (colonial ideology). In this
6 representation some are perceived as ‘literate’, ‘civilised’, ‘enlightened’,
7 ‘masters of themselves’ and others as ‘uneducated’, ‘barbarians’,
8 ‘obscure’, ‘uncontrollable’ (Mori, 2012: 75, author’s translation).
9 This observation is also confirmed by Bettina Ghio (2016), whose
10 research highlights that French rap artists’ complex relationship with
11 and contribution to highbrow literature is generally ignored, or by
12 Keira Maameri, whose 2016 documentary, Nos Plumes (Our Pens),
13 shows how bestselling French novelists with postcolonial and banlieue
14 roots (like Santaki himself) continue to be marginalised by mainstream
15 literary institutions.
16 Similarly, from the earliest days of samba, Brazilian favelas have
17 consistently been associated with popular musical genres rather than
18 with a vibrant literary scene (Maddox, 2014). In recent years, favela
19 youths have been actively engaged in different musical movements,
20 from hip- hop to AfroReggae. According to Patrocínio (2013),
21 these have contributed to the emergence of an avant-garde literary
22 movement called ‘Marginal Literature’ in the peripheries of São Paulo
23 and Rio de Janeiro since the 1990s. Hip-hop was also instrumental
24 in providing peripheral youth with alternative identities, feelings of
25 self-affirmation and ‘a sense of protest, creating a counter-discourse,
26 erasing hegemonic discourses and producing an interstice between
27 centre and periphery’ (Patrocínio, 2013: 107, author’s translation).
28 However, in spite of their participation in literary production, favelas
29 just like banlieues continue to be referred to as ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’
30 and depicted in opposition to the formal city perceived as ‘civilised’
31 (Maddox, 2014: 466).
32 This chapter will systematically compare the two festivals’ attempts
33 to shift the image of peripheral urban areas in France and Brazil from
34 ‘zones of non-writing’ (Mori, 2012) to places of written culture. The
35 first section will explore their similarities and differences. The second
36 section will place them in the Global North/South divide to shed
37 light on their different participation in knowledge production. The
38 final section will compare the two events’ ethos, aims and strategies
39 with those of Co-Creation. The conclusion will discuss how Co-
40 Creation projects and socially engaged literary festivals could learn
41 from each other.
42
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page 157 Literary festivals as Co-Creation
1
Destigmatisation through art in two literary festivals
2
3 La Dictée des Cités (the Dictation of the Periphery) was launched in
4 2013 by writer and journalist Rachid Santaki, in collaboration with
5 community activist Abdellah Boudour, president of the association
6 Force des Mixités (Strength in Diversity). Santaki, who lives in Saint-
7 Denis, Greater Paris, is a journalist, essayist and novelist, author of
8 several scripts and crime novels set in the area. As an engaged writer,
9 he seeks to “be active beyond writing books, to play a role in society,
10 to take the books outside the library” (Santaki, 2019), using strategies
11 ranging from pasting posters in the street to promote his novels to
12 teaching creative writing in prisons or launching cultural initiatives.
13 The Literary Festival of the Urban Periphery (then called FLUPP)
14 was also founded by writer, journalist, novelist and cultural producer
15 Julio Ludemir and Écio Salles, a poet, essayist, former Cultural Secretary
16 of the municipality of Novo Iguaçu and one of the coordinators of
17 cultural group AfroReggae. The festival was established in 2012 as a
18 counter-event to Brazil’s most prestigious book fair, the International
19 Literary Festival of Paraty (FLIP) which has been held annually since
20 2003 in the seaside town of Paraty. The FLUP has both challenged
21 and extended the international festival model adopted by the FLIP
22 (Heyward, 2017) by seeking to make literature accessible to all, reaching
23 out to the over one million people living in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas
24 (Perlman, 2013: 52).
25 Both the Dictation and the FLUP are itinerant events with strong
26 community roots, although they both have experienced important
27 mutations over time. The first Dictation was an outdoor event organised
28 in May 2013 in Clichy-sous-Bois (Greater Paris) before spreading to
29 other banlieues around Paris. Later it was held in other cities across
30 France and was even exported to Italy, Belgium, Cameroon and
31 Morocco (Boucher, 2019). Its size expanded from an initial average
32 of 40 to 200–400 participants (Dictée Géante website). In May 2017,
33 the event reached its 100th edition in Bagnolet (Brancato, 2017) and
34 earned Rachid Santaki the rank of Knight of the National Order of
35 Merit. The Dictation’s 200th edition was celebrated at the Elysée Palace
36 In 2019. A record 1,473 participants were registered in March 2018
37 when the largest Dictation ever held took place in the iconic sporting
38 venue, Stade de France. According to Santaki “it was something
39 incredible because so many things happened around this simple exercise
40 we all had at school but never outside it” (Santaki, 2019). To reflect
41 its mutations, the event changed its name from La Dictée des Cités
42 to La Dictée pour Tous (Dictation for All) and to La Dictée Géante
157
1 (Giant Dictation). For the organisers, this transition meant an increased

2 potential to connect to more diverse audiences but also a shift in focus:
3
4 “In fact, the first version of the dictation was staged in
5 the neighbourhood and was perceived as an event in the
6 periphery. … It was a way to respond to the clichés, to
7 show that banlieue residents liked dictations just as much as
8 people in the centre but as a side-effect it contributed to
9 enclosing participants in the margins and seemed to suggest
10 that people in the periphery had their own dictation. …
11 Things changed since, as soon as we took the dictation
12 out of the neighbourhoods, it actually allowed people to
13 mix. … Today, organising a dictation and bringing all the
14 audiences together allows for a neutral meeting ground.
15 I think that the dictation has made it possible to create a
16 bridge between these publics, which do not necessarily
17 meet. But there are so many differences between these
18 audiences that the dictation is just one meeting point, other
19 instances of sharing and transmission need to be invented
20 to go even further.” (Santaki, 2019)
21
22 Similar to the Dictation, the FLUP is also a nomadic event. The first
23 five iterations took place in different Rio de Janeiro favelas: Morro dos
24 Prazeres in 2012, Vigário Geral in 2013, Mangueira in 2014, Chapéu
25 Mangueira in 2015, Cidade de Deus in 2016, and Vidigal in 2017. Yet
26 in 2018 the festival broke with this tradition by moving to the Valongo
27 Wharf, a UNESCO world heritage site where enslaved Africans were
28 traded, while the 2019 edition was held at the Museum of Art in Rio
29 (MAR). Initially called FLUPP (the Literary Festival of the Pacifying
30 Police Units), the festival progressively distanced itself from the police
31 pacification process that started in 2009 by moving from pacified
32 favelas to an unpacified one in 2013 and by “freeing itself from the
33 UPP [Pacifying Police Unit] brand after the decline of the pacification
34 policy” (Ludemir, 2019) by changing its name to the Literary Festival
35 of the Urban Periphery (FLUP). The change of location from favelas
36 to cultural institutions in the city centre was simultaneously motivated
37 by the difficulty of negotiating with a range of new stakeholders in a
38 different favela every year and the desire to draw attention to racism,
39 sexism, homophobia, the legacies of colonialism and slavery, reminding
40 audiences that ‘the idea of the “periphery” in this festival extends
41 beyond the geographical sense to include communities and identities
42 that are marginalized in society’ (El Youssef, 2016).
158
1 While the two events share similar goals, they use different strategies
2 to reach these. Dictations are one-day events based on classical literary
3 texts which are read out loud and have to be spelled by the participants.
4 This school exercise, traditionally used to test students’ spelling skills,
5 has been turned into a game to attract wide audiences to literature,
6 reconcile postcolonial populations with the French Republican school
7 system which they often resent, and demonstrate that “the French
8 language belongs to all and can be enriched by the participation of
9 others and adopt different forms according to the context” (Santaki,
10 2019). The FLUP’s annual programme, on the other hand, unfolds
11 over five consecutive days and includes roundtable discussions,
12 activities for children, performances and other celebratory moments.
13 The festival’s main innovation, however, is the ongoing rather than
14 one-off engagement with the host communities; this helps build
15 relationships, involve local actors and stakeholders, create a community
16 of readers, challenge the stigmatisation attached to the urban margins,
17 and ultimately nurture a new Brazilian literature from below through
18 discovering and forming new talents. According to Heyward:
19
20 The FLUP engages a territory in a year-long, bottom-
21 up creative process before conducting tailored writers’
22 and readers’ workshops over a series of months. … The
23 community consultation and co-creation process is key
24 to developing ongoing relationships with residents and
25 integrating a variety of genres and tools in the festival’s
26 programming. (Heyward, 2017: 1)
27
28 Thus, both the Dictation and the FLUP use artist-initiated events
29 based on literary texts to engage with mixed audiences and dispel
30 preconceptions about peripheral populations. Their differences lie in
31 the varying depth and length of this involvement and its more or less
32 creative nature, as well as in some structural dissimilarities caused by
33 the North-South divide.
34
35
36
Literary festivals in the context of the Global
37 North-South divide
38 Although France and Brazil occupy different positions in the global
39 economy, their present-day social, educational and cultural inequalities
40 are deeply rooted in the discriminatory practices of colonization,
41 leading to lasting divides between educated elites and stigmatised
42 postcolonial populations in both countries. Due to the accessibility
159
1 of books and higher literacy rates, the percentage of regular readers in

2 France is much higher: 91 per cent (Pech, 2017) as opposed to 56 per
3 cent in Brazil (Failla, 2016). According to Mustafa Dikeç (2017), the
4 current stigmatisation of French banlieues is shaped by a strong colonial
5 legacy, a persistent imaginary based on distinctions between populations
6 and civilisations believed to be superior or inferior:
7
8 The Republic is at once the product and the producer of
9 racialized social relations through its public policies and
10 official discourses. … The working-class banlieues of France
11 bear the weight of this colonial legacy. … Through policies
12 and discourses, the State perpetuates, indeed reproduces,
13 forms of colonial domination in the banlieues. (Dikeç,
14 2017: 104)
15
16 This legacy explains that, in the country that achieved the world’s
17 third highest literacy rate in 2002 (0.987 against 0.905 in Brazil,
18 EFA 2002), an important divide persists between the populations of
19 metropolitan centres and the residents of low-income banlieues. The
20 latter have distinctively lower literacy rates, higher numbers of non-
21 native speakers of French, weaker school performances and higher
22 concentrations of students experiencing difficulties. A recent study on
23 illiteracy revealed that, in 2011, 27 per cent of the population aged
24 18–65 in the so-called ‘sensitive urban zones’ or ZUS experienced
25 difficulties when reading and writing, compared with only 11 per cent
26 of those living outside these areas (Rapport de l’Observatoire national
27 des zones urbaines sensibles, 2013: 133). Since 1981, schools in these
28 areas have received extra support from priority education policies,
29 enabling them to reduce their class sizes, offer higher remuneration
30 for teachers and allocate extra time for small-group activities. A reform
31 in 2017 transformed the so-called ZEPs (Priority Education Zones)
32 into Priority and Reinforced Priority Education Networks (REP
33 and REP+) and extended the scheme to 1,095 geographic areas
34 encompassing 21 per cent of public school students aged 11–15 in
35 about 8,000 schools across France. Yet, according to a government
36 report published in February 2018 (Rosenwald, 2018), both REP
37 and REP+ areas still have a significantly higher percentage of socially
38 disadvantaged students whose parents are either unemployed or manual
39 workers and these students have a considerably lower competency in
40 the French language: 15-year-old students entering the sixth and final
41 year of college tested at the beginning of the 2015–16 academic year
42
160
1 scored only 60 per cent against 83 per cent in schools outside REP
2 areas (Rosenwald, 2018: 2).
3 While these statistics explain why French banlieues are seen by some
4 as ‘zones of non-writing’ (Mori 2012: 75), other studies (Van Zanten,
5 2001, Caillet, 2005, Beaud and Mauger, 2017) highlight the existence
6 of a prevalent ‘anti-school sentiment’ in these areas (Beaud and Mauger,
7 2017: 35), which explains why during the 2005 riots several schools
8 were torched (Dikeç, 2017).
9 Banlieue residents’ mistrust of the Republican education system
10 is rooted in a complex range of factors: racially and socially biased
11 practices targeting students of postcolonial origin (Beaud, 2002);
12 curricula promoting colonial values; anti-Muslim policies culminating
13 in the banning of the headscarf in French schools since 2004 (Dikeç,
14 2017); and the orientation of children of immigrant or working-class
15 parents towards vocational training at an early age, which impedes
16 their social mobility while maintaining former hierarchies (Van
17 Zanten, 2001).
18 Brazil’s marginalised urban population is similarly linked with
19 colonial history. The abolishment of slavery in 1888 brought significant
20 numbers of freed slaves from around Brazil to Rio de Janeiro in
21 search of affordable housing (Freire Medeiros, 2013). Freire Medeiros
22 suggests that ‘in the absence of public policies capable of providing
23 housing for those in need, [favelas] emerged as a solution based mostly
24 on the self-construction of homes in territories where building was
25 formally forbidden – areas beyond the reach of the formal real estate
26 market’ (Freire Medeiros, 2013: 57). From their inception, favelas
27 were configured as the ‘space of the poor’, both geographically and
28 culturally, and by the 1920s they were durably associated with samba
29 and carnival. Although these products of Afro-Brazilian counter-culture
30 were integrated into the national culture and identity by the regime of
31 Getúlio Vargas in the 1930s (Yúdice, 2003), the economic and social
32 marginalisation of favela residents continued throughout the Brazilian
33 dictatorship from 1964 till 1984, and even after the democratisation
34 that started in 1985. Perlman (2013) notes that the arts have played
35 an important role in the resistance to marginalisation in Brazil too:
36
37 In the wake of the return to democracy, community
38 groups, federations of community groups, and non-profits
39 working in favelas flourished. Some of these promoted the
40 rights of citizenship and attempted to correct past social
41 injustices. Others were organized around cultural activities
42
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1 such as theatre, dance and filmmaking, sports … or around

2 reclaiming weak or even lost racial or ethnic practices.
3 (Perlman, 2013: 151–3)
4
5 Perlman argues that the distinction between the worthy ‘in-group’ and
6 the unworthy ‘out-group’ remains strong in a country where 34 per
7 cent of the population lives below the poverty line and the top ten
8 per cent of the population earn 50 per cent of the national income,
9 while the poorest 20 per cent earn 2.5 per cent of the national income
10 (Perlman, 2013: 48). She suggests that, although racial and spatial
11 stigmatisation remain strongly interlinked, the fact of living in a favela
12 remains more stigmatising than people’s skin colour. The criminalisation
13 of favela residents in the fields of the media, local administration and
14 public policies reinforces this stigmatisation (Lacerda, 2015) and the
15 fight against drug trafficking is frequently used as a pretext to justify
16 aggressive policing that denies the residents’ human rights.
17 Ireland (2008) states that the distribution of quality education among
18 the Brazilian population is one of the most unequal in the world and
19 functional illiteracy rates remain high (Ireland, 2008: 718). This mainly
20 affects older people, the indigenous and black populations as well as
21 those living in rural areas and in the North East of Brazil. Besides the
22 important socioeconomic disparities that make books unaffordable
23 for many, the main obstacle to reading is illiteracy. In 2006, Brazil
24 registered over 13 million illiterate youths and adults, representing 10.38
25 per cent of the country’s population (Rodrigues Mello and Marini
26 Braga, 2018). As a result of the ambitious adult literacy programmes
27 introduced under the Lula presidency, this number was reduced to
28 11.8 million people (7.2 per cent) in 2016 and 11.3 million (6.8 per
29 cent) in 2018 (Indio, 2019). According to Julio Ludemir, the FLUP
30 has capitalised on the success of these education policies to train new
31 readers and authors (Ludemir, 2019).
32 Despite some similarities regarding the territorial stigmatisation, racial
33 discrimination and educational disadvantages experienced by banlieue
34 and favela residents, there are also important structural differences
35 between the Global North and South. While most researchers agree
36 on describing class and race issues in Brazil as a ‘social apartheid’
37 (Resende, 2009, Lacerda, 2015), references to a ‘postcolonial urban
38 apartheid’ in France remain sporadic (Silverstein and Tetreault, 2006,
39 Tchumkam, 2015). In French banlieues, governmental, regional and
40 municipal structures are in charge of running schools, community
41 centres, libraries, theatres, houses of culture and cultural events. In
42 Brazil’s favelas, most cultural institutions are maintained by the efforts
162
1 of local and foreign associations, volunteers and non-governemental

2 organisations (NGOs). The neoliberal turn of the 1980s, which in
3 the Global North resulted in the retrenchment of the welfare state
4 and ‘the reduction of state-subsidised social services, the lowering of
5 wages and the evisceration of labour rights’ (Yúdice, 2003: 82), had
6 a somewhat different effect on the Global South where the welfare
7 state has never been fully developed and unskilled labour has been less
8 affected by unemployment (Perlman, 2013: 159). In both parts of the
9 world, however, it has triggered a turn to civil society, transforming
10 culture into the main arena of progressive struggle led by the most
11 innovative actors (Yúdice, 2003: 88).
12 North-South differences also prevail in the domain of knowledge
13 production and epistemology understood as the critique and validation
14 of scientific knowledge. As previously argued in Chapter 1, the
15 epistemologies of the North have attracted significant criticism in recent
16 years for their ‘pretence to be the planetary centre and the desire and
17 design to homogenise the world to its image and likelihood’ (Mignolo
18 and Walsh, 2018: 194). Due to the unequal relations of power, they
19 succeeded in imposing the mirage of their universal validity upon
20 the totality of cultures colonised (Quijano, 2010). However, with the
21 rise of decolonial theory, the embodied and technically and culturally
22 intrinsic social practices of Southern epistemologies born from the
23 struggle against capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy have been
24 increasingly recognised and the necessity of decolonising Eurocentric
25 ways of knowledge production has been gaining ground (Santos, 2018).
26 FLUP’s efforts to collect and conserve favela residents’ practice-based
27 knowledge and oral memories in events like the ‘Feijoada da Memória’
28 (Memory Meal), which will be discussed in the next section, can be
29 considered as part of decolonial strategies aiming to erase hierarchies
30 between Northern and Southern ways of knowledge production.
31 Finally, the North-South divide is also encapsulated in both events’
32 different access to public funding and national and international
33 institutional validation. The Dictation mainly relies on national and
34 municipal funders, including France Culture, the Centre of National
35 Monuments, municipal and regional councils and ministries (according
36 to La Dictée Géante website), while since the decline of state support,
37 the FLUP receives most of its financial support from private sponsors
38 (such as Ford) and foreign institutions (among others the Open Society
39 Foundation, the French Institute, and the British Council) (Ludemir,
40 2019). The Global North is also known for concentrating the most
41 prestigious literary institutions, publishing houses and globally known
42 literary prizes (Casanova, 2007) which act as instances of legitimation
163
1 by validating new writers and introducing them to global audiences.

2 The London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award awarded to
3 the FLUP in 2016 is a good example of the international power of
4 legitimation which is still mostly held in the Global North.
5
6
The literary festivals through the Co-Creation lens
7
8 This final section will assess the two events’ aims, ethos and strategies
9 through the lens of Co- Creation. According to the definition
10 championed in this book, Co-Creation is a method of collaborative
11 knowledge production that relies on socially engaged artistic and
12 cultural practices to provide communities with opportunities for
13 self-understanding and resistance to the dominant social imaginary.
14 Co- Creation brings together artists, researchers, residents and
15 stakeholders from disadvantaged neighbourhoods to generate tangible
16 and intangible, creative and intellectual outcomes relevant to the
17 community. Arts practice is embedded in Co-Creation workshops
18 in which all actors are recognised as equal participants actively taking
19 part in both the creative process and the knowledge production which
20 are inseparable from each other. A deeper understanding of different
21 perspectives on the neighbourhood, the divided city and social
22 justice emerges from the process spontaneously as a by-product of
23 this engagement, with art used as a leveller to enable different voices
24 to be heard.
25 Like Co- Creation, both festivals use literature to destigmatise
26 disadvantaged urban audiences and build capacity by engaging
27 participants in arts-based practices. Co-Creation generally works with
28 small groups of participants and seeks to develop strong, trust-based
29 relationships between them through collectively set goals, discussion
30 and time spent together, shared creative and bodily experiences and
31 communal meals. The two festivals, however, seek to reach out to
32 broader audiences in timeframes that are often too short to establish
33 such solid links. Dictations are one-off events that attract 200–400
34 participants on average and promote a limited engagement with
35 creativity, insofar as the activity they promote consists of reading and
36 writing out extracts of classical texts. Original texts are only produced
37 on special occasions, such as for World Refugee Day in June 2019
38 when Rachid Santaki set up a wall “on which each participant wrote
39 words and expressed, in the form of drawings, their ideas but also their
40 feelings” (Santaki, 2019). According to Santaki, the Dictation is less
41 about creativity and capacity building than about bringing together
42 schoolchildren, middle school and high school students, adults, people
164
1 with disabilities, learners of the French language, and institutions

2 involved in the fields of education, culture and sport who would not
3 meet otherwise. Santaki insists on equality between participants:
4
5 “The Dictation provides means for all participants to be
6 equal when it comes to words. It is above all an event
7 about the French language that can be enriched by the
8 participation of others and adopt different forms according
9 to the context in which it takes place.” (Santaki, 2019)
10
11 However, participants are unlikely to be equally involved in the literary
12 activities as these are not co-designed by them: the texts that are read
13 are chosen by the organisers without consulting the participants and
14 thus the divide between those who dictate and those who participate
15 in writing out the dictation remains unchallenged.
16 As a larger-scale event, the FLUP brings together several thousand
17 participants for five days each year. It also includes a series of creative
18 workshops run by artists and academics over a number of months
19 leading up to the festival. Workshops like the ‘Laboratory of Black
20 Narratives for the Audiovisual’ run in partnership with TV Globo are
21 quite similar to Co-Creation workshops in that they produce creative
22 outputs and help young people from the urban periphery to develop
23 their creative skills and self-esteem. For organiser Julio Ludemir, the
24 FLUP’s greatest achievement is having launched over 200 writers
25 from the periphery of Rio, among them bestselling novelist Geovani
26 Martins from Rocinha, poet and cultural producer Vivi Salles from
27 Cidade de Deus, and internationally recognised writer and filmmaker
28 Yasmin Thayná from Nova Iguaçu:
29
30 “The first two editions of the workshops resulted in the
31 creation of 56 original stories for television, several of
32 which have been accepted for screening. In August and
33 October 2018, we organised poetry slam workshops in
34 14 public high schools in Rio de Janeiro. By 2018, we
35 organised four workshops leading to the publication of five
36 books and 25 original audio-visual documents, a politically
37 engaged fashion show which drew attention to the killing
38 of black youths by the state and a documentary about the
39 first generation of black professionals arriving to the job
40 market after passing through the quotas. Achieving this
41 was a challenging process for which significant human and
42 financial resources were mobilised.” (Ludemir, 2019)
165
1 Similar to Co- Creation, the FLUP engages academics, artists,

2 communities and stakeholders in collective creative processes and
3 shared bodily experiences by bringing together disadvantaged and more
4 privileged audiences to spend time together in favelas. Its workshops
5 have resulted in the publication of several collective volumes but, unlike
6 Co-Creation, these activities are not co-designed by the participants
7 and researchers are largely absent from the creative process. It is
8 important to note that while scholars have been regularly involved in
9 teaching creative writing and film making on FLUP workshops, they
10 do not contribute to these as researchers.
11 While research and long- term engagement with the same
12 community are less central to FLUP than Co-Creation, forms of
13 shared understanding may nevertheless arise from the regular workshop
14 activities in which artists, academics and other participants share
15 ideas and work together towards a shared goal. Engagement with
16 communities’ local and orally circulating or embodied knowledge has
17 been nevertheless central to FLUP’s repeated attempts to reassemble
18 oral history and community memory. For example, the ‘Feijoada da
19 Memória’ (Memory Meal) introduced in 2015 in Babilônia brought
20 together the favela’s founders with the younger generations and resulted
21 in a comic-strip exhibition based on the history of the inhabitants.
22 In Cidade de Deus, FLUP co-produced a book celebrating 50 years
23 of the favela, and in 2017 in Vidigal they staged with local partners
24 a ‘Memory Competition’ for children and adolescents (Ludemir,
25 2019). These events are just a few among the many FLUP initiatives
26 that encourage the inclusion of Southern epistemologies through
27 the valorisation of oral narrative modes. Oral culture and spoken
28 word practices inspired by African griots and hip-hop artists from
29 the Northern urban periphery have also been celebrated through the
30 FLUP Slam Battle, which, according to Julio Ludemir (2019), has
31 been offering a platform for youth from Rio de Janeiro’s margins to
32 voice their indignation over homicidal security policies and racial and
33 social discrimination. These arts-based practices, aimed at abolishing
34 extant hierarchies between oral and written forms of expression, are
35 strategies that could be adopted by Co-Creation projects seeking to
36 engage with knowledge emerging from social struggle in the Global
37 South (Santos, 2018: 13).
38 Through arts practice, Co-Creation encourages communities to
39 critically engage in ‘questioning unexamined beliefs …, disarticulating
40 the existing common sense and fostering a variety of agonistic public
41 spaces’, as advocated by Chantal Mouffe (2013: 95). Therefore, Co-
42 Creation workshops can be considered as ‘agonistic’ interventions
166
1 insofar as they promote democratic processes and encourage political

2 adversaries to respect each other’s discordant viewpoints. By bringing
3 together scholarly and embodied ‘ways of knowing’ arising from
4 academic and non-academic perspectives and from both Northern or
5 Southern epistemologies, a shared Co-Creation develops an agonistic
6 understanding of the city which can be translated into actions that can
7 lead to practical and potentially transformative change. Co-Creation
8 aims to harness participants’ capacity to challenge and dismantle
9 multiple stigmas attached to disadvantaged neighbourhoods using
10 ‘complicated gestures of rewriting, strategies of decontextualizing’
11 (Rosello, 1998: 18). This aim is shared by the two festivals, although
12 they challenge negative perceptions of the urban periphery to different
13 extents, using different strategies. While both demonstrate that both
14 banlieues and favelas are places fit to host highbrow cultural events, only
15 the FLUP seeks to promote new aesthetics emerging from the margins.
16 By focusing on classical texts and spelling rules set by the famously
17 conservative French Academy, the Dictation shows respect to literary
18 conventions, institutions and canons validated by the establishment.
19 On the contrary, by launching and endorsing new writers, the FLUP
20 contributes to shaping alternative canons, while simultaneously
21 establishing itself as an alternative instance of literary validation. The
22 efficiency of this strategy can be measured by the FLUP’s recent
23 success of imposing its ethos on other festivals. For example, its efforts
24 to increase the number of female invitees, to include indigenous and
25 black writers, to honour marginal writers such as Lima Barreto in
26 2016, and to draw attention to racism by introducing FLUP Preta
27 (Black FLUP) in 2019, have been imitated by the more traditional FLIP
28 literary festival and have resulted in the emergence of new national
29 trends (Ludemir, 2019).
30 Finally, both literary events and Co-Creation seek to promote
31 the inclusion of peripheral populations, although their ambitions in
32 this respect vary. Rachid Santaki admits to being sceptical about the
33 Dictation’s potential to challenge negative stereotypes:
34
35 “With the Dictation, I don’t think we have changed the
36 image of the banlieue and I don’t believe that an event can
37 change the image or the stigmas of the periphery. I rather
38 think that I surprised audiences who did not imagine that
39 the French language concerned everyone, including people
40 living in the periphery but I did not change the perception
41 of those who believe in the clichés.” (Santaki, 2019)
42
167
1 Julio Ludemir advocates a more radical approach, inspired by affirmative

2 action that promotes the participation of marginalised groups, in
3 particular women, black and indigenous populations and the LGBTQI
4 community. Despite the obvious differences between the French and
5 Brazilian contexts, both festivals aim to bring art and literature closer
6 to underprivileged communities and to open up a space for public
7 participation through active engagement with literary texts. Although
8 Co-Creation is more focused on producing in-depth knowledge at the
9 neighbourhood level, it may struggle to build such extended networks
10 and raise such high levels of media attention due to its limitation to
11 single neighbourhoods.
12
13
14
Conclusion
15 The literary events promoted by Rachid Santaki and Julio Ludemir
16 are artist-initiated, participative projects that celebrate the margins and
17 promote the inclusion of disadvantaged groups into the mainstream
18 city and society. They highlight the importance of artists as initiators,
19 organisers and promoters of multi-partner events which bring together
20 several Co-Creative elements (being respectful, ethical, plurivocal, and
21 sometimes also embedded, aware and creative) while others (being
22 equal, trust-based, shared, occasionally also embedded, aware and
23 creative) are missing. Just like Co-Creation, these events are founded
24 on the ideal of equality and inclusivity and share Co-Creation’s interest
25 in marginality and arts methods. They may, however, lack some other
26 key elements, such as research practices involving academic partners,
27 the explicit focus on knowledge production and dissemination, and
28 the active production of artistic outcomes, which plays a more central
29 role in the FLUP where new literary works are produced, than the
30 Dictation where literary works are mostly consumed.
31 The comparative analysis of both events showed that, while organising
32 touring events such as the FLUP may be more time-consuming than
33 setting up Co-Creation workshops with a more steady focus on specific
34 small communities, these events may benefit from a greater visibility
35 which enables them to change national canons, pressure institutions
36 into becoming more inclusive, produce new spaces for participation,
37 generate new audiences and enable marginal voices to emerge and to
38 be heard. Such events have the potential to attract significant public
39 attention to urban and social margins and challenge stigmatising
40 discourses about ‘the periphery’ perceived as areas of ‘non-reading’,
41 places devoid of high culture. However, arts-based events that are not
42 rooted in a specific community and do not rely on scholarly research
168
1 and partnerships with academics and community activists are also

2 more vulnerable due to their greater dependence on the organisers’
3 individual efforts, charisma, availability, and commitment. Academic
4 collaborators bring to Co- Creation projects not only symbolic
5 legitimation and knowledge validation but also potential sources of
6 funding and a greater degree of institutionalisation that can be key to
7 make projects sustainable. Co-Creation, in return, needs to learn from
8 the engagement of literature-based events with embodied knowledge
9 and oral forms of expression which have been particularly prominent in
10 FLUP’s practice. This can help Co-Creation go further in the inclusion
11 of Southern epistemologies in knowledge production.
12
13 Note: The author gives her heartfelt thanks to Rachid Santaki (Dictée
14 des Cités, Saint-Denis, France) and Julio Ludemir (FLUP, Rio de
15 Janeiro, Brazil) without whose insight and comments this chapter
16 could not have been completed.
17
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page 173
1 11
2
3
4
5
When Co-Creation meets Art
6 for Social Change: the Street
7
8
Beats Band
9
10 Juliet Carpenter
11
12
13
14
15
Introduction
16 The concept of Co-Creation has been interpreted in this volume from
17 a variety of perspectives: approaches from the Global North and Global
18 South, from the perspective of scholars working with artists and non-
19 governmental organisations (NGOs) on Co-Creative projects, as well
20 as from the angle of non-profit organisations, instigating projects that
21 bring together artists and communities to Co-Create knowledge and
22 new understandings in marginalised neighbourhoods. This present
23 chapter draws on work by the author on the interface between
24 two conceptual frames: the notion of Co-Creation (Carpenter and
25 Horvath, 2018 ; Carpenter et al, 2021 forthcoming) and its intersection
26 with the ‘Art for Social Change’ movement (Marcuse and Marcuse,
27 2011), exploring the role that creative arts collaborations can have in
28 knowledge creation to effectuate social change.
29 The use of the term Co-Creation in this chapter aligns with that
30 set out in the Introduction to this volume (Chapter 1): that is, the
31 collaboration of a constellation of different actors (artists, local residents,
32 researchers, community groups and other stakeholders) in cultural
33 production, to address societal challenges such as marginalisation and
34 stigmatisation (see Pahl et al, 2017 for a discussion of academic-artist
35 collaborations). However, as the chapter will illustrate, the boundaries
36 between these different actors are fluid, given that the notion of
37 Co-Creation challenges the rigid binaries between ‘academic’ and
38 ‘non-academic’ participants, and the boundaries between professional
39 and non-professional artists. Wrapped up with this fluidity of roles is
40 the way in which the balance of power plays out and shifts between
41 different participants in a Co-Creation project.
42
173
1 This chapter seeks to demonstrate that, while the methodology of

2 Co-Creation holds critical potential as a tool to challenge stereotypes
3 and marginalisation, it nevertheless operates within the structural
4 constraints of deeply embedded power hierarchies and hegemonic
5 discourses that dominate received narratives. Drawing on the example
6 of a Co-Creative project, the Street Beats Band (SBB), a community-
7 based percussion band in Vancouver, Canada, the chapter argues that
8 such projects have potential to build community, empower participants
9 and effectuate change in daily lives. However, it also cautions against
10 framing Co-Creation as a catch-all panacea for social exclusion and
11 marginalisation, given the differentials of power that thread through
12 urban society, related to class, gender, race and postcolonialism.
13
14
15
Conceptual frames: Co-Creation and Art for
16 Social Change
17 As other chapters have demonstrated, there are a number of different
18 interpretations of the notion of Co-Creation, as understood in the
19 context of this volume. Chapter 1 draws up a general definition of
20 the concept, which involves the Co-Creation of knowledge and
21 understanding around marginalisation, through the collaboration of
22 residents, artists, researchers and urban stakeholders in creative arts
23 practice. One of the key components is the disruption of existing
24 hierarchies of knowledge production and social power, bringing
25 together alternative perspectives through collaborative creative practice
26 in order to interrupt traditional thinking and challenge stereotypes.
27 Co-Creation also necessitates a fluidity of functions, blurring the
28 boundaries between traditional knowledge producers (researchers)
29 and creative practitioners (artists), as well as collaborating with others
30 who may have no previous association with either group (Haviland,
31 2017). This duality of roles is paramount in the process of Co-
32 Creation, involving crossing disciplinary boundaries, exchanging
33 skills and understanding, and collaborating with people from different
34 backgrounds. Co-Creation involves crossing borders, so-called ‘fuzzy
35 boundaries’ (Gubrium et al, 2014) between professional and non-
36 professional artists, between researchers and residents as knowledge
37 producers, traversing borders which are by implication wrapped up
38 with power hierarchies, both within the project and more broadly at
39 a community or societal level. The hybridity inherent in Co-Creation
40 implies the need to balance interests, a mediation of alternative
41 understandings and ambiguities which need to be negotiated by those
42 involved in creative production.
174
page 175 Co-Creation meets Art for Social Change
1 There are crossovers between the notion of Co-Creation and

2 the field of ‘Art for Social Change’ (ASC) (Marcuse and Marcuse,
3 2011). ASC can be defined as: ‘Art that is created collectively
4 by groups of people (who may not self-identify as artists) about
5 what matters to them, through arts or dialogic processes that are
6 facilitated by an artist or group of artists’ (Yassi et al, 2016). It is
7 more focused on creative production for social change rather than
8 on knowledge production and engagement with researchers. The
9 key focus of ASC is, therefore, the artistic production and the social
10 change that may result from it. Co-Creation, on the other hand,
11 emphasises knowledge production, as well as a strong relationship
12 between researcher and artist in that process, with the creative
13 output acting as a vehicle for knowledge production. However, the
14 two processes have distinct similarities. Both approaches involve
15 professional and non-professional artists in creative collaboration
16 to explore social issues and engage with participants to find new
17 ways of seeing and understanding their worlds. There are also
18 parallels in relation to the power dynamics at play, both visible and
19 hidden, that need to be addressed within a reflective framework
20 of ethical practice.
21 Projects harnessing ASC can be driven by different agendas. In
22 exploring participation in art projects, Bishop (2006) argues that there
23 are three main motivations for community engagement in the arts: first,
24 the desire to create empowered and active subjects through arts practice,
25 who are then catalysed to determine their own social and political
26 realities; second, the desire to de-hierarchise art, to share or hand over
27 authorship from the artist to the community; and third, to develop
28 stronger social and community bonds, through ‘a collective elaboration
29 of meaning’(Bishop, 2006: 12). ASC projects are driven mainly by the
30 first motive, with the overall objective to allow participants to take
31 control of their social and political worlds.
32 However, with both Co-Creation and ASC, it is important to
33 engage with the critical debates around the use of arts in social
34 change and community-engaged practice. Some argue that creative
35 practice should not be reduced to a tool to achieve social outcomes,
36 but rather should be seen as a legitimate end in itself (Gray, 2007).
37 Others point to the tension between what is defined as ‘quality art’
38 in traditional arts practice, versus the more flexible standards that are
39 applied to community-based arts involved in Co-Creation and ASC
40 (Belfiore, 2002). For example, in community-based projects, there
41 can be friction between the emphasis on excellence of the outcome
42 as assessed through the criteria of aesthetics versus the value of the
175
1 creative process itself, the artistic journey, and the value that this brings
2 to participants as an end in itself. These debates are important to be
3 aware of when considering Co-Creation and ASC projects and will
4 be explored further in the context of the Street Beats Band, a ‘found
5 object’ percussion band in Vancouver.
6 In relation to the methodology, the chapter draws on a number of
7 different sources of data, including documentary evidence, the funding
8 application for the Street Beats Band project, other publicly available
9 sources and a total of 15 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders and
10 project participants which were completed in 2018–19. These included
11 community and professional musicians, ‘binners’, non-profit organisations
12 involved in the project and representatives from the municipal funder.
13 A total of five semi-structured participant feedback surveys were also
14 completed after the final concert performances in November 2017,
15 which were used in the analysis to feed in to an assessment of the project
16 that was completed by the author in July 2019. The next section provides
17 a background to the project and the constellation of collaborators
18 involved. The chapter then explores the ‘materialities’ of the Street Beats
19 Band project and the issue of power relations and then draws conclusions
20 on the possibilities for Co-Creation projects such as the Street Beats Band
21 to address social inequalities.
22
23
Street Beats background
24
25 This chapter is based on the author’s collaboration with the not-
26 for-profit organisation ‘Instruments of Change’, which is based in
27 Vancouver, Canada. Instruments of Change was set up in 2008 by
28 professional flautist and academic Dr Laura Barron. The organisation
29 aims to empower people to become ‘instruments of transformative
30 change’ in their own lives (Instruments of Change, nd). It leads a variety
31 of Co-Creative, socially engaged projects that work with marginalised
32 communities, both in the Global North and Global South, using
33 musical expression as a vehicle for change.
34 Much of the work of Instruments of Change is situated at the
35 interface of the two conceptual strands of Co-Creation (as defined in
36 this volume) and ASC: that is, broadly speaking an artistic engagement
37 that impacts social change. This broad definition can take a variety of
38 expressions with different combinations of professional and community
39 participation, but in general, Instruments of Change categorises their
40 projects in one of three ways: (1) work that is community-created
41 and community- presented; (2) work that is community- created
42 and professionally presented; or (3) work that is community- and
176
1 professionally created, and community- and professionally presented.

2 According to Instruments of Change, when work is Co-Created with
3 the community and professional artists (models 2 and 3), this tends to
4 generate greater social change, with a more sophisticated art output,
5 greater levels of expressivity, and potentially wider audiences, than if
6 the work is created and presented solely by the community.
7 One of the projects led by Instruments of Change from 2015–17 was
8 the ‘Street Beats Band’ (SBB) project, which aimed to bring together
9 different communities in Vancouver to rehearse and perform a pre-
10 composed percussion work at the New Music Festival. The Festival
11 was organised by the International Society for Contemporary Music
12 (ISCM) in Vancouver in November 2017. The Street Beats Band
13 project falls under the third model, as the work was both community-
14 and professionally created and presented.
15 The Street Beats Band was a two-year project that aimed to bring
16 together a constellation of different actors, including Vancouver’s
17 ‘binner’ community, professional musicians and other community
18 members, to collaboratively Co-Create and perform a large-scale,
19 specially commissioned percussion piece, within the framework of an
20 international music festival (Community Arts Grant Application Form,
21 submitted by Instruments of Change to Vancouver City Council,
22 2017, unpublished).
23 The project developed in two phases and involved multiple
24 communities. The first phase ran from September 2015 to November
25 2016 (Year 1) and started by engaging members of Vancouver’s binner
26 community and paying them to source recyclable materials to be
27 converted into musical instruments. The binners are Vancouver’s
28 recycling community, who collect redeemable containers and other
29 materials from garbage bins across the city to generate income through
30 refunds received at recycling depots. Instruments of Change partnered
31 with the Binners’ Project, a non-profit advocacy organisation that
32 coordinates the binners’ waste collection throughout the city on a
33 weekly basis, to work with a group of binners to source materials,
34 clean them up and repurpose them as the Street Beats Band’s percussion
35 instruments. These ranged from simple buckets, cans and pans to
36 ‘created’ percussion instruments, such as a shaker made from a tennis
37 ball container half-filled with quinoa.
38 The project then recruited 40 community members in four different
39 locations across Vancouver to rehearse and perform on these instruments
40 as part of the Street Beats Band. Following six weeks of rehearsals,
41 this urban percussion community band gave two performances at the
42 Roundhouse Community Centre in Vancouver in November 2016,
177
1 as part of the Modulus Festival run by the not-for-profit organisation

2 ‘Music on Main’. This first phase of the overall project was exploratory,
3 investigating the different sounds and rhythms that could be achieved
4 by the four community groups using the ‘found object’ percussion
5 instruments, exploring the levels of rhythm complexity that the
6 community were able to sustain, and possible teaching strategies to
7 help the players learn the work.
8 The second phase (Year 2) tied in with Vancouver’s hosting of the
9 ISCM World New Music Festival in November 2017, which was
10 also led by ‘Music on Main’. The Vancouver-based composer, James
11 Maxwell, was commissioned to write a piece for the Festival, and
12 following Year 1 of the project, he subsequently incorporated some of
13 the rhythms and motifs that were created during that first phase into his
14 new composition, ‘Eight or nine, six or seven’. He also accompanied
15 the binners on alley walks and collected soundscapes, both of which
16 also informed the compositional process.
17 Some 20 community participants then worked in three ‘pods’ or ‘mini-
18 bands’, each led by a facilitator, to learn the specially commissioned
19 work over six weeks; the piece was then performed in two shows at
20 the ISCM Festival, on the ‘found object’ percussion instruments before
21 an international audience. The Street Beats Band were also joined by a
22 nine-piece professional brass ensemble from the Music on Main All-Star
23 Band,including six trombones, a tuba and two professional percussionists,
24 with the whole composition being mixed in with recordings of sonic
25 urban soundscapes (for example, traffic sounds, birds, and rain) that the
26 composer had sampled in the city. The key components of the Street
27 Beats Band project are presented in Figure 11.1.
28 However, although labels are used to categorise the collaborators
29 (musician, composer, facilitator, and so on), in reality and in
30 line with a Co- Creative approach, the boundaries were blurred
31 between roles. The instigator, Laura Barron was also an academic,
32 a musician and facilitator. The community participants performed
33 alongside professional musicians in the International Music Festival,
34 challenging traditional views of the profile of a ‘professional’ musician.
35 Furthermore, the composition itself was also Co-Created in response
36 to the community participants, as it was rewritten by the composer
37 in light of the community’s initial experimentation with the binners’
38 found instruments, thus disrupting the hierarchy between professional
39 composer and community musician, through the incorporation of the
40 community’s inputs into the composition. Similarly, during rehearsals,
41 the professional musicians, composer and conductor all needed to
42 play not only a leadership role, but also a facilitating and empowering
178
1 Figure 11.1: Key contributors to the Street Beats Band project.

2
3 • Instruments of Change: The project champion, a not-for-profit organisation that runs
community arts programmes and aims to empower people to use the arts, and music in
4 particular, to promote transformative change in their lives. Led by Executive Director, Dr
5 Laura Barron, who is a professional flautist and was a full-time academic for ten years,
6 and who now dedicates her time to Instruments of Change.
• Music on Main: A non-profit organisation that programmes music events in the city and
7
was the lead on Vancouver’s bid to host the ISCM New World Music Festival in 2017. Led
8 by David Pay.
9 • The composer: Vancouver-based composer, James Maxwell.
• The Binner Community: Engaged through the Binners’ Project, a number of binners were
10
employed to collect or ‘curate’ the instruments at the beginning of the SBB project.
11 • Participants from the community-at-large: Recruited through four community centres
12 in different neighbourhoods throughout the city in Year 1, and through further music-
13 related networks in Year 2.
• Facilitators: Three professional musicians, employed as facilitators to guide the
14 community participants in their learning and practice and to lead the performances.
15 • Conductor: Professional conductor, Janna Sailor.
16 • Music on Main All-Star Band: Professional musicians who accompanied the
community Street Beats Band with brass and additional percussion sections, in the two
17
performances at the ISCM World New Music Festival, November 2017.
18 • Audience members: Those who attended the Modulus Festival in November 2016 and
19 the ISCM Festival in November 2017.
• City of Vancouver: The funder of the project, through the Community Arts Grant
20
Programme.
21
22
23 role. There are no rigid binaries between the roles of researcher, artist,
24 non-profit organisation and community participant, rather there are a
25 set of complex, layered and shifting experiences that overlap between
26 them. These are fluid categories where individuals can pass from one
27 to another according to their role in a particular situation.
28
29
30
Co-Creation through the Street Beats Band
31 Co- Creation through the Street Beats Band started with the
32 involvement of the binners in curating the percussion instruments
33 at the beginning of the project. Binners are very much a part of
34 Vancouver’s downtown community, a constant presence on the
35 street, collecting redeemable containers from bins to sustain their
36 livelihoods and divert waste from landfill. Yet their status in the city
37 is marginal, often conflated with begging, and stigmatised due to
38 the nature of their work. The SBB instigator, Laura Barron, built up
39 relations with the binner community over more than a year, to create
40 trust and confidence, and to “gain an appreciation for their expertise,
41 and really humanising them, and getting to know them as people,
42 and being privileged to witness their work” (interview, 31 October
179
1 2018). A number of binners were paid to collect materials that could

2 be curated as percussion instruments and were accompanied on their
3 alley walks to collect materials by Laura Barron, and the composer
4 James Maxwell, who observed how they listened to the city, and how
5 they sifted, sorted and selected materials (such as buckets, cans and
6 pans) that could be repurposed as instruments. In this way, the binners
7 themselves contributed to the Co-Creation of the composition, not
8 only through providing the instruments but also through giving the
9 composer insights into their perspectives on the city, which also fed
10 into the composition (Figure 11.2).
11 The very act of paying the binners for their time had a significant
12 impact on their self-esteem, as it demonstrated the value of their work
13 and an appreciation of their knowledge of the city and their skills in
14 sourcing materials. They were proud to present the materials that they
15 had found on the alley walks. It was also an engagement that involved
16 planning beyond the immediate week ahead, which is the normal
17 timescale of the Binners’ Project. Many binners find it challenging
18 to think beyond the coming week ahead, due to complex issues of
19 mental health, addiction or inadequate housing. Their involvement in
20 the project was longer term, stretching over a month, so it challenged
21 participants to think beyond the immediate week and to project
22 themselves forward and plan ahead.
23
24
25
Figure 11.2: The binners curating instruments.
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42 Source: Lani Brunn.
180
1 In fact, it was anticipated at the beginning of the project that the

2 binners would be involved much more closely throughout the two
3 years, including taking part in the final performance, which was
4 anticipated as being a ‘Binners’ Symphony’. However, this longer-
5 term engagement proved unworkable, given the difficult lives that
6 many binners lead, working long and exhausting hours, and not being
7 able to commit to a long-term project. One of the binners was more
8 closely involved, in both curating instruments, attending rehearsals and
9 performing in the first year show, but ill health prevented him from
10 continuing into the second year. So, while the binners were an integral
11 part of the SBB, through Co-Creating the instruments, their absence
12 in the final performance meant that the public audience was not fully
13 aware of their involvement and were not fully challenged about their
14 preconceptions of the binner community.
15 The final performance, however, did involve a wide range of some
16 20 participants, from a variety of neighbourhoods in the city, and from
17 different backgrounds, cultures and generations (see Figure 11.3). The
18 experience gave participants a strong sense of community related to the
19 project, in a supportive atmosphere – as the conductor noted: “The little
20 boys would be helping the grandmas with their rhythms” (interview, 14
21 November 2018) – and helped to build confidence among participants.
22 One facilitator appreciated “the different inputs that different walks of
23 life could bring to the group” (interview, 7 February 2019). Another
24 participant noted that: ‘Making music together is a one-of-a-kind
25 bonding experience. People I considered strangers just weeks ago have
26 become a part of me’ (Campbell, 2017). Respondents commented that
27 the strength of the community created through participating in the
28 project was an important outcome of their involvement.
29
30
Figure 11.3: The Street Beats Band performance, November 2017.
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42 Source: Jan Gates.
181
1 Although the Street Beats Band was not focused on community

2 participants gaining a voice in a situation where they may have
3 felt marginalised, as with other ASC projects, it did open up other
4 possibilities, such as the opportunity to play alongside professional
5 musicians, with other benefits of confidence building, the discipline of
6 rehearsals, the focus and time management required, and collaborative
7 skills of working in a group.
8 Additionally for the binners, further opportunities also opened up
9 from the SBB – to be involved in a parallel project run by Instruments of
10 Change in local schools, speaking to school children about repurposing
11 waste as part of their environmental education class. The binners were
12 empowered as experts, paid to share their expertise in recycling in a
13 school setting, normally an environment from which they are excluded.
14 This also contributed to the destigmatisation of the binners in the
15 eyes of the children and school community, where direct contact with
16 individual binners helped to broaden the children’s understanding of
17 the binner community, and their value in society.
18 For the audience, the performance challenged them to question
19 their preconceived ideas about what community engagement can
20 achieve. The 300 or so audience members over two days were made
21 up of Festival participants, composers and performers from around
22 the world, as well as friends and family of the Band, who were all
23 exposed to the fusion of ages, cultures and backgrounds in the Street
24 Beats Band. They witnessed the high standard of musical ability that
25 is possible with community engagement in the classical music world
26 and opened up their minds to the possibilities of such Co-Creative
27 approaches. A number of audience members provided informal
28 feedback on the achievement of working at such a high level artistically,
29 while also promoting a participatory approach. As one audience
30 member expressed: “It was one of the most successful instances I’ve
31 seen of combining professional artists with community artists in a
32 truly meaningful way … the two halves were really co-dependent and
33 integrated” (interview, 14 February 2019).
34 The project also destabilised accepted thinking of what a musical
35 instrument is, both for the audience and the community participants,
36 in relation to the materiality of the ‘found object’ instruments. As the
37 instigator Laura Barron commented:
38
39 “It shifted paradigms a bit, in relation to their imagining
40 what an instrument can be, and how accessible music
41 making can be, how it can be right at their fingertips,
42 that they don’t need to go to the Conservatory, they don’t
182
1 need to buy an expensive instrument, that their voices and

2 their found instruments can make music.” (Interview, 31
3 October 2018)
4
5 Individuals benefit from participating in art, because of its potential
6 for learning, emancipation and empowerment (Bacqué and Biewener,
7 2013). The SBB achieved these outcomes for the participants, but the
8 Co-Creation process goes beyond individual outcomes of community
9 participation in art, to Co-Create new knowledge about places or
10 communities, which challenges previously held views. In this case,
11 although the binners were not as fully involved as anticipated, their
12 association with the project contributed to confront audience views
13 about community- based art and what can be achieved through
14 community engagement in creative production. As an audience
15 member noted: “Too often, I find, the community element could
16 be eliminated without necessarily having an impact on the final
17 presentation. But this wasn’t the case with that [the SBB] at all”
18 (interview, 14 February 2019).
19 These border situations unsettle audiences with new ways of seeing
20 and understanding. The SBB drew on the binners’ life experiences
21 in border situations, blurring the boundaries between art and social
22 action. By performing the piece with community participants at
23 an international music festival, the process was also destabilising
24 conventional views about who is ‘a musician’ and who has the right to
25 be labelled as ‘a musician’. In many ways, therefore, the SBB project
26 can be seen as Co-Creation, as it crossed borders, disrupted concepts
27 and disciplines, and questioned existing thinking.
28
29
30
Confronting power differentials in Co-Creation
31 As Matarasso notes (2019: 107), ‘inequalities of power are created in
32 the act of co-creation’. This arises for a number of reasons. The first
33 relates to the level of skill, knowledge, experience and confidence
34 of professional artists (musicians in this case), compared to non-
35 professional community artists, which inevitably places the community
36 participants in an unequal position. The second reason is connected
37 to the power attached to the role of the instigator, who is the hub of
38 the Co-Creation project, connected to all components, ranging from
39 the funding body through to the artists, community participants and
40 beyond. This gives them access to knowledge that underpins their
41 authority in the Co-Creation process. While it is important to have a
42 strong instigator and leader in Co-Creation projects, this concentration
183
1 of knowledge also brings with it potentially significant command

2 over other participants, a situation which should be acknowledged
3 and negotiated from the beginning and throughout the Co-Creation
4 exercise to integrate strategies for power sharing into the process.
5 In the case of the Street Beats Band, the instigator Laura Barron
6 was conscious of her privileged role, as the leader of the project, as
7 a professional musician, and as a facilitator. Community participants
8 acknowledged her grounded style, approachability and levelling
9 manner, which contributed to breaking down power hierarchies in
10 the project. However, she did need to make difficult decisions about
11 whether to include certain participants from Year 1 in the Year 2
12 performance year, due to the mismatch between the skills of some
13 participants and the technicalities of the composed piece. It was felt
14 that some participants would struggle to learn the complicated rhythms
15 that were needed to play the work to a performance level, and so they
16 were passed over in Year 2. She expressed her “deep regrets about
17 having had to make the executive decision to exclude some participants
18 from Phase Two of the project. However, my motivations for making
19 such difficult decisions are always in the interest of what is best for the
20 greater good” (personal communication, 18 September 2019).
21 This raises issues that are frequently debated in relation to socially
22 engaged arts, that is, the relative importance of the product artistically
23 versus the value of the process to the participants, such as the importance
24 of social relations and dialogical interactions. How important is the
25 quality of the final artistic product, in this case the musical outcome,
26 when the process taken to get there has the potential for significant and
27 long-lasting impacts on the community members involved? While in
28 general, Instruments of Change aims to valorise both the process and
29 the final product equally, in this case, due to the connection with the
30 wider ISCM Festival and the newly commissioned percussion piece,
31 the delivery of the final musical product at the ISCM Festival was given
32 priority, although this meant excluding certain Year 1 participants from
33 continuing into the second year. This tension between the process
34 and the product, between relational outcomes and object- based
35 outcomes, is one that many Co-Creative projects grapple with while
36 trying to bypass binary thinking that positions artistic outcomes against
37 social ones. In each case, the aim is to achieve a balance that is most
38 appropriate in the particular context.
39 Power relations in a Co-Creation project are also complicated by
40 the issue of who gets paid for their participation and why. Payment
41 to professional artists for their involvement is rarely questioned, but
42 payment to non-professional artists is less common, partly due to
184
1 funding constraints. In the Street Beats Band, the binners were paid
2 for their time to collect materials and curate them as instruments. They
3 were paid as a way of demonstrating the value of their knowledge and
4 know-how of the city, its alleys and waste materials, in the context of
5 a project that aims to destigmatise a marginalised group in Vancouver
6 society. The professional musicians from Music on Main were paid for
7 their involvement in the final performance, as were the instigator of the
8 whole project, the composer, the facilitators and the conductor. The
9 community participants were seen as volunteers and were not paid.
10 However, if the community participants are recognised as musicians,
11 equally implicated in the act of Co-Creation, there are strong arguments
12 from an ethical and power perspective for them to be paid as well. And
13 yet some would argue that financial remuneration is not necessarily
14 the most appropriate means of compensating community participants
15 for their involvement, given the potential for disempowerment and a
16 sense of obligation if payment is made in exchange for participation.
17 Others argue that community members benefit from participation in
18 non-monetary ways through personal development, capacity building
19 and other skills, so payment is neither necessary nor appropriate. In
20 the Street Beats Band, community members were provided with free
21 food at every rehearsal and refreshments in the Green Room at the two
22 performances, in addition to the ‘free’ skills-building education they
23 received. These complexities around payment are often resolved by
24 default through a lack of available funds to remunerate all community
25 participants, but they nevertheless raise important questions about
26 fairness and equality of treatment in a Co-Creation project, issues
27 of reciprocity, and the perceived value of different participants’
28 contributions.
29 Co-Creation aims to disrupt traditional thinking and challenge
30 stereotypes, ultimately to bring about societal change. But these are
31 grand objectives, which are not necessarily achievable through small-
32 scale projects. Many Co-Creation projects achieve significant impacts at
33 individual and community scales. In the Street Beats Band, individual
34 impacts at the personal level were identified through participants
35 gaining skills, confidence and knowledge. At the community scale, the
36 rehearsal groups came together as a whole, shared ideas and resources,
37 and developed trust through their communal experience of practising
38 and performing together. However, wider social transformation is
39 harder to identify, not only because it is a long-term process and the
40 project was a small scale intervention, but also because of the difficulty
41 of accomplishing such change, within a framework of structural
42 constraints that limit wider social transformation related to gender,
185
1 class, race and postcolonialism. The involvement of the binners in

2 the broader project could have contributed to individual and societal
3 change, but the constraints of their difficult lives meant that they could
4 not and/or did not participate more fully. This case therefore illustrates
5 the potential of Co-Creation to build community and to confront
6 barriers and prejudice, but tempered with a realism of the power of
7 structural constraints that limit deep social change.
8
9
Conclusion
10
11 Co-Creation aims to be a creative and democratic process through
12 which different voices come together in a common artistic endeavour
13 that brings participants into creative contact, and contributes to their
14 discovering, understanding and sharing experiences. The Street Beats
15 Band brought together the notion of Co-Creation with principles
16 of ASC to empower participants and challenge traditional views of
17 community-engaged practice by marrying professional and non-
18 professional musicians in an international professional setting.
19 Overall, the project adhered to ASC principles, while also drawing
20 on elements of Co-Creation as defined in this volume, by bringing
21 together different stakeholders to address issues of marginalisation,
22 and emphasising community and empowerment. Although researcher
23 engagement and knowledge creation were not explicit aims of the SBB,
24 one of the outcomes was participants’ enhanced understanding of different
25 perspectives and world views of those who took part, particularly through
26 the engagement of the binner community. The project reached significant
27 achievements in the final show at the ISCM New Music Festival, with a
28 high-level work performed mainly by community musicians, some with
29 no formal musical training, playing on repurposed object instruments that
30 had been curated by binners. The binners’ connection with the project
31 helped to challenge the community participants’ views of the binner
32 community, although as the binners themselves did not perform at the
33 final New Music Festival, the impact on the audience’s perception of this
34 marginalised community was more limited.
35 This case study illustrates that a Co-Creative process such as the
36 Street Beats Band project can build community, as well as confront
37 conventional thinking and challenge ideas and expectations.
38 Participants came together to collaborate and create music together,
39 to make sense of and explore their worlds. The Street Beats Band
40 provided an arena for building voices, confidence, trust and space for
41 dialogue between different groups. But, as the chapter has illustrated,
42 within the Co-Creation process there are inevitable inequalities of
186
1 power that risk creating dominant and subordinate relations, when

2 professional and non-professional artists collaborate, and when the
3 necessary ‘instigator’ is required to initiate, lead and make decisions
4 for the project. As Laura Barron commented: “I am well aware of
5 the limitations of this work, and recognise it as an incomplete vehicle
6 for social change” (personal communication, 18 September 2019).
7 Tensions and dilemmas embedded in Co-Creation are unavoidable,
8 due to different visions, interests, and inevitable power hierarchies.
9 These issues should be acknowledged, addressed and negotiated by
10 those involved.
11 What this chapter has argued is that Co-Creative projects offer critical
12 potential to catalyse individual and collective impacts, with community
13 participants benefiting in a myriad of ways from the creative and
14 collective process of artmaking. These benefits include participants’
15 feeling of achievement, a sense of community and communal identity,
16 and building cross-generational and cross-cultural understanding.
17 However, at the wider societal level, changes are necessarily more
18 limited. While impacts can be seen at the individual and community
19 level, the power of Co-Creative or ASC projects to address some of
20 the deep-seated societal challenges is more limited. As ‘incomplete
21 vehicles for social change’, as Laura Barron remarked, they cannot
22 dismantle the structural forces that underpin inequalities, but they
23 do have the capacity to impact on the people who can trouble those
24 structural forces, to question inequalities related to gender, class, race
25 and postcolonialism, and challenge societal inequities through the
26 process of Co-Creation.
27
28 Funding acknowledgement
29 This chapter was written with support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
30 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska- Curie grant
31 agreement no 749154 (SURGE: Social Sustainability and Urban Regeneration
32 Governance: An International Perspective).
33
34 References
35 Bacqué, M.-H. and Biewener, C. (2013) L’Empowerment: Une Pratique
36 Émancipatrice?, Paris: Éditions La Découverte.
37 Belfiore, E., (2002) ‘Art as a means of alleviating social exclusion: does
38 it really work? A critique of instrumental cultural policies and social
39 impact studies in the UK’, International Journal of Cultural Policy,
40 8(1): 91–106.
41 Bishop, C. (ed) (2006) ‘Participation’, in I. Blazwich (ed) Documents
42 of Contemporary Art, London: Whitechapel Gallery.
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2 Contemporary Classical New Music, blogpost, 11 November 2017,
3 available from https:// tenthousanddaysofgratitude.com/ index.
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5 contemporary-classical-new-music/ [accessed 19 September 2019].
6 Carpenter, J. and Horvath, C. (2018) ‘Co-Creation: addressing urban
7 stigmatization, building inclusive cities’, Paper presented at the Urban
8 Affairs Association Annual Congress, Toronto, 6 April 2018.
9 Carpenter, J., Horvath, C. and Spencer, B. (2021 forthcoming) ‘Co-
10 Creation as an agonistic practice in the favela of Santa Marta, Rio
11 de Janeiro’, Urban Studies.
12 Gray, C. (2007) ‘Commodification and instrumentality in cultural
13 policy’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 13(2): 203–15.
14 Gubrium, A., Hill, H. and Flicker, S. (2014) ‘A situated practice of
15 ethics for visual and digital methods in public health research and
16 practice: a focus on digital storytelling’, American Journal of Public
17 Health, 104(9): 1606–14.
18 Haviland, M. (2017) Side by Side? Community Art and the Challenge of
19 Co-Creativity, Abingdon: Routledge.
20 Instruments of Change (nd) About Us, available at http:// www.
21 instrumentsofchange.org/index.html, [accessed 18 September 2019].
22 Marcuse, J. and Marcuse, R. (2011) ‘Art for Social Change: a call for
23 partnership’, in C. McLean and R. Kelly (eds) Creative Arts in Research
24 for Community and Cultural Change, Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd.
25 Matarasso, F. (2019) A Restless Art: How Participation Won, and Why
26 It Matters, London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, UK Branch.
27 Pahl, K., Escott, H., Graham, H., Marwood, K., Pool, S. and Ravetz, A.
28 (2017) ‘What is the role of the artists in interdisciplinary collaborative
29 projects with universities and communities?’ in K. Facer and K. Pahl
30 (eds) Valuing Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research, Bristol: Policy Press.
31 Yassi, A., Spiegel, J.B., Lockhart, K., Fels, L., Boydell, K. and
32 Marcuse, J. (2016) ‘Ethics in community-university-artist partnered
33 research: tensions, contradictions and gaps identified in an “Arts for
34 social change” project’, Journal of Academic Ethics, 14(3): 199–220.
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
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page 189
1 12
2
3
4
5
Co-Creation and social
6 transformation: a tough issue
7
8
for research
9
10 Jim Segers
11
12
13
14
15
Introduction
16 This chapter discusses the role of research institutions and researchers
17 in social transformation in an urban context. From the perspective of
18 City Mine(d), an initiator of social change processes, it looks at the
19 ambitions of academic research methodologies like Co-Creation to
20 generate knowledge together with communities and stakeholders.
21 The first section outlines the argument. Section two describes the
22 evolution many citizen and community organisations have made from
23 protest to proposal. The third section focuses on a practical approach
24 to social transformation inspired by the work of Vermaak (2012) and
25 Orlikowski (1996). Section four is dedicated to the specific tactics for
26 social change developed by City Mine(d). The last section deals with
27 the, at times, ambiguous role of research institutions and researchers, as
28 observer-scientist versus agent-activist, or as producers of knowledge
29 versus initiators of change, in social transformation. A conclusion
30 revisits the main ideas of this chapter.
31
32
33
The argument
34 In September 2019, the department of Political Sciences of UNAM
35 (National Autonomous University of Mexico) organised a Co-Creation
36 seminar in Mexico City. During the session titled ‘Citizen participation
37 and socio-political dynamics’, it was argued that grassroots organisations
38 and citizen initiatives are increasingly shifting ‘from protest to proposal’,
39 no longer aiming to block developments, but formulating alternatives,
40 analysing what is at stake and coming up with better ways of meeting
41 needs. The shift from opposing to proposing has brought grassroots
42 organisations closer to more institutional actors like governments,
189
1 businesses and industry, civil society organisations, and also research

2 institutions. This raises an interesting question: are institutionalised or
3 informal partners better positioned to initiate social transformation?
4 The rapprochement of these actors has blurred the traditional
5 boundaries between social transformation and social research. Campbell
6 and Vanderhoven (2016) refer to the public benefit of co-producing
7 research, and this volume describes Co-Creation as a methodology
8 for generating creative outputs and knowledge that are relevant to the
9 local community. While this is welcomed by all involved, one should
10 be careful not to confuse social research as a scientific practice with
11 social transformation. Social transformation in this chapter refers to the
12 practice of bringing about change in issues that cannot be solved in a
13 traditional manner. Following Vermaak (2012), these are referred to
14 here as ‘tough issues’. These issues are multifactor – knowledge we have
15 about them is incomplete or even contradictory and interconnected,
16 multiactor – many stakeholders and agencies are involved, and
17 multiscalar – they often play at local as well as global levels.
18 City Mine(d) tends to involve five groups of stakeholders.
19 They are: the government; businesses; civil society (NGOs, non-
20 governmental organisations, that have a relationship with the state);
21 citizens and grassroots organisations; and research institutions. None
22 of these stakeholders has the legitimacy to start a process dealing
23 with tough issues, as each one can be considered suspect by all
24 others: government for consolidating power, business for the profit
25 motive, civil society as an extension of the status quo, and citizens for
26 being occupied only by expressing grievances.
27 Researchers and research institutions are not considered
28 independent either. On the one hand, a research agenda is deeply
29 embedded in an institutional framework that comes with framing and
30 with an agenda different from the (tough) issue in question. More
31 importantly, academia has a status and adhered power that distorts
32 horizontal or egalitarian decision making. In response to this, and
33 referring to the work of Simmel (1950), City Mine(d) defends a
34 position of ‘third actor’, or in Simmel’s words ‘tertius gaudens’. While
35 Simmel limits himself to three-actor relationships, the broker roles he
36 describes can also be identified in larger networks: the ‘mediator’ is an
37 equal to or stands above the others; ‘divide and rule’ is someone who
38 creates conflict to gain a dominant position; the ‘tertius gaudens’ on
39 the other hand acts as a gateway between different actors and derives
40 resources (or in case of City Mine(d) stakeholder commitment) from
41 occupying this pivotal position. City Mine(d) proposes to produce
42 a creative answer to a small part of the ‘tough issue’ at hand. In
190
page 191 Co-Creation and social transformation
1 doing so, it is considered insignificant but also not a threat by the

2 stakeholders. The organisation has no resources to contribute, yet
3 can be considered a potential ally by every other stakeholder. Because
4 it is powerless, it is considered harmless. In addition, City Mine(d)
5 often refrains from promoting a brand image and for each tough
6 issue creates a new identity.
7 In the light of these remarks about power hierarchies within
8 collaborative projects, the following section will illustrate the shift
9 from protest to proposal as it was experienced in the course of a
10 project in Barcelona initiated by City Mine(d). The chapter will then
11 attempt to set out a perspective on social transformation through the
12 lens of tough issues. Next, the approach of prototyping and its tactic
13 of tertius gaudens will be described, and finally some thoughts will be
14 expressed about the relationship between initiatives like City Mine(d)
15 and research and academia in general, and with a methodology like
16 Co-Creation in particular.
17
18
From protest to proposal
19
20 City Mine(d) es proposa recuperar aquest espai com una cuina
21 urbana emergent oberta a tot tipus d’iniciatives que retornin l’espai
22 públic als habitants de la ciutat.
23
24 City Mine(d) intends to recover this space as an urban
25 kitchen emerging open to all kinds of initiatives to return
26 the public space to the inhabitants of the city.
27 (Quaderns de architectura i urbanisme 2006, author’s
28 translation)
29
30 City Mine(d) is a design practice that was set up in Brussels in
31 1997. Over the years it has assumed many guises, from ‘production
32 house for art interventions in public space’ via ‘economic
33 development agency’ to ‘neighbourhood activists in some twenty
34 neighbourhoods throughout Europe’ (City Mine(d), 2016). Yet,
35 there are two recurrent themes: on the one hand there is ‘the
36 making of things’: creation of artefacts that serve their own ends,
37 while also serving as an opportunity to bring disparate – at times
38 even adversarial – parties together. On the other hand, a second,
39 connected, theme has to do with the just and cohesive city. While
40 not well placed to directly increase the socioeconomic well-being
41 or political emancipation of citizens, City Mine(d) does aim to
42 improve the lives of people. Inspired by the work of Nussbaum
191
1 (1999), among others, City Mine(d) has become convinced of the

2 view expressed by Nussbaum that ‘choice matters. You might have
3 the opportunity to eat a nutritious diet, though you might choose
4 to eat a lousy diet. What matters is the opportunity’ (quoted in
5 Adams, 2017).
6 This ‘equal worth of persons as choosers’ (Nussbaum, 1999: 57) –
7 which asks, ‘what are the individuals of the group or country able
8 to do and be’ (1999: 34) –seems dialectically opposed to the need
9 for communities to self-organise in order to overcome barriers to
10 development (see Ostrom, 1990). However, it is precisely this tension
11 between individual liberty and ‘the collective power needed to reshape
12 the processes of urbanisation’ (Harvey 2008: 23) that fuels the work of
13 City Mine(d). And not just City Mine(d). Research methodologies
14 such as Co-Creation, which aim to combine artistic expression (often
15 a very individualistic endeavour) with community interests, will at
16 some point unavoidably have to deal with it.
17 As with other similar practices that emerged in the late 1990s, City
18 Mine(d) has a background in environmental, peace and movements in
19 support of the Global South, with roots in direct action. Many of these
20 groups were informed by the 1960s civil rights movements and the anti-
21 nuclear movement of the 1980s, with practices that used non-violent
22 strategies like sit-ins, occupations of buildings or mass demonstrations.
23 More interestingly, these practices used governance principles that are
24 still relevant: horizontal decisionmaking, anti-authoritarianism and
25 self-organisation. Even a research methodology like Co-Creation can
26 aspire to these principles. This chapter will deal with the extent to
27 which this is possible from within academia later.
28 From its inception, City Mine(d) focused on the city as its locus
29 operandi as well as subject of its work. The reasons for action were
30 struggles of social justice manifest through a lack of green and
31 public space, loss of affordable housing, gender imbalance, urban
32 transport and mobility. In more general terms it resisted the top-
33 down development of cities in which planning was left to engineers,
34 who organise space and other resources in the most efficient way.
35 According to Healey (1997: 5), the planning system was designed
36 assuming:
37
38 … that the state could “take charge” and “control” spatial
39 organisation and the location of development. … Whereas
40 the economic planning tradition has been dominated by
41 economists and political philosophers, the arena of physical
42 development planning was shaped for many years by
192
1 engineers and architects, and by utopian images of what

2 cities could be like. (Healey, 1997)
3
4 However, the regeneration of post-industrial areas required financial
5 resources no longer available to public authorities. In light of the
6 macroeconomic difficulties of the 1970s and 1980s, governments cut
7 back expenditure programmes and relied more heavily on private
8 initiatives. Moulaert (2005) in Singocom, concluded:
9
10 The current policy shifts occurring, at all government scales,
11 towards narrowly defined economic and efficiency criteria,
12 a reliance on real estate development for urban regeneration,
13 the privatisation or externalisation of service provision, a
14 re-conquest of public spaces by either private businesses
15 or technocratic local governments are increasingly pushing
16 civil society “change agents” out of the social scene.
17 (Moulaert, 2005)
18
19 In the introduction to City Mine(d)’s ‘Bruxel’ Conference, Swyngedouw
20 (2003) warned that the consequences of market-led urban development
21 would be ‘mechanisms of exclusion, social polarisation and diminishing
22 citizenship’. A decade later, European cities are still, unsuccessfully,
23 trying to reconcile claims of social justice and redistribution with
24 dependence on market and private investment.
25 A shift can now be noticed in the relationship between the powers-
26 that-be and those, like City Mine(d), who try to change cities for
27 the better. Here there is a distinction between ‘tactic’ and ‘strategy’.
28 This chapter uses ‘tactic’ in the sense defined by Michel de Certeau
29 in L’Invention du Quotidien (1980), as opposed to ‘strategy’. ‘Strategy’
30 is the realm of the powerful, who plan cities and are able to impose
31 a vision, while in de Certeau’s reading, ‘tactic’ is an adaptation of the
32 powerless to the context provided by the strategy of the powerful. He
33 refers to it both as ‘résistance’ and as ‘bricolage’. It is precisely between
34 these two terms that the shift is taking place: where the urban struggles
35 mentioned previously were initially mainly forms of resistance against
36 development, the author agrees with the participants of the UNAM
37 seminar that practitioners are trying to change developments by
38 proposing alternatives. In this sense bricolage, in its meaning of ‘do-it-
39 yourself ’, describes a non-professional, do-it-yourself way of urban
40 planning and policy making. This happens in regeneration schemes, but
41 also in urban governance and even the management of urban natural
42 resources. This chapter will illustrate the shift from résistance to bricolage
193
1 with a process City Mine(d) initiated in Barcelona in 2004, and which

2 itself moved from opposing the development plan of the metropolitan
3 government to bricoler a veritable alternative for a specific site.
4 In the year 2000, Barcelona’s metropolitan government accepted
5 the 22@ plan, an urban regeneration scheme aimed at transforming
6 the industrial area of Poblenou into the technology and innovation
7 neighbourhood of the city, while at the same time increasing space
8 for housing and leisure. French architect Jean Nouvel was asked to
9 transform a five-hectare piece of land into a ‘Central Park’. Right
10 after the scheme was adopted, the metropolitan government started
11 expropriating houses on site, with the last ones demolished in 2003.
12 A year later the site was still vacant. Users of the factory building
13 and local residents took matters into their own hands and started to
14 build their own park. Initially, the factory walls were painted. Then,
15 on 29 May 2004, action ‘ParcCentralPark’ followed. About 40 local
16 residents – users of the Can Ricart centre and sympathisers, armed with
17 brooms and spades – started cleaning up the site. Its strategic importance
18 manifested itself immediately in a peculiar way: in no time about one
19 hundred members of the Spanish riot police in full gear removed the
20 cleaners from the site. Once cleared, the site was surrounded and
21 secured by the Guardia Civil as a forbidden zone. When the ‘active’
22 citizens focused their attention and spades on an adjacent plot barely a
23 thousand square metres large, that also was stopped manu militari. The
24 siesta respected by Guardia Civil as well as Spanish citizens brought
25 the stalemate to an end.
26 The public demonstration meant that local grievances reached the
27 metropolitan government as well as Nouvel’s practice. Residents’
28 associations were consulted, a local artist’s work was integrated into
29 the design of the park, and a historic chimney on site was kept and
30 restored as a reminder of the neighbourhood’s glorious past. The
31 decision-making process about the full five hectares, however, remained
32 off limits for residents.
33 Meanwhile, the old factory complex still housed about 60 small-
34 and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), collectives and arts centres,
35 which together employed 240 people. Among them was Can Font,
36 a space shared among others by City Mine(d). When, in September
37 2004, the metropolitan government informed users of the imminent
38 demolition of the complex, the platform ‘Salvem Can Ricart’ (Save
39 Can Ricart) was founded, Can Ricart being the name of the site that
40 holds several factory buildings, among them Can Font. It initiated
41 campaigns such as ‘Made in Can Ricart’ to promote products made
42 on site. By April 2005, the platform developed a dossier in defence
194
1 of the site: ‘Can Ricart – Parc Central Nou Projecte’ (Universidad

2 de Barcelona, 2005). In this dossier, the site’s heritage value was
3 emphasised – one of the last three remaining 19th century industrial
4 complexes in Barcelona, its urbanistic importance was explained – a
5 publicly accessible site on which industry and experiment co-existed,
6 and a critique of the 22@ scheme was articulated – the plan interpreted
7 innovation too narrowly, leaving only room for technology. More
8 importantly, the dossier contained an alternative proposal made by
9 the citizen platform that combined existing qualities with ambitions
10 from within 22@. In January 2006, the metropolitan government
11 decided to preserve half of the industrial complex and to adjust the
12 plans according to users’ needs.
13
14
15
Tough issues
16 One learns about tough issues by addressing them, not
17 by thinking about them beforehand. The latter leads to a
18 ‘paralysis by analysis,’ where people cannot take action until
19 they have more information, but they cannot get good
20 information until someone takes action. Thus, a process
21 of ‘small wins’ makes more sense: micro-level changes
22 that actors enact as they make sense of and act in the
23 world.(Wanda Orlikowski (1996), as quoted in Vermaak
24 (2012: 226))
25
26 The earlier mentioned lack of green and public space, loss of affordable
27 housing, gender imbalance, decolonisation, urban transport and
28 mobility are instances of ‘tough issues’ (Vermaak, 2012) or ‘wicked
29 problems’ (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Policy issues grouped under
30 this label are deemed ‘tough’ because they are complex in their
31 subject matter (multifactor), in order to be addressed they need the
32 collaboration of many stakeholders (multiactor) and they touch upon
33 different levels of policy and decisionmaking (multiscalar). Rittel and
34 Webber (1973) juxtapose ‘wicked problems’ with ‘tame problems’,
35 like playing chess or solving a puzzle. The latter have a clear solution
36 and an endpoint, whereas wicked problems lack a clear formulation of
37 the problem, have no right or wrong solution and each one is unique
38 (see also Conklin, 2006). This also means that ‘tough issues’ escape
39 the prevailing logic that all issues can be solved by algorithms. They
40 show us the edges of today’s dominant notion that all problems can
41 be reduced to a mathematical formula which, with the right input of
42 data, then solves itself.
195
1 The problem of urban transport and mobility provides an interesting

2 example of a tough issue. In a study on Munich and Birmingham,
3 Hendriks (1994) identified three cultural positions towards the
4 dilemma of more roads versus fewer cars. There are those who
5 value individual freedom most and who put their trust upon the
6 environment recovering; a second group counts on keeping matters
7 orderly with a structured framework, and relies on determining the
8 boundaries of environmental resilience and taking action before
9 chaos erupts; and a third group values equal access, sustainability
10 and liveability, and for them the environment is always on the edge
11 of collapse. Within a single city, these three visions compete for
12 power to shape the built environment and to decide and implement
13 regulation. Often, this takes place within a system of governance in
14 which the municipal vies for the final word with regional, national
15 and even transnational institutions, in addition to government and
16 private sector interests. As such, urban transport and mobility is a
17 clear example of a ‘tough issue’. There is only one physical space,
18 and the visions are incompatible.
19 In City Mine(d)’s approach to social transformation, ‘tough issues’
20 form the subject and cause of collaboration. Urban populations and
21 their governments are confronted with a plethora of ‘tough issues’ and
22 deal with them with a limited degree of success. Rittel and Webber’s
23 (1973: 156) remark, ‘Now that the relatively easy problems have been
24 dealt with, we have been turning our attention to others that are much
25 more stubborn’, is true when it comes to stubbornness. Solutions to
26 ‘tough issues’ are still outsourced away from democracy to experts,
27 taskforces or think tanks, excluding citizens from the thought process
28 and making citizens reluctant to accept, let alone adopt, the remedy
29 (Vermaak 2012). ‘Tough issues’ demand an approach in which all
30 who have a stake – for once, the jargon is spot on in calling them
31 ‘stakeholders’ – take part in understanding the problem and designing
32 a solution. As Orlikowski (1996) suggests, it takes an agent to take a
33 first step in order to gain information to move on to the next step.
34 This practical way of working is what inspired City Mine(d) in an
35 approach it now refers to as ‘prototyping’.
36
37
38
The prototyping third
39 Often the relation between the parties and the non-
40 partisan emerges as a new relationship: elements that have
41 never before formed an interactional unit may come into
42 conflict; a third non-partisan element, which before was
196
1 equally unconnected with either, may spontaneously seize

2 upon the chances that this quarrel gives him; and thus an
3 entirely unstable interaction may result which can have an
4 animation and wealth of forms, for each of the elements
5 engaged in it, which are out of all proportion to its brief
6 life. (Simmel, 1950: 154)
7
8 The prototyping approach was inspired by Suchmann et al (2002): ‘…
9 the prototype, an exploratory technology designed to effect alignment
10 between the multiple interests and working practices of technology
11 research and development, and sites of technology-in-use’.
12 The exploratory character of prototyping is important, as it goes
13 beyond the comfort zone of engineers and specialists. It goes into
14 uncharted territory, where it touches upon different interests. Yet,
15 it is more ambitious than community arts projects, as it aspires to
16 be relevant within its tough issue, and function at the same time.
17 It is a working model, rather than an expression of (community or
18 individual) sentiments or grievances. In addition, it avoids the issue
19 of ‘instrumentalisation of art’ which, according to some critics, leads
20 to a lower form of artistic expression.
21 In their article ‘The role of the Tertius as initiator of urban
22 collective action’, exploring the role of City Mine(d), Moyersoen and
23 Swyngedouw (2005: 309) write:
24
25 Initially, the initiators, … had no reputation, no financial
26 means and very limited power to start, let alone impose, an
27 urban renewal process. … [They] adopt the role of Tertius
28 (Simmel, 1955). The ‘tertius’ role is the intermediary role
29 between groups in situations of friction resulting from open
30 competition and/or from a state of non-communication
31 between rival groups. From this perspective, the core-
32 group exploited the ‘vacant’ institutional and socio-political
33 space between the diverse and non-communicating local
34 community. (Moyersoen and Swngedouw, 2005; see also
35 the previous quote by Simmel, 1955.)
36
37 The question for research methods like Co-Creation becomes: to
38 what extent is a research institution a third, non-partisan element? Is
39 scientific research an end in itself, and would, therefore, a community
40 feel instrumentalised by contributing to research; or can the research
41 truly coincide with the needs and aspirations of a community, even if
42 it has to abide by the laws of academia?
197
1 While the development of a prototype serves a purpose in itself,

2 namely that of technological exploration and innovation, it also
3 serves a secondary purpose, namely that of providing the different
4 stakeholders in a tough issue with the opportunity to come together
5 in a non-rival context. Suchmann et al (2002) refer to it as ‘alignment’,
6 City Mine(d) calls it the ‘creation of a coalition’. The coalition’s main
7 reason for being is to build the best possible prototype, but, while
8 working on it, different stakeholders meet in an informal context and
9 have the opportunity to get to know each other’s perspective on the
10 tough issue. As already mentioned, the knowledge about tough issues
11 is always incomplete, contradictory and interconnected, so it makes a
12 lot of sense hearing other stakeholders’ perspectives.
13 City Mine(d) tends to look for five groups of stakeholders. The
14 starting point is citizens and communities, often at the scale of a
15 small neighbourhood. It distinguishes citizens from civil society in a
16 Gramscian way, in the sense that civil society (in its meaning of non-
17 governmental organisations and institutions that manifest interests and
18 will of citizens) has an intimate relationship with the state. As Gramsci
19 notes (1971: 263): ‘The general notion of State includes elements … of
20 civil society (in the sense that one might say that State = political society
21 + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of
22 coercion).’ The government in itself, at the different levels on which
23 the tough issue is at play, is obviously also a stakeholder. The shift from
24 government to governance, aptly described by Swyngedouw (2004),
25 makes the relevant business actors indispensable in a coalition. The fifth
26 actor is research institutions. They are invited for their contribution of
27 basic as well as applied research, but also from the notion that research
28 influences policy. In that sense it is an indirect way to shape society.
29 Yet, their role is not entirely unproblematic. Whereas government
30 and industry are aware of being ‘hegemonic actors’, research and civil
31 society institutions are often less so. The next example will explore
32 this further.
33 A coalition on electricity that is developing at the time of writing
34 can provide an insight into the first stages of this process. An article
35 published in The Guardian in December 2016 (Magnin, 2016) quotes
36 a study showing that by 2050 half of the European population could
37 be producing their own electricity, ‘either at home, as part of a
38 cooperative, or in their small business.’ The electricity sector is on the
39 verge of a major shift. Factors such as increasing electrification, growing
40 awareness of the environmental impact of energy consumption and a
41 retreat of the state that makes the sector predominantly profit-driven
42 are bringing about a transformation comparable only to the creation
198
1 of the national grid a century ago. In this shift, City Mine(d) sees
2 an opportunity to approach the mountain of climate change from a
3 less steep flank. In other words, climate change increasingly pitches
4 believers against non-believers, to the point where the subject becomes
5 so vast that it ends up being incapacitating. Yet, within this broad field
6 of a sustainable environment, City Mine(d) is looking for opportunities,
7 rather than engaging with the threats, the opportunity here being the
8 shifting electricity landscape that provides a chance to tilt the playing
9 field in favour of citizens and cooperatives. The location is Brussels’
10 Quartier Midi, one of Europe’s most densely populated areas and with
11 a notoriously stubborn deprivation index (including energy poverty).
12 From May 2018, experts from industry, research, media, government
13 and civil society were interviewed about their perspective on the
14 changing sector. After the interviews, the interviewees were brought
15 together in a meeting in the Quartier Midi. To take out the differences
16 in status or posture, participants agreed to a first-name basis meeting.
17 Meanwhile, a local group had been formed, and a name had been
18 chosen for the project: ‘La Pile’ (The Battery). Thirty-five stories
19 of local residents of the Quartier Midi and their relationship with
20 electricity were collected and contributed to an overall perspective
21 on the sector. Next, the vast amount of information gathered from
22 interviews, meetings and collected stories was made digestible in
23 three ways. One was a roadmap, entitled ‘How to face up to the cost
24 of electricity’, with tips and tricks and useful contacts. The second
25 way was an exhibition that aimed to inspire the general public, but
26 particularly those involved in the prototyping stage in Brussels’ Quartier
27 Midi. The La Pile Expo was launched in Brussels’ prestigious arts
28 centre Bozar before it moved to the Quartier Midi and then travelled
29 across Belgium and abroad. The third way of sharing information was
30 a board game called ‘Exploration Game’. Playing the game gives players
31 an opportunity to familiarise themselves with what local electricity
32 production involves (and its limits), yet at the same time through
33 roleplaying to gain a better understanding of the interests different
34 stakeholders have to take on board.
35
36
37
The truth is out there
38 ¿Qué es la razón? La razón es aquello en que estamos todos
39 de acuerdo, todos o por lo menos la mayoría. La verdad es otra
40 cosa, la razón es social; la verdad, de ordinario, es completamente
41 individual, personal e incomunicable. La razón nos une y las
42 verdades nos separan.
199
1 What is Reason? Reason is what we all agree upon, all or at

2 least the majority. Truth is something else, Reason is social;
3 Truth, ordinarily, is completely individual, personal and
4 incommunicable. Reason unites us and Truths separate us.
5 (Miguel de Unamuno, 1927: 9; author’s translation)
6
7 One of those interviewed as part of La Pile was Ilse Tant, chief officer
8 of community operations at Elia, Belgium’s electricity transmission
9 operator. Her role is to mediate between the company responsible for
10 installing high voltage cables across the country, and communities that
11 have to live with the cables. In her view, the difficulty is to convince
12 engineers from her company that they have only part of the picture,
13 and that local communities also hold an important part of the truth.
14 Her experience sounds true for many experts. The curse of knowledge,
15 a term coined by Camerer, Loewenstein and Weber (1989), is easily
16 described as the inability to unknow what we know. This is problematic
17 in a coalition, as the asymmetry of information puts members of the
18 research community always at an advantage. They have access to the
19 latest information and it takes a very conscious researcher to overcome
20 this bias. Gladwin (1989: 13) provides us with an interesting thought
21 on social sciences in particular:
22
23 [Like other] models in the social sciences, [decision tree
24 models] are simplified pictures of a part of the real world,
25 like model trains. They are simpler than the phenomena
26 they are supposed to explain or represent, just as a model
27 train has some characteristics of a real train but not all (e.g.,
28 its size). (Gladwin, 1989: 13)
29
30 The main concern is, however, a political one. As mentioned before,
31 research institutions are hegemonic actors, which excludes them from
32 roles like community actors or grassroots activists. Illich (1971: 26)
33 warns us that universities ‘have a monopoly of both the resources
34 for learning and the investiture of social roles. [They] co-opt the
35 discoverer and the potential dissenter’. This is important not only for
36 the stakeholders City Mine(d) brings together in a coalition, but also
37 for research methodologies like Co-Creation. Research institutions can
38 be key actors and stakeholders in a social transformation process, but
39 it is very hard for them to be the initiator. The question of whether
40 researchers can dissociate themselves from the research institution, to
41 what extent, and what new role in addition to citizen that would confer
42 on them, remains to be dealt with, preferably by researchers themselves.
200
1 Yet, Co-Creation can become a valuable tool for studying social

2 change in a more inclusive way. In an interview on the topic of Co-
3 Creation in science, Xavier Hulhoven, scientific adviser to the Brussels
4 Regional Institute for Scientific Innovation Innoviris, talked about
5 two participatory schools within scientific research: there is, on the
6 one hand, participatory action research, which is very much toolkit-
7 and methodology-oriented; and on the other hand there is a school
8 of Co-Creation:
9
10 “… more based on principles, which tell a story of a
11 community, of how people are taken into account, and how
12 the freedom to experiment and to take risks is guaranteed.
13 And to make sure the values of scientific research are
14 respected, be they a slow pace (‘la lenteur’), reflection,
15 nuance, possibility to experiment and consequently to fail,
16 contradiction.” (Hulhoven and Vangeebergen, 2019)
17
18 He admits that these values are meaningful beyond the realm of
19 scientific research. His colleague, Thomas Vangeebergen, adds values
20 such as questioning (‘remise en question’), doubt, even creating some
21 discomfort or confusion which conjures up a series of questions.
22
23 “This is politically important. For everyone’s comfort, we
24 are forced to eliminate all forms of risk, we need to eliminate
25 all uncertainties, we need to eliminate questioning. [Co-
26 creation] is not about win-win alliances, in which each
27 can find his or her thing; it is rather about embarking on a
28 journey of shared exploration with all the risk-taking that
29 entails.” (Hulhoven and Vangeebergen, 2019)
30
31 Clearly, these are the values that inspire both the Co- Creation
32 methodology described in this volume, as well as City Mine(d).
33 Loftus (2003: 39), describing the work of City Mine(d), wrote:
34
35 … to use the now hackneyed aphorism of Antonio Gramsci,
36 the projects show a true optimism of the will in the face
37 of a pessimism of the intellect. As several authors have
38 suggested however, it is conceptually lazy to fall back on
39 Gramsci’s maxim without also changing our own praxis
40 (see Harvey 2000). What is needed is a renewed optimism
41 of the intellect, or better still a renewed synergy between
42 theory and practice. (Loftus, 2003: 39)
201
1
Conclusion
2
3 This chapter builds on the observation that many grassroots and citizen
4 initiatives are shifting away from blocking developments towards
5 proposing alternatives. It borrows from the vocabulary of Michel de
6 Certeau (1980) to describe a shift from ‘résistance’ to ‘bricolage’. The
7 Barcelona case study illustrates how this shift can occur within a
8 project of merely five years. The chapter also considers an important
9 tension between the individualistic capabilities approach as described
10 by Nussbaum (1999) and the need for collective action which emerges
11 from the work of Ostrom (1990). This seeming contradiction can
12 often be found at the core of social transformation. In issues of climate
13 change, urban transport and mobility or economic redistribution, the
14 individual needs and entitlements often collide with a collective and
15 long-term view.
16 This chapter has drawn on a reading of social transformation
17 that is based on the notion of ‘tough issues’. Defined by Vermaak
18 (2012) as multifactor, multiactor and multiscalar, ‘tough issues’ are a
19 performative way of stating the challenges society is faced with. The
20 issue can be unpacked in smaller, more practical challenges, and small
21 wins allow for progress even in over-complex matters such as climate
22 change. Informed by the notion of ‘tough issues’, City Mine(d) has
23 developed a tactic for social transformation it refers to as ‘prototyping’.
24 ‘Prototyping’ is what gives City Mine(d) its role of third actor (Simmel,
25 1950). Prototyping brings together a group of five stakeholders, which
26 are (in addition to citizens) civil society organisations, business actors,
27 governments and research institutions. The latter, particularly, have
28 an ambiguous relationship with social transformation. The chapter
29 identifies two reasons: on the one hand they suffer from the curse of
30 knowledge, yet on the other, they are also, willingly or not, imbued
31 with power. This makes it harder for them to initiate processes of social
32 transformation. Yet the chapter concludes by noticing that initiatives
33 like City Mine(d) and research methodologies like Co-Creation
34 have many values in common: a slow pace, reflection, nuance, the
35 possibility to experiment and consequently to fail, contradiction. To
36 name but a few.
37 City Mine(d) emphasises its role as ‘tertius gaudens’ because this is a
38 position none of the five other stakeholders can achieve. Urban lives
39 are very much shaped by structures that impose power and a form of
40 coercion upon citizens. These are not solely the state or market-related
41 actors. As a matter of fact, the distinction between the five stakeholders
42 comes from the fact that each of them has a different degree of power,
202
1 while at the same time has to live with a different set of constraints.
2 The five are chosen because they cover a very wide spectrum of power
3 that shape cities. Compared to these five actors, City Mine(d) – in that
4 sense also any arts organisations – wields no power, but at the same
5 time suffers little constraints.
6 The perspective of ‘tough issues’ can prove valuable to all sorts of
7 actors aspiring for social transformation. As mentioned before, it
8 makes the challenges communities and even societies are faced with
9 more practical and allows for progress in the right direction without
10 actually solving the issue immediately. In research methodologies like
11 Co-Creation, ‘tough issues’ can prove a meaningful way to identify
12 the overlap between the research agenda and community concerns.
13 The prototyping approach City Mine(d) proposes is but one way of
14 making small wins and progressing towards dealing with the true issue.
15 Others, including research or arts-related approaches, could prove at
16 least as valuable.
17
18 References
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1 13
2
3
4
5
We Can Make: Co-Creating
6 knowledge and products with
7
8
local communities
9
10 Martha King, Melissa Mean and Roz Stewart-Hall
11
12
13
14
15
Introduction
16 This chapter explores the role that Co-Creation plays in the work
17 happening at Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC), Bristol, UK,
18 through the lens of two case study projects: The Bristol Approach,
19 which is about addressing digital exclusion and tackling inequalities,
20 and We Can Make, which is about Co-Creating new approaches to
21 housing. Both projects help to demonstrate how KWMC has been
22 working, since 1996, in ways that start with people and bring together
23 arts, artists, other expertise, digital tools and data to explore and
24 address people’s concerns and priorities through Co-Created creative
25 interventions.
26 For KWMC, Co-Creation is understood to be: ‘… a cooperative
27 process whereby people with common interests, often with diverse
28 skills and experiences, work together non-hierarchically towards a
29 change they want to bring about’ (KWMC, nd). A key aspect that
30 allows this ‘non-hierarchical’ practice to function is the collaborative
31 definition of an overarching common goal around which people from
32 different backgrounds (both in terms of socioeconomics, cultures and
33 disciplinary specialisms) can cluster and focus energy. At the start of
34 every project, it is essential to give time to defining and Co-Creating
35 a shared mission of change. With a clear headline intent, participants
36 can then voluntarily contribute as little or as much as is appropriate
37 and could be involved in only one small aspect, knowing that their
38 participation is still moving towards the overall mission. To enable this
39 process to work everyone has to have a willingness to contribute to the
40 overall shared goal as well as the agency to participate and contribute in
41 different ways. Facilitators of Co-Creation play a key role in ensuring
42 a process of ‘non-hierarchical’ Co-Creation is possible. Rather than
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1 denying different knowledge and expertise, KWMC facilitators apply

2 processes where all skills are valued and acknowledged, ground rules
3 are established early on, and in turn safe spaces that flatten hierarchical
4 power dynamics are created. Artists are often employed as facilitators
5 using tactics such as ‘play’ to cross boundaries, remove fear and create
6 spaces where change on both a community and individual level can
7 happen.
8 It can be argued that the transformative potential of engagement in
9 the arts has sometimes led to an unhelpful set of assumptions about
10 who or what it is that is in need of transformation. François Matarasso
11 has written about this, clearly articulating some of the issues there are
12 with pervasive notions of ‘impact’:
13
14 In this thinking, the social art project is conceived as
15 an experience whose ‘impact’ changes those who take
16 part. And in this context, ‘change’ means ‘improve’, in
17 terms of the problem-solving mission identified, more
18 or less cooperatively, by the artist and the commissioner.
19 (Matarasso, 2015: 5)
20
21 Matarasso uncovers a set of problematic assumptions, which underpin
22 this way of thinking, that some people are ‘in need of improvement’.
23 At KWMC, there is no such assumption about who or what is in need
24 of improvement. Instead, a process of Co-Creation is used to identify
25 the broad and diverse changes that need to take place in order to make
26 radical, long-term positive differences.
27 Co-Creation, in practice, demands a recognition that change may need
28 to happen in many places, spaces and people, including within the
29 organisations or for the individuals involved in a process (such as at a
30 gallery or for a researcher), or at organisations and with individuals that
31 are not directly involved (such as councils or policy makers). The sites
32 for change are only identifiable through the Co-Creation process and
33 reflection on the exchange and learning that takes place through such
34 a process. In such a context, the notion of ‘impact’ is usefully unsettled
35 in terms of who has impact upon whom, and it is less predictable than
36 the everyday use of the term often implies.
37 This chapter will explore some of the challenges, possibilities and
38 limitations of Co-Creation, suggesting that positive social change can
39 be enabled by Co-Creation processes that:
40
41 • start with people and their interests;
42 • work towards a shared goal;
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page 209 Co-Creating with local communities
1 • use creative approaches and arts practice to work across disciplines

2 and power structures;
3 • create space for reimagining;
4 • democratise and demystify the tools and means of production.
5
6 The authors will discuss some of the challenges around incentivising
7 and enabling people from different socioeconomic backgrounds and
8 positions of power to participate in Co-Creation projects. They will
9 also demonstrate how artists and arts-led creative approaches can allow
10 diverse contributions towards common Co-Creation goals. Before
11 doing so through two case study examples the next section provides
12 some context about Knowle West and KWMC.
13
14
15
Knowle West Media Centre
16 KWMC is an arts organisation and charity based in Knowle West,
17 south Bristol, an area of approximately 5,500 households that
18 roughly corresponds to the electoral ward of Filwood. It ranks highly
19 in government indices of deprivation, with 35 per cent of people
20 experiencing income deprivation in some parts of the area, which
21 is ranked in the most deprived 1% of areas in England (Bristol City
22 Council, 2019).
23 KWMC offers a wide range of activities for people of all ages,
24 including skills training and employment opportunities for young
25 people, a programme of regular talks and exhibitions, and creative
26 projects working with local residents to explore issues ranging from
27 health to housing. As the Bristol Living Lab (part of the European
28 Network of Living Labs), KWMC brings together people from
29 different backgrounds to explore and test creative solutions to the
30 challenges that affect them in a ‘real world’ setting.
31 KWMC also runs The Factory, an award-winning making and
32 training space, based at Filwood Green Business Park. The Factory,
33 established in 2015, provides access to new digital manufacturing
34 technologies (such as CNC routers and 3D printers), offers product
35 design and prototyping services for clients, and delivers a range of free
36 training courses.
37 From its beginnings in a 1996 photography project run by KWMC
38 Director Carolyn Hassan, the organisation and its ethos were forged
39 at a ‘grassroots’ level, with Knowle West residents and young people
40 involved from the outset. KWMC was formally constituted as a charity
41 in 2002 and, in 2007, a group of young people helped to develop
42
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1 designs for an innovative environmental building to house KWMC’s

2 expanding staff team and portfolio of projects.
3 When it opened in 2008, KWMC’s new building was the largest
4 straw-bale construction in the South West. In 2014, on the ten-year
5 anniversary of her involvement with KWMC, one young woman
6 involved in the building project tweeted: ‘It’s a big part of my life and
7 helped carve my future’.
8 KWMC now works across generations and communities in Bristol,
9 as well as with enterprises, universities, local governments and networks
10 across the UK and the world. Knowle West remains at the heart of
11 KWMC’s work and it is committed to being a nationally relevant
12 organisation with a local focus.
13 Through its creative and accessible activities, KWMC hopes to
14 inspire people to make a difference to their lives, communities and
15 environment. A former volunteer described the impact that KWMC
16 has had for her, saying: “It’s a great place to regain your confidence
17 and make you feel like you’ve made a difference”.
18 KWMC was recently cited by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as
19 an example of innovative SEO (Social Economy Organisation) activity
20 and an exemplar for innovation and knowledge sharing. (Vickers et al,
21 2017). Sharing learning from 23 years of Co-Creation, and continuing
22 to evolve and explore what Co-Creation means, is key to KWMC’s
23 practice. For example, the organisation is currently a core member of
24 the national Co-Creating Change network, which is coordinated by
25 Battersea Arts Centre and is working as a partner on a community-
26 led Creative Civic Change arts project led by Filwood Community
27 Centre in Knowle West and funded by Local Trust, National Lottery
28 Community Fund, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the
29 Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
30
31
32
The Bristol Approach
33 The Bristol Approach is a project that highlights a strand of KWMC’s
34 work that is about addressing digital exclusion and tackling inequalities
35 by Co-Creating relevant tools to address contemporary issues. Between
36 2015 and 2018, KWMC worked with Bristol City Council (BCC)
37 and Ideas for Change (a Barcelona-based innovation company) to
38 develop The Bristol Approach to Citizen Sensing, which sought
39 to address the extent to which ‘smart city’ programmes are often
40 developed and driven by the few and do not always take into account
41 the majority of people who live in, work in and collaboratively make
42 the city. Citizen sensing is a democratic approach to the collection,
210
1 analysis and use of sensor data (including and often combining digital
2 and human sensing) that actively involves and engages citizens in all
3 aspects of data sense making.
4 A report by Nesta, a UK innovation foundation, identified things
5 that have held ‘smart cities’ back from delivering real value:
6
7 • not addressing the issues people really care about;
8 • not taking human behaviour as seriously as technology;
9 • a lack of focus on the skills people need to use smart technologies;
10 • a lack of integration with other things going on in cities;
11 • not providing clear roles for people;
12 • not focusing on shared, open resources. (Nesta, 2015)
13
14 These barriers intensify existing challenges of urban disadvantage
15 and social injustice that confront those cities struggling to be socially
16 cohesive in this era of economic uncertainty. To counter this dominant
17 trajectory – and with the belief that all people, whatever their
18 background, should be able to imagine, design and build the future
19 they want to see, for themselves and their city – The Bristol Approach
20 to Citizen Sensing was developed as a framework to enable ‘smart
21 cities’ to be Co-Created.
22 The framework included six steps and was underpinned by
23 a philosophy of the ‘commons’. This is a potentially powerful
24 conceptual and methodological framework to collectively manage,
25 or govern, shared resources, and offers an alternative to privatisation
26 or monopolistic public regulatory control. While there is no single
27 definition or uniform application of the commons, the aim of
28 enabling collective change making, through gathering a wide range
29 of contributions from citizens and different stakeholders, forms a
30 critical part of the approach. The approach is gaining momentum
31 with a growing number of places, from Bologna to Bolivia, adopting
32 it as a practical tool and mind-set to help guide collaborative decision
33 making and structuring participation in how commons resources
34 (everything from natural assets to data) are contributed to and shared
35 among diverse populations.
36 The steps of The Bristol Approach commons inspired framework are:
37
38 • Identification: identifying issues people care about, mapping
39 communities, organisations, businesses and others affected by the
40 issues who might be interested in working towards a solution.
41 • Framing: exploring issues and framing them as shared goals.
42 Identifying if and how technology and data could be utilised,
211
1 uncovering resources that are available and identifying gaps in

2 resources or knowledge.
3 • Design: working with people to Co-Create tools, governance and
4 data infrastructure to tackle issues.
5 • Deployment: taking the tools created into communities to test.
6 • Orchestration: drawing attention to what has been made,
7 encouraging others to use tools created and data collected, and to
8 celebrate what has been Co-Created.
9 • Outcome: assessing if and how goals have been achieved, finding
10 out what has been learned, sharing insights, creating solutions to
11 issues, identifying opportunities and making changes to available
12 infrastructure. (Bristol Approach, 2018)
13
14 The framework aimed to enable relevant citizen-generated data to
15 be collected and used for the common good and for the service of
16 citizens. It was structured to ensure that smart city programmes are
17 driven by issues that are relevant to local needs and take place at a
18 community level, with local people actively involved in designing,
19 testing and evaluating. As with all KWMC’s work, it starts with people
20 who have expertise and/or lived experience regarding the issues facing
21 their communities.
22 Pilot projects, led by KWMC, took place in 2016 to test how
23 the Bristol Approach framework works in real communities, with
24 real issues. The purpose was to learn from this process, to improve
25 the framework as a guide for citizens and cities, and to help inform
26 the design and development of smart city programmes. One of the
27 pilot projects focused on damp in homes. The issue of damp homes
28 was identified as a key area of concern after conducting a broad
29 city-wide analysis of key issues through visiting community activist
30 groups, having conversations with city leaders and subject specialists
31 and employing artists to engage residents in conversations through
32 more creative means. Once damp homes had been identified as an
33 issue that was impacting negatively on many people’s lives, and which
34 citizen sensing could help to tackle, then a broad range of people were
35 invited (via various on- and offline channels) to participate in a series
36 of Co-Creation workshops.
37 Workshops were facilitated by artists and first focused on framing
38 shared goals, moving towards Co-Creating solutions and then on
39 to hands- on making. Artists used creative approaches to enable
40 conversations, which helped dissolve hierarchies and persistently
41 underlined the human aspect of technology. This process opened up
42 new ways of looking at things and brought people together through
212
1 play and making. The starting point for The Bristol Approach is the
2 belief that citizens should have a leading role in imagining, designing
3 and building their future.
4 The initial framing workshops were attended by residents who had
5 damp in their homes, energy experts, housing charities, designers,
6 hackers, artists and community activists. The group decided to call the
7 project ‘Dampbusters’. Once an overarching goal had been agreed,
8 smaller working groups were formed with different leaders. Through
9 creative Co-Creation workshops, people decided to make frog-shaped
10 cases to house damp sensors for measuring temperature and humidity.
11 They also designed an online damp-reporting tool and a community
12 ‘dampbusting’ team of people trained to support their neighbours.
13 These tools were prototyped and tested with residents in east Bristol.
14 Prototype testing was followed up with evaluation and collaborative
15 interpretation sessions with residents. Ensuring that the people collecting
16 the data were also the ones making sense of that data and involved in
17 the decision making around what to do with the data was important.
18 The project nurtured a greater sense of people’s own individual
19 potential to bring about change and supported people to have greater
20 autonomy in understanding and using data as a useful asset for bringing
21 about positive social change:
22
23 “I’ve realised how much power I have to affect change
24 and how much power we have working within a team.”
25 (Workshop participant, The Bristol Approach)
26
27 “It’s a big step to make local people feel like they’ve got the
28 power, explaining data, taking the fear out of that space, and
29 then getting them in an empowered space where they can
30 actually be involved.”(Workshop participant, The Bristol
31 Approach)
32
33 The Bristol Approach enables the creative generation of solutions to
34 issues that are apparent but also, because of its integrated and holistic
35 approach, it ensures that people become familiar with data and how
36 it can be used to tackle issues. People are therefore better equipped to
37 tackle unforeseen issues that they may encounter beyond the project
38 remit. Furthermore, through the collaboration between the human and
39 digital sensing that is necessary in citizen sensing, or environmental data
40 gathering, people often become more attuned to their environments
41 and start using their own bodily senses more to notice changes in their
42 environment.
213
1 Beyond individual agency the project, due to the Co-Creation

2 processes applied, also increased a sense of community and shifted
3 notions of data collection, that are often focused on self-improvement
4 and self-quantification, to be oriented towards a shared goal for the
5 common good. For example, participants commented on how they
6 would happily contribute information about the interior of their
7 homes to collective data sets if it would help their neighbours or others
8 suffering with damp homes.
9 Data sense making was a phase where the range of participants
10 needed to expand once again, to ensure that government officials,
11 charities, policy makers, industry professionals and so on were present
12 alongside residents and community activists to Co-Create solutions
13 around the collected data. Sense making or ‘solutions workshops’
14 demonstrated the potential of Co-Creation projects to inform the
15 development of city services, infrastructure and new models of
16 community action and business development. Partners and experts
17 highlighted the contemporary significance of Co-Creation approaches
18 in a society where the sands are shifting considerably in terms of the
19 resources available. For example, a member of Bristol City Council’s
20 environmental health team explained that they have to use a severity
21 index regarding damp, whereby they have to be sure of the severity
22 of a situation before being able to investigate it:
23
24 “I’m a senior environmental health officer … and am really
25 interested in this project. We can investigate problems with
26 damp and mould growth in privately rented houses and
27 flats, and if it’s severe enough we do have legal powers …
28 In the past, we’d try to help by giving advice and guidance
29 to tenants and landlords but recent cutbacks mean we just
30 don’t have the resources to do this anymore. Therefore your
31 project might go a long way to help plug this gap.” (Senior
32 environmental health officer at Bristol City Council)
33
34 The pilot showed that Co-Creation projects such as this require
35 a wide range of expertise and skills, including: knowledge about
36 neighbourhoods and networks, people and communications skills, data
37 infrastructure and governance, coding, interface and user experience
38 design, product design, behaviour, economics, anthropology,
39 visualisation, sensor hardware, workshop facilitation, documentation
40 and sharing. It was clear that technology was only a small part of
41 citizen sensing work and that a much wider combination of tools and
42 resources are needed to make change. ‘Dampbusters’ illustrated how
214
1 key issues can be identified and then tackled through Co-Creating and
2 working together across disciplines and power structures. Sharing and
3 collaboration are key in this era of increased funding cuts. It is not for
4 councils or others in positions of power to absolve responsibility, but
5 to establish an equality of input through participation as one of the
6 many players needed in the process of Co-Creation.
7 However, the willingness of those in decision-making positions
8 to engage in processes of collaboration and Co-Creation can be a
9 challenging sticking point; often the pressures to make fast decisions
10 and reach large numbers of people on a surface level wins over deeper
11 more sustained localised processes of Co-Creation, which require
12 much more advocacy. Lengthy advocacy work for the value of Co-
13 Creation and the participation in such approaches can end up distracting
14 facilitators from the actual work of Co-Creation. However, finding
15 ways to articulate and demonstrate the value of Co-Creation processes
16 and approaches to working across disciplines and hierarchies is essential
17 in order to achieve the necessary diversity in such processes, as well as
18 ensuring Co-Creation happens beyond silos and can gain the necessary
19 support to sustain projects.
20 KWMC has sought a range of ways to tell the story of successful
21 Co-Creation over 23 years, such as through seizing the value in
22 co-publishing articles, papers and chapters with academics, but also
23 importantly in supporting Co-Creation participants to tell their own
24 story through a range of digital media, often working with artists as
25 well as professional industry mentors to enable this. Balancing the need
26 to articulate the value of Co-Creation practices in order to continue
27 working sustainably, while also needing to be immersed in the practice,
28 can be a challenge.
29
30
31
We Can Make
32 We Can Make is another example of KWMC’s work that successfully
33 engages decision makers, alongside local community members and
34 specialists from other disciplines in processes of Co-Creation, and has
35 done so from its inception.
36 Home is shelter, safety, and stability. Yet, 100 years on from David
37 Lloyd George’s promise of ‘homes fit for heroes’ and the 1919
38 Addison Act, which ushered in Britain’s first mass wave of council
39 homes, people’s ability to access a secure, affordable home is more
40 challenging than ever before. Housing needs spill over into every part
41 of a person’s life, affecting relationships, work, education, physical
42 and mental health; this makes stark the inadequacy of our collective
215
1 response. Conventional strategies to access housing can be understood

2 as reductively competitive, as they either require people to divert more
3 of their wages and savings to get on a property ladder devoid of bottom
4 rungs, or compel people to prove how ‘weak’ and ‘incapable’ they are
5 in order to win eligibility for austerity-rationed social housing. Instead
6 of relying on speculative developers or last resort state provision, we
7 need new ways in which people and communities can meet their own
8 housing needs.
9 We Can Make was born of the frustration expressed by local residents
10 that the housing market and system was not working for them. KWMC
11 set up a Co-Creation ‘test space’, as part of a broader strand of We Can
12 Make activities, to explore whether and how housing could be done
13 differently if the starting point was the needs and knowhow of people
14 and communities. The subsequent process of We Can Make illustrates
15 some of the key elements of Co-Creation practice.
16 Co- Creation requires working across different boundaries and
17 disciplines, the mixing together of ideas and experiences, and using
18 different tools and approaches to explore them. Housing is often
19 treated in a silo, as if it is disconnected from other issues such as health,
20 employment, environment, governance and adult social care. Early
21 on, at one of its first Co-Creation workshops, We Can Make worked
22 to break these silos by hosting an ‘open data jam’, where people from
23 different disciplines, and experiences – from local residents to computer
24 programmers and from artists to engineers – came together to explore a
25 wide range of open data sets that could be shaping people’s experience
26 of housing in Knowle West. Working in small mixed teams meant that
27 people could pool their expertise and identify emergent issues, into
28 which they could ‘deep dive’ together. One team used open data tools
29 to analyse all the planning applications made in Knowle West over
30 a six-year period. They compared the data with Clifton (a wealthy
31 neighbourhood in Bristol) and found that planning applications were
32 twice as likely to be rejected in Knowle West compared with Clifton.
33 By highlighting this issue, the analysis indicated that, if housing prospects
34 in Knowle West were to change, then wider transformations in culture,
35 regulation, and access to resources would need to be Co-Created.
36 KWMC works with the concept of ‘low floor, high ceiling’, whereby
37 people can step into a space or place and contribute quickly, easily and
38 simply, but at the same time there is no limit on how lengthy, complex
39 or sophisticated their contribution might become. KWMC often works
40 with artists as facilitators of Co-Creation processes, as they are often
41 excellent mediators and use tactics of play and hands-on making that
42 effectively release inhibitions and allow people to feel safe and treated
216
1 Figure 13.1: Charlotte Biszewski and her Mobile Wallpaper Making Machine.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Source: Ibi Feher.
20
21 as a ‘whole person’. Artists can also help incentivise participation in
22 Co-Creation processes through more subtle, tangential and dialogic
23 engagement approaches, which are often more effective than traditional
24 invitations to participate in workshops or events.
25 We Can Make deployed this arts-led ‘low floor, high ceiling’ approach
26 from its inception with a six-month residency with artist Charlotte
27 Biszewski (see Figures 13.1 and 13.2). The residency focused on
28 surfacing the experience of housing in Knowle West through a process
29 of door-to-door conversations with people, through which the day-
30 to-day struggle for adequate housing of many individuals and families
31 in Knowle West was manifest. As is articulated in Charlotte’s artist
32 blog on the KWMC website, this involved in-depth and often highly
33 emotive exchanges on people’s doorsteps:
34
35 I wanted to open up questions of home and what makes
36 a home. I wanted to look at objects, what we surround
37 ourselves with, how we adorn the place we live and why
38 we do this. How the physical space inside our homes makes
39 us feel ‘at home’ … .
40 I couldn’t imagine that asking up-front would work. So
41 I built a mobile cyanotype unit using a bike trailer; it was
42 something I could take door to door, asking people to
217
1 Figure 13.2: Charlotte Biszewski with wallpaper cyanotypes.

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 Source: Ibi Feher.
13 bring me an object and take part in making long wallpaper
14 hangings (using a mobile wallpaper making machine). This
15 is how a typical encounter looked:
16
17 Knock, knock.
18 Resident: Yes?
19 Charlotte: Hello, my name is Charlotte, I work at the
20 Media Centre.
21 The door remains ajar, the owner unwilling to open it fully to this
22 stranger, who has just turned up at their house uninvited. There
23 is a silence.
24 Charlotte: Do you know it? Yes? Well I work there, I am an
25 artist. I am creating a large wallpaper hanging.
26 In my trailer here I have wallpaper covered in
27 this photographic formula.
28 I bring out my scraggly piece of tattered blue demonstration
29 wallpaper – it shows the silhouettes of coat hangers and lace
30 curtains, captured in the deep blue of cyanotype. They look at me
31 curiously – untrusting but interested.
32 Resident: I’m sorry we already have wallpaper and we
33 don’t want to buy any more.
34 Charlotte: No, I’m not selling it, I am making it. I am
35 asking residents of Knowle West to bring me
36 an object. I put it in the trailer, and I expose
37 the silhouette onto the wallpaper, it will be a
38 long hanging artwork out of everyone’s objects
39 from the area …’
40 They pause, their face continues to be unimpressed, deadpan.
41 We wait like that for a few seconds, me expecting them to slam
42 the door on my face, or tell me to politely jog-on.
218
1 Hang on a minute! They turn back for a minute and return,

2 triumphant-looking, with a child’s toy/glass ornament/frog statue/
3 brass ring/some strange cooking implement.
4 Resident: Will this do?
5
6 And then we put it in the trailer and wait for ten minutes
7 [for the cyanotype to develop]. In these ten minutes, we
8 are locked into a conversation. In this time they tell me
9 their stories. Their lives in Knowle West, how they came
10 to acquire the object, the way their neighbourhood has
11 changed, their successes in Weight Watchers, the pain of
12 losing a partner, mother, son, the difficulties in finding
13 a job, a place to live, a recent pregnancy. They show me
14 war medals, Crufts awards, trinkets, gifts, tools and cups
15 of tea. I am sniffed by a hundred different pugs, poodles,
16 Dobermans and a Jack Russell who licks my leg for about
17 ten minutes.
18 The people of Knowle West are as generous with their
19 personal life stories as they are with their offers of tea and
20 biscuits. It has been eye-opening – not just to the objects
21 and stories but the people behind each door who surprised
22 me every time. (KWMC, 2017)
23
24 These intimate exchanges and relationships of trust, developed on
25 doorsteps, created the conditions for a first act of collective making
26 among local residents and neighbours and formed the foundations and
27 possibilities for deeper participation. For example, some of the people
28 who worked with Charlotte came to KWMC to see their artwork
29 and participated in Co-Creation workshops to develop new ideas and
30 practical tools to address housing needs. These are people who may
31 never have engaged in a process of Co-Creation if they had been asked
32 to in a more conventional way.
33 Another critical part of Co-Creation is making visible and valuing
34 the assets and resources available to Co-Create with. Through processes
35 such as Charlotte’s Mobile Wallpaper Making Machine, which invited
36 people to have a different kind of conversation about ‘housing need’,
37 We Can Make was able to surface and map the rich resources with
38 which to Co-Create a different kind of approach to housing in
39 Knowle West. These resources included a high level of knowhow and
40 skill in construction trades among local people, and a high level of
41 everyday resilience, with networks of families and friends helping to
42
219
1 meet people’s housing needs through mutual support and mixing and
2 matching of rooms available.
3 The resources also included identifying a new supply of land already
4 in the hands of people; micro-sites distributed in large back gardens,
5 between buildings and leftover patches of land. Knowle West is a typical
6 1930s neighbourhood, made up of mainly redbrick semi-detached
7 homes, all built at very low density. The research identified that over
8 2,000 potential micro-sites exist in Knowle West, in each of which
9 a new one- to two-bedroom home could fit. The approach thereby
10 opens up the possibility of housing provision as ‘urban acupuncture’,
11 allowing families to grow, ageing residents to downsize, and those
12 with changing mobility needs to adapt, without having to leave their
13 community. This, importantly, creates a citizen-led alternative approach
14 to the more conventional developer- and council-led ‘demolish and
15 densify’ top-down regeneration tactics.
16 A vital part of Co-Creation, which perhaps surprisingly often
17 gets forgotten, is the importance of actually creating something.
18 Co-Creation is an imaginative process, but it is not just a thought
19 experiment. We Can Make has sought to manifest tangible change in
20 a number of ways. These include building a prototype We Can Make
21 home on a micro-site next to a community centre. The build used
22 innovative flat-pack construction methods, employed local people in
23 the construction crew, worked with artists and local people to make
24 the fittings and furnishings, and is now available for local people to
25 visit and stay in, as a way of testing out different ways of living. Local
26 people have Co-Created a community design code which is a live
27 document that helps set the rules for what any new home on a micro-
28 site should look like, what materials it should use, and sets standards
29 for energy efficiency and biodiversity, which are all priority issues for
30 local people. We Can Make has just secured funding to support its
31 next phase which is working with local families and the community
32 to develop the pilot batch of 16 homes on micro-sites.
33 The importance of who tells the story about Co-Creation runs
34 through the We Can Make project. As part of the process to support
35 local people shaping and telling the story, KWMC commissioned
36 artist Lily Green of No Bindings (No Bindings, nd) to help produce
37 a resident-led chat show. Knowle Westers are the hosts and guests
38 on this bi-monthly show that is recorded and being collated into
39 a series of broadcast podcasts. The hot topics for discussion come
40 from local people and the process of the wider We Can Make
41 project. Each episode also features a guest artist, such as Bristol
42 City Poet, Vanessa Kisuule and artist Rediat Abayneh, who create
220
1 new writing and artwork inspired by the conversations. The

2 artist’s response to each chat show conversation helps to manifest
3 the character and value of the conversations, so again they can be
4 shared and invite ever more diverse participants and audiences into
5 the Co-Creation process.
6 The creative contributions to the We Can Make project are wide
7 ranging, from someone contributing an object that becomes part of
8 a cyanotype printed wallpaper, to a resident standing up in a council
9 meeting and suggesting that things could be done differently, to
10 someone helping to build a new prototype house. They are all feeding
11 into the overall goal of social change, all contributing to the story, all
12 helping to shift both perceptions and the actual practical way housing
13 is developed. To Co-Create does not have to mean all sitting in a room
14 together participating in every aspect. Co-Creation can be a collection
15 of diverse acts all curated in a shared direction. The innovative quality
16 and potential for impact of We Can Make was recognised when it was
17 named as one of The Observer and Nesta’s 2018 ‘New Radicals’ (Nesta,
18 2018), a bi-annual showcase of the most innovative ideas changing the
19 UK for the better.
20
21
22
Conclusion
23 Through these case studies we have begun to understand how, as was
24 shown at the beginning of this chapter, KWMC’s practice of Co-
25 Creation achieves its goal to always:
26
27 • start with people and their interests;
28 • work towards a shared goal;
29 • use creative approaches and arts practice to work across disciplines
30 and power structures;
31 • create space for radical reimagining;
32 • democratise and demystify the tools and means of production.
33
34 This chapter has illustrated how creative processes and skilled artist
35 facilitators can nurture intimate exchanges and develop relationships
36 of trust, dissolving hierarchical assumptions and opening up new
37 possibilities in terms of what can be imagined and what can be made
38 through Co-Creation. It has discussed how pivotal it is for those
39 involved in Co-Creation to articulate their own stories, and how this
40 can help extend understanding, in terms of both depth and reach,
41 about the value of Co-Creation.
42
221
1 This chapter has also discussed some of the challenges around the
2 advocacy work needed to engage policy makers and decision makers
3 in participatory processes. Indeed, the challenge remains to galvanise
4 and secure this wider recognition and shift in resources and power
5 relations to ensure that more people can work together effectively
6 and non-hierarchically towards the change they want to bring about
7 in their communities.
8 More research is now needed to better understand the role of policy
9 makers and decision makers, and how they can better engage with
10 communities on non-hierarchical terms, and how a step up in terms of
11 commitment, scale, and ambition to champion Co-Creation processes
12 and practices can best be achieved. As ever, the success and impact
13 of Co-Creation processes depend upon remaining open and mindful
14 about what and who is in need of transformation.
15
16 References
17 Bristol City Council (2019) State of Bristol, Key Facts 2019 ,
18 October 2019 Update, available at www.bristol.gov.uk/documents/
19 20182/32947/State+of+Bristol+-+Key+Facts+2018-19.PDF
20 Bristol Approach (2018) Bristol Approach website, available at www.
21 bristolapproach.org/
22 KWMC (nd), Knowle West Media Centre website, available at https://
23 kwmc.org.uk/projects/co-design/
24 KWMC (2017), Knowle West Media Centre website, community
25 housing blog, available at https://kwmc.org.uk/communityhousin
26 gblogpartthree/
27 Matarasso, F. ( 2015 ) ‘Music and social change: intentions and
28 outcomes’, A Restless Art (online), available from https://arestlessart.
29 files.wordpress.com/2015/10/2015-music-and-social-change.pdf
30 Nesta (2015) Rethinking Smart Cities from the Ground Up, Nesta [online]
31 available from https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/rethinking-smart-
32 cities-from-the-ground-up/.
33 Nesta (2018) ‘New radicals, 2018’, Nesta, available at: www.nesta.org.
34 uk/feature/new-radicals-2018/.
35 No Bindings (nd) No Bindings website, available at www.nobindings.
36 co.uk.
37 Vickers, I., Westall, A., Spear, R., Brennan, G. and Syrett, S. (2017)
38 Cities, The Social Economy and Inclusive Growth: A Practice Review,
39 York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
40
41
42
222
page 223
1 14
2
3
4
5
Innovative collaborative policy
6 development: Casa Fluminense and
7
8
Rio’s public agenda challenges
9
10 Inés Álvarez-Gortari, Vitor Mihessen and Ben Spencer
11
12
13
14
15
Introduction
16 This chapter explores some of the innovative ways in which
17 collaborative approaches to developing urban policy have been
18 undertaken by the Casa Fluminense organisation (Casa Fluminense,
19 2019a) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It introduces the work and values of
20 Casa Fluminense, which has built on a recent history of participatory
21 planning and policy making in Brazil to develop and test public policy
22 proposals in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region (RJMR). After
23 introducing the current Rio de Janeiro context and the extreme
24 inequalities experienced across the RJMR, the chapter then tackles the
25 question of how these urban challenges could be addressed through the
26 collaborative work of Casa Fluminense and to what extent their work
27 can be understood as including Co-Creation approaches.
28 The authors conclude that Casa Fluminense’s work includes many
29 successful elements of Co-Creation, especially when working at
30 the neighbourhood level. These feed into the effectiveness of the
31 organisation in developing policy at the metropolitan level where many,
32 but not all, of the Co-Creation principles are utilised, particularly in
33 terms of mapping, networking and collaborative actions. The authors
34 argue that this constitutes a hybrid model of Co-Creation particularly
35 suited to the challenging context of Rio de Janeiro and having an
36 impact at the neighbourhood and metropolitan scale.
37
38
39
Inequality in Rio de Janeiro
40 The RJMR is an area facing chronic issues of governability, insecurity
41 and inequality and includes 21 municipalities with extremes of
42 marginalisation, exclusion and stigma and with urban issues that
223
1 are growing ever more socially, politically and physically complex

2 (Ribeiro, 2017). The 21 municipalities are subdivided into three
3 regions: the municipality of Rio de Janeiro itself, which has six million
4 inhabitants; the Baixada Fluminense, made up of 13 municipalities
5 with a population of three million; and the Leste Fluminense which
6 has seven municipalities and also has around three million inhabitants
7 (See Figure 14.1).
8 To provide an overview of the multiple challenges facing the residents
9 of RJMR, some key facts collated by Casa Fluminense in the form of
10 inequality maps (Casa Fluminense, 2019b) are presented here. In terms
11 of transport, every day around two million people commute from the
12 municipalities where they live to work in the city of Rio de Janeiro,
13 where 74 per cent of jobs in the RJMR are concentrated. Just over a
14 quarter (26 per cent) of workers spend over an hour in their commute
15 to work. A person on a minimum salary who commutes daily by bus
16 will spend 20 per cent of their salary on their bus fare. Only 31 per
17 cent of the population in the RJMR is close to a train station, metro
18 station, Bus Rapid Transit or tram stop. Currently, after decades of
19 underinvestment and infrastructure degradation, Rio’s intermunicipal
20 trains transport an average of just 800,000 people per day, compared
21 with 1.5 million in the 1980s.
22 The situation regarding citizen safety is also unbalanced, with
23 homicide rates (per 100,000 population) as high as 134.9 in Queimados,
24
25 Figure 14.1: Map of the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region (RJMR) showing the
26 three regions and the central area where commercial activity is concentrated.
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42 Source: Ben Spencer.
224
page 225 Innovative collaborative policy development
1 in the Baixada Fluminense, in contrast to 29.3 in the city of Rio de

2 Janeiro. Similarly, in terms of sanitation, provision of sewers in RJMR
3 varies from 83 per cent in the city of Rio de Janeiro to 33–46 per
4 cent in much of the Baixada Fluminense, falling to just 12 per cent in
5 Maricá, situated in the Leste Fluminense. Fresh tap water availability
6 varies from 98 per cent in the city to 58 per cent in Maricá.
7 Unemployment in the city of Rio de Janeiro stands at 8 per cent,
8 rising to 13 per cent in parts of the Baixada Fluminense, while average
9 income varies from 2,155 Brazilian reals (BRL) (£430/US$540) per
10 month in the city, to as low as 607 BRL (£120/US$150) in the
11 municipality of Japeri. Partly as a result of these challenges, there is a
12 widely held association between the Baixada and Leste Fluminense
13 regions and violence, which ignores other aspects of residents’ everyday
14 lives, something that Casa Fluminense seeks to challenge.
15
16
Participatory planning in Brazil
17
18 Following a growing interest in a rights-based approach to urban
19 development and management in Brazil in the 1980s, the 1988
20 Constitution included articles affirming direct participation in urban
21 policy making (Friendly and Stiphany, 2019). In the late 1980s and
22 1990s, experiments with participatory budgeting were developed,
23 notably in Porto Alegre, and in 2001 Brazil’s City Statute finally
24 included the legal requirement for participation in the planning process.
25 In the following years, participation took place through processes that
26 were genuinely inclusive in some cases, using participatory budgeting,
27 municipal councils, the development of masterplans and town hall
28 housing meetings. However, it has been argued that this happened
29 within the broader context of a continuing political-electoral game that
30 maintained City Council control over urban development, reduced
31 the potential of participatory approaches to guarantee rights to the city
32 (Rolnik, 2013) and privileged wealthier citizens who could engage
33 more easily with the system (Caldeira and Holston, 2015).
34
35
36
Casa Fluminense
37 With the imminent hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Finals and
38 the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio, Casa Fluminense was
39 founded in 2013 by activists, researchers and citizens who shared a
40 vision of a socially just, democratic and sustainable Rio de Janeiro.
41 The founding of Casa Fluminense was the result of conversations held
42 among a group of people working, in their respective institutions,
225
1 towards Rio’s democratic development. Among Casa’s founding

2 members were human rights advocates and community leaders from
3 Rio’s favelas, academics (including anthropologists, political scientists
4 and economists) from Rio’s Federal University (UFRJ) and State
5 University (UERJ) as well as people from arts-based organisations
6 working with educational and cultural projects with young people.
7 Therefore, from the outset Casa Fluminense can be seen as a
8 collaboration between those in academia, those in public and private
9 sectors and those in civil society. All the organisations involved worked
10 at the neighbourhood or municipal level, not at the metropolitan level;
11 Casa was created to bring these organisations together to have influence
12 at the metropolitan level . The organisation’s mission was developed by
13 this group, so as ‘to expand the public sphere and foster the construction
14 of public policies targeting the promotion of equality, democracy and
15 sustainable development in the entire metropolis and state of Rio de
16 Janeiro’. The creation of this vision rested on the recognition that the
17 challenges facing the city, such as the high levels of pollution in the
18 Guanabara Bay (the large bay in the centre of RJMR) and very long
19 commuting times from the periphery to the centre, were the result of
20 factors at the metropolitan and state scale which required action beyond
21 the neighbourhood or municipal level. Casa also wanted to change
22 the way in which the periphery of the city was seen and imagined,
23 with the Baixada and Leste areas being predominately associated with
24 the stigma of violence.
25 Casa Fluminense is structured as a non- profit civil society
26 organisation that is independent and non-partisan. Casa Fluminense’s
27 wider network of over 70 organisations (Casa Fluminense, 2019a)
28 is regarded by Casa as its key strength. The organisation’s strategic
29 planning cycles are open for all its members to participate in and
30 it encourages transparency through publishing its work plans. The
31 management and governance of the organisation are structured
32 through three components. The Board of Directors has overall
33 responsibility for the direction of the organisation, with the Consulting
34 Council in turn responsible for supporting the activities of the Casa
35 network through the Executive Nucleus. The Executive Nucleus is
36 made up of a team of ten full-time staff members who carry out Casa’s
37 day-to-day activities. The organisation is funded by donations and
38 grants from private foundations such as the Open Society Foundation
39 and Ford Foundation. The overall budget is around 2 million BRL
40 (£400,000/US$500,000) per annum.
41 Casa Fluminense implements a three-pronged strategy of advocacy
42 and the strengthening of civil society. This is achieved through:
226
1 • Monitoring public policy, with a focus on public investments and

2 specific programmes, keeping in mind the goals of equity, respect
3 for human rights and government transparency.
4 • Organising capacity building and information dissemination
5 activities and debates in the form of courses, seminars and working
6 groups that involve leaders and social actors from across RJMR.
7 • Developing proposals targeted at overcoming the main
8 challenges in Rio’s public agenda and guiding innovative ways
9 of collectively conceiving policies.
10
11 Casa Fluminense works through collaborative initiatives, including the
12 monitoring of public expenditure and policy and through collating
13 and publishing information in a form that is easy to digest and use. An
14 important example is the mapping of inequalities across metropolitan
15 Rio, including aspects of mobility, work, income, education, safety,
16 health and sanitation as previously referenced. Another key strand of
17 work is the appraisal of the existence and implementation of municipal
18 policies, such as masterplanning, through an online monitoring panel
19 (Casa Fluminense, 2019c). After the founding of Casa Fluminense and
20 an initial information-gathering and mapping exercise, the priority
21 policy themes of urban mobility, public safety and sanitation were
22 chosen by the Casa team for the development of policy solutions.
23 Capacity building in the 21 metropolitan areas has been enabled
24 through an annual short course on public policies. The aim is to provide
25 a diverse range of civic and community leaders, activists, journalists,
26 young academics and other actors from across the metropolitan region
27 of Rio de Janeiro with the skills and confidence to engage with public
28 policy debate and formation. Since it first ran in 2016, over 200 people
29 have completed the course. Each year the course is run in a different
30 municipality and, in a typical year, course participants will come from
31 at least 15 different municipalities across the metropolis. Some alumni
32 have gone on to found their own organisations, some have run in
33 municipal elections, while others have been involved in planning and
34 delivering later versions of the course and its expansion to be run in
35 São Paulo and Brasilia. The course has been evaluated by participants
36 at the mid-point and on completion of the series of weekly classes
37 over the three to four months it runs. Recognising how hard it can
38 be to measure the impact of this and other programmes, Casa staff
39 are participating in training to learn more about approaches to the
40 evaluation of programmes run by third sector organisations.
41 In 2016, the Casa Fluminense Fund was established to support
42 grassroots social movements, local institutions and activists who propose
227
1 to organise monitoring and/or advocacy initiatives on public policy

2 issues aligned with Casa’s themes. That year, grants of up to 200 BRL
3 (£40/US$50) were allocated to initiatives promoted by the members
4 of Casa’s network. These mostly included workshops, campaigns and
5 other events, all with general support and advice from Casa. The
6 following year, grants of 300 BRL (£60/US$80) were made available
7 and activities expanded to include more campaigns and events as well
8 as the legal formalisation of organisations.
9 Over the following years, the sums available increased further. In
10 2018, the funding was separated into a small grant scheme, with
11 minimal bureaucracy, for sums up to 300 BRL (£60/US$80) and
12 larger grants of 4,000 BRL(£800/US$1,000) which were available
13 to the public, whether organisations or individuals, through an
14 application process. The larger sums available led to an increase in
15 creative approaches to raising and understanding issues. For example,
16 a series of four videos was made by different collectives from across the
17 metropolitan region about urban mobility issues. They were screened
18 at an event in the Complexo do Alemão favela organised by one of
19 Casa’s partners, Institute Raízes em Movimento (Roots in Motion
20 Institute). The event included artistic performances such as a poetry
21 slam (‘Slam na Laje’) and debates.
22 In dispersing its grants, Casa is effectively operating as a ‘regranter’
23 channelling funding from international sources to the local level. This
24 means that barriers to accessing international funding, such as high
25 levels of literacy in English, appropriate contacts and the ability to
26 navigate complex application and monitoring systems, are removed.
27 This results in Casa being able to act as a catalyst, irrigating grassroots
28 activity by taking on advisory, administrative and accountability roles.
29 In addition, the legal formalisation of local organisations means that
30 they are able to access other sources of funding directly themselves,
31 thus the Casa Grant Funds can have a multiplier effect.
32 This mapping, monitoring and capacity development leads directly
33 into Casa’s own collaborative policy development process which
34 culminates in the publication of its ‘Agenda Rio’ document, produced
35 every two years to coincide with state and municipal elections. Each
36 updated version is organised differently, according to the main themes
37 of the moment, but always prioritising urban mobility, public security
38 and sanitation. The latest edition in 2018 aligns itself with the United
39 Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2019)
40 and hence is called ‘Agenda Rio 2030’. This identifies policy solutions
41 for each of the eight current key Casa themes. These are Metropolitan
42 Politics; Employment and Income; Urban Mobility; Public Safety
228
1 and the Right to Life; Basic Sanitation and Guanabara Bay; Access to
2 Health, Education and Culture; The Liveable City; and finally, Public
3 Administration, Transparency and Participation.
4 During the process of developing Agenda Rio, the Fórum Rio is
5 a key event for Casa’s network members to make contributions to
6 the document. The Fórum Rio originally took place three times a
7 year, each time in a different location in the greater Rio area. The
8 process of policy development used by Casa Fluminense was initially
9 conceived using the ‘design thinking’ approach (Interaction Design
10 Foundation, 2019). In practice, it brought together Casa’s network
11 of partners for a whole day to discuss the most pressing issues in the
12 metropolis. Through reviewing the success of the approach, the process
13 has now been refined to one meeting per year and employs a strategy
14 whereby its website is used in advance of the face-to-face meeting to
15 invite participants to make suggestions on proposals addressing the key
16 Casa themes. These are then voted on online and combined using a
17 collaborative process, first on the website and then at the meeting. The
18 12 Fórum Rios that have already taken place have mobilised around
19 2,000 people and over 60 civil society organisations from across Rio’s
20 metropolitan region. The Fórum Rio process opens up space for Casa
21 to create new partnerships with institutions that appear on its radar,
22 enabling Casa to have a more direct link to institutions from the full
23 range of municipalities and also specific policy interests, such as active
24 mobility (walking and cycling) or water quality.
25 The current Agenda Rio 2030 document captures the 40 resulting
26 policy proposals, with five for each of the Casa themes. The printed
27 Agenda Rio 2030 document is widely distributed among politicians,
28 especially municipal mayors and city councillors in order to influence
29 decision-making processes and to promote the principles of democracy,
30 accountability, and sustainable development. At the last municipal
31 election, the document was given to 96 candidates, of whom 19 were
32 elected. The document is also available in an online format (Casa
33 Fluminense, 2019d).
34 Casa Fluminense also works closely with partners from outside Rio.
35 In 2017, it worked on the Virada Sustentável (Going Sustainable)
36 event. This has become the largest sustainability initiative in Brazil.
37 Starting in São Paulo, it expanded to other cities including Manaus,
38 Porto Alegre and then Rio de Janeiro. Planning the debates, playful
39 activities and public events involved the participation of civil society
40 organisations, cultural and social movements, museums, businesses,
41 schools and universities, among others, with the common goal of
42 presenting a positive and inspiring understanding of sustainability. The
229
1 event is also based on the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development

2 Goals, which guide the projects implemented by the groups involved
3 and so is a good strategic fit with Casa Fluminense. Casa was one of
4 the curators of Virada Sustentável events in Rio and held its largest
5 network meeting in São João de Meriti, a municipality in the Baixada
6 Fluminense in the north of the metropolitan area.
7
8
9 Example of a Casa Fluminense neighbourhood project: Parque de
10 Realengo Verde
11
12 Realengo is a neighbourhood in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro (see Figure 14.1),
13 an area with few leisure spaces in comparison with those in the South and Central
14 parts of the city. The neighbourhood contains an abandoned space next to a
15 former munitions factory. Since the closure of the factory in the 1970s, residents
16 have been campaigning to transform the space into a green public park, to be
17 known as ‘Parque Realengo Verde’. In addition to the recreational value of the
18 park, residents have argued that it would improve security, create new pedestrian
19 routes and counteract very high summer temperatures and local flooding.
20
21 Following approval through the process of developing Casa Fluminense’s Agenda
22 Rio 2030, the project ‘Lata Ocupa’ was devised as a starting point for the
23 permanent artistic and environmental occupation of the space. This was led by
24 the local Lata Doida Cultural Association and its partners, who Casa awarded a
25 grant of 4,000 BRL (£800/$1000).
26
27 The recent history of plans for the open space had been controversial. In a
28 neighbourhood consultation meeting in March 2017, which was attended by the
29 City Mayor, residents voted to create the park in place of the construction of a
30 condominium. This resulted in the Realengo Park being included in both the city’s
31 Strategic Plan and a city government decree. However, the park was not created
32 as planned and the Mayor then proposed to split the park in two, constructing a
33 condominium on one half and creating a park in the remainder. This proposition
34 was again rejected by the community, who continued to campaign for the whole
35 area to be turned into their vision for Parque Realengo Verde.
36
37 In the existing space there were some limited uses, with two football pitches and
38 a junkyard, but much of the area was consumed with dumped rubbish and rubble.
39 Before the start of the Lata Ocupa event, volunteers were mobilised to clear the
40 area, supported by COMLURB (the Council company responsible for cleaning of
41 public spaces). The removal of rubbish and rubble freed up considerable space
42 that had previously not been accessible.
230
1 The Lata Ocupa event was held over a weekend in early August 2019. Saturday
2 morning included breakfast and more clearing of spaces along with tree planting,
3 building a structure with a green roof, creating a musical installation for children
4 to play, building artistic installations, making graffiti and high school students
5 constructing a medicinal garden. Following lunch, a series of workshops were
6 held, followed by a party and musical performances that went on into the
7 evening. The Sunday followed a similar pattern but with an evening meeting with
8 local leaders and community groups focusing on local sustainability issues and
9 occupations of public spaces. Finally, there was a large party to close the event.
10
11 Media coverage of the event, including by the television station Globo Rio de
12 Janeiro (Globo, 2019), was positive, helping to counteract a horrific school
13 shooting in 2011 which many associate with Realengo. Following the event, a
14 petition ‘Parque Realengo 100 per cent Verde’, coorganised with another NGO,
15 Meu Rio, gained over 10,000 signatures.
16
17
18
Comparing Casa Fluminense and Co-Creation approaches
19
20 The following section explores the similarities and differences to
21 Co-Creation approaches to better understand the potential of Casa
22 Fluminense methods to inform approaches to addressing issues of
23 marginalisation, exclusion and stigma in other cities.
24 The strategies used by Casa Fluminense include many of the principles
25 of Co-Creation (see Chapter 1, Figure 1.1). Collaborative actions are
26 developed with network members and the wider civil society in a
27 respectful and ethical manner that builds trust. Power relations are
28 affected by the nature of the Casa staff team who are diverse, coming
29 from across the metropolitan region and not being ‘BBB’, a term in
30 Brazil from the Portuguese ‘Branco, Burguês, Bem-intencionado’ which
31 means white, bourgeois and well-intentioned.
32 Power relations within Casa were examined in an action research
33 study (Amann, 2016) which identified issues with the opportunities for
34 making proposals and decisions in the Network, Executive Nucleus,
35 Consulting Council and Board, and also noted the complex and
36 overlapping relations between them. However, Amann recognised
37 that this was a dynamic organisation, seeking to adjust so as to address
38 these issues and that, overall, there was the ‘astonishing ability of Casa
39 to unite actors coming from different backgrounds and topic areas,
40 throughout the whole metropolitan region of Rio’ (Amann, 2016: 28).
41 Casa’s activities are grounded in very detailed mapping of the wider
42 context, monitoring of policy and targeted capacity building through
231
1 the public policies course and the Casa Fluminense Fund programme
2 of grants. Through moving their meetings to different locations across
3 the metropolis, with an emphasis on the peripheral communities
4 of the Baixada and Leste Fluminense, and developing the skills
5 and knowledge of local representatives through the public policies
6 course, both the events and the participants are embedded in their
7 locality while also benefiting from the wider perspectives of network
8 partners. The development of all policy recommendations is clearly
9 attributed to the whole family of the Casa Network in the Agenda
10 Rio documents. The workshop and short course outcomes include
11 intangible products such as networks, skills, knowledge and shared
12 understanding along with more tangible policy recommendations
13 which are captured, communicated and evaluated. Amann gives
14 examples of the strength of Casa’s approaches to opening up spaces
15 for social change:
16
17 Giving a young black girl from the outskirts the opportunity
18 to speak to public power holders at the launch of the Agenda
19 Rio 2017. Providing legitimate and valuable information
20 in the form of art. Connecting actors and problems in the
21 broader level of the metropolitan region. These all are
22 achievements in which Casa shifts what can be done and
23 whose knowledge counts. (Amann, 2016: 28)
24
25 During their work with Virada Sustentável, Casa Fluminense was
26 introduced to the concept of Co-Creation as used by that organisation.
27 However, having considered using the term Co-Creation for their own
28 Fórum Rio events, they decided it was not appropriate. This was after
29 reflecting on the fact that Casa had already developed a starting point
30 of identifying its eight key policy themes and that they had developed
31 a tried-and-tested methodology for organising and running meetings
32 that they wished to use – rather than actively Co-Creating them. These
33 two factors resulted in the feeling that this aspect of the Casa approach
34 was not truly Co-Creation and that they would be misrepresenting
35 themselves and the principles of Co-Creation if they used that label
36 for the overall process. Following criticism of the extent of truly Co-
37 Creative opportunities within the Virada Sustentável approach, that
38 organisation has also stopped using the term. This reveals an informed
39 questioning of the use of the Co-Creation terminology and a need
40 for its careful use.
41 The development and expansion of the Casa Grant Fund over the
42 last four years has provided increasing resources for local communities
232
1 and actors to create their own forms of advocacy within the framework
2 of the Agenda Rio 2030. It can be argued that this is much closer to
3 the spirit of the Co-Creation principles and it is notable that, given
4 this flexibility in the Casa grant funded projects, they have become
5 increasingly creative in their work with artists and use of artistic
6 practices to explore issues and engage with communities.
7 By using this range of approaches, it can be seen that Casa’s goal
8 of improving social engagement in public policy debate across the
9 whole metropolis is achieved at a range of connected scales. At the
10 metropolitan level, information and policy are mapped and made
11 available for campaign use municipality by municipality. Across RJMR
12 the key themes are agreed collaboratively with partners through Fórum
13 Rio using a pre-determined methodology. Following participatory
14 action research framing, this can be seen as an ‘invited space’ for
15 participation where the rules are already set (Gaventa, 2006). By
16 virtue of the fact that Casa Fluminense is working at the metropolitan
17 scale, there is also a mismatch with Co- Creation’s focus on the
18 neighbourhood, and artists or artistic practices are not employed in
19 their work at this scale.
20 However, at the neighbourhood level, participation in the public
21 policies short courses and, especially, the Casa Grant Funds can be seen
22 as enabling something closer to ‘claimed spaces’ (Gaventa, 2006), that
23 are created more autonomously by less powerful people and provide
24 empowerment and resources for action by communities and local
25 leaders. As emphasised by Amann: ‘This communication – not the
26 one Casa is doing, but the one it is allowing – is very important. …
27 These exchanges between people amplify the vision of people: they
28 manage to see what is happening on the other side’ (‘Danilo’, quoted
29 by Amann, 2016: 29)
30 These actions, along with Fórum Rio, which holds its face-to-face
31 meetings in peripheral neighbourhoods, in turn contribute to Agenda
32 Rio 2030, which is oriented to the metropolitan level. This means
33 that a hybrid approach to Co-Creation is being used in the context
34 of RJMR. A more recognisable and complete form of Co-Creation
35 is enabled at the neighbourhood level, which is in turn contributing
36 to policy development and actions at the metropolitan level. This
37 is an important way for Casa to inform and legitimise their policy
38 proposals. As noted here, many of the most challenging issues facing
39 the residents and workers of Rio cannot be effectively tackled solely at
40 the neighbourhood level. For example, tackling pollution in Guanabara
41 Bay requires combined action across the many municipalities in its
42 watershed.
233
1
Conclusion
2
3 The Casa Fluminense collaborative approach shares many similarities
4 and strengths with Co- Creation, in that it is based on detailed
5 mapping of the context, building networks and trust, increasing
6 local capacity for action, and monitoring the impact of policy
7 interventions. Divergence comes in terms of scale and related practices.
8 At the top level, Casa Fluminense provides a carefully developed
9 overall framework of policy themes (linked to the UN Sustainable
10 Development Goals) within which it works with its network of
11 organisations to produce policy outcomes. This process does not
12 involve artistic practices or a neighbourhood scale and it is notable that
13 Casa has been uncomfortable about adopting the term Co-Creation
14 for their work. In the Brazilian context another organisation, Virada
15 Sustentável, has also retreated from using the terminology following
16 criticism that they were not fulfilling the ideals of Co-Creation. This
17 demonstrates a positive critical engagement with the use of both
18 language and methods and the challenge of following the principles
19 of Co-Creation.
20 However, at the neighbourhood scale, nested within Casa’s
21 framework of themes, this chapter has described how there are
22 opportunities for more truly Co-Creative approaches to flourish.
23 This is through using the Casa Grants Funds programme to enable
24 residents, artists and stakeholders to use arts-based methods, if they
25 wish, to understand and communicate about urban challenges at
26 the local level and then to contribute this knowledge to wider
27 policy recommendations at the metropolitan level. The strength
28 of this approach is in fusing the benefits of Co-Creative activities
29 at the neighbourhood level with mapping, networking and policy
30 development at the metropolitan scale to provide a hybrid approach
31 to Co-Creation suited to the context and challenges of Rio. This
32 has the potential to improve the living conditions of marginalised
33 and stigmatised people across the wider city. It also suggests an
34 approach that could be adopted more widely to create greater impact
35 from neighbourhood Co-Creation initiatives in other cities at the
36 metropolitan scale.
37
38 References
39 Amann, D. (2016) ‘Inside the network hub: learnings and reflections
40 from a network of NGOs, activists & researchers in Rio de Janeiro’,
41 unpublished MA dissertation, Institute of Development Studies,
42 Sussex University.
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12 available from http:// casafluminense.org.br/ inequality- map/
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17 management/ [accessed 20 August 2019].
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19 available from http://casafluminense.org.br/agenda-rio-2/ [accessed
20 20 August 2019].
21 Friendly, A. and Stiphany, K. (2019) ‘Paradigm or paradox? The
22 “cumbersome impasse” of the participatory turn in Brazilian urban
23 planning’, Urban Studies, 56(2): 271–87, available from https://doi.
24 org/10.1177/0042098018768748.
25 Gaventa, J. (2006) ‘Finding the spaces for change: a power analysis’,
26 IDS Bulletins, 37(6): 23–33.
27 Globo ( 2019 ) Moradores de Realengo fazem mutirão de limpeza
28 [online], https://globoplay.globo.com/v/7852967/ [accessed 11
29 October 2019].
30 Interaction Design Foundation (2019) ‘5 Stages in the design thinking
31 process’ Interaction Design Foundation [online], available from https://
32 www.interaction- design.org/ literature/ article/ 5- stages- in- the-
33 design-thinking-process [accessed 5 July 2019].
34 Ribeiro, L.C. de Q. (ed) (2017) Urban Transformations in Rio de
35 Janeiro: Development, Segregation, and Governance, New York: Springer.
36 Rolnik, R. (2013) ‘Ten years of the City Statute in Brazil: from the
37 struggle for urban reform to the World Cup cities’, International
38 Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 5:1: 54–64, available from
39 DOI: 10.1080/19463138.2013.782706.
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235
page 237
1 15
2
3
4
5
Working the hyphens of artist-
6 academic-stakeholder in Co-
7
8
Creation: a hopeful rendering
9 of a community organisation and
10
11 an organic intellectual
12
13
Bryan C. Clift, Maria Sarah da Silva Telles and Itamar Silva
14
15
16
17
18
Introduction
19
20 Perhaps it is easy to look at a city like Rio de Janeiro and despair. The
21 urban inequalities are nowhere more noticeable than in the city’s favelas,
22 where approximately one fifth of the local population lives. Brazil’s
23 favelas, like other areas of apparent temporariness and marginality
24 around the world, are fast becoming dominant modes of current
25 urbanity (Davis, 2006). Frenzel (2016) proposed that two discourses
26 commonly shape popular understandings of the favela. The first is a
27 narrative of despair. This narrative recognises that those who live in
28 favelas (the favelados) are situated at the intersection of multiple power
29 formations and inequalities. They experience the stigmatising effects
30 of mainstream media and policy through drug and gang activity, low
31 income levels, unsanitary conditions, lack of education, police brutality,
32 spatial stigmatisation, gender- and sex-based violence, employment
33 and education discrimination, and racism.
34 The second narrative – which is less prominent – is a narrative of
35 hope. In this narrative, the favela is more of a natural constituent of
36 urbanisation; its spaces are neighbourhoods, sites of the vibrancy of urban
37 life, collective agency, self-reliance, creativity, and entrepreneurialism.
38 The winning of rights and legal positions or increased access to public
39 services are examples of the progress of this narrative. Rio de Janeiro
40 is replete with narratives of both despair and hope (Perlman, 2009). It
41 is on a narrative of hope, and in particular the creative activism in one
42 favela, Santa Marta, that this chapter focuses. Co-Creation is capable
237
1 of responding to urban stigma through creativity, collectivity, and

2 activism, and thus also capable of generating the narratives of hope,
3 which this chapter develops.
4 From 2016 to 2019, a team of more than 30 researchers and activists
5 from the EU, Mexico, and Brazil worked together to deliver Co-
6 Creation projects in five cities around the world. Co-Creation is both a
7 methodology and a knowledge project that brings together researchers,
8 artists, and stakeholders in order to produce shared knowledge that can
9 challenge, resist, or modify urban stigmatisation (see Chapter 1). Rio de
10 Janeiro was one case among the five. In 2018, more than 20 researchers
11 from the EU and Mexico, NGO (non-governmental organisation)
12 members from the EU, and several researchers from Rio de Janeiro,
13 collaborated with local stakeholders in Santa Marta, a favela in Rio de
14 Janeiro’s Zona Sul (South Zone). The key community organisation
15 in Santa Marta with whom the project collaborated was Grupo Eco,
16 which is led by Itamar Silva (who co-wrote this chapter). Over the
17 course of five days, researchers, artists, and stakeholders aimed to
18 produce shared knowledge that could challenge, resist, refute, or modify
19 urban stigmatisation. Note that this chapter refers to Co-Creation as
20 a methodology and knowledge project as outlined in Chapter 1; it
21 refers to ‘cultural activism’ as a broader set of artist-activist-stakeholder
22 practices or projects.
23 In this chapter, the authors reflect on the Co-Creation process
24 in Santa Marta in 2016–19 by examining the relationships among
25 artists-researchers-stakeholders, and – more intensively – the role of
26 community organisations and activists and likewise the role of the
27 researcher. Like other participatory methodologies, Co-Creation
28 centralises the relationship between academic and non-academic
29 partners (Banks and Hart, 2018). Examining these relationships is a way
30 of ‘working the hyphens’ (Fine, 1994): that is, the process of examining
31 the relationships between people in research. Fine suggested that, in
32 doing so, writers interrogate how written representations may speak
33 of or for Others through methodological, ethical, and epistemological
34 considerations, a point reiterated by Ribeiro (2019) in a Brazilian
35 context. A key aspect of this process is placing research and researchers
36 in a broader historical political, economic, and social context. As this
37 Co-Creation project brought together researchers from the Global
38 North with researchers, stakeholders, and artists from the Global South,
39 the reflection here focuses on Global North-South relations.
40 To guide their reflection, the authors drew on observations from
41 Co-Creation projects in Santa Marta from 2016 to 2019 and conducted
42 interviews with two academic professors in Brazil, two Brazilian NGO
238
page 239 Artist-academic-stakeholders in Co-Creation
1 leaders, and eight Santa Marta residents and Grupo Eco members aged
2 18 to 70 in order to gain insight into various moments over Grupo
3 Eco’s more than 40-year history.
4 First, this chapter contextualises Santa Marta and Grupo Eco in terms
5 of the area’s historical inequalities and the role that creative expression
6 and activism have played in a post-dictatorship Brazil. Second, it paints
7 a picture of Silva’s central role in the history and creative activism of
8 Eco; he is also the leader, gatekeeper, and partner of the Rio Co-
9 Creation case study. The chapter concludes by unpacking some of
10 the elements that should be considered when engaging with local
11 leadership in Co-Creative endeavours.
12 Co-Creation represents an opportunity for urban marginalised people
13 to contribute to knowledge production across the Global North and
14 South in a way that incorporates different perspectives, traditions,
15 and origins of knowledge. If successful, Co-Creation can contribute
16 meaningfully to the debate around the place of marginalised people in
17 knowledge production. The authors argue that, in order to achieve its
18 aims as a creative, participatory methodology and knowledge project,
19 any Co-Creation project must examine the relationships it builds
20 between its three key actors. To do so requires contextualisation in
21 the country, city, and spaces in which it is undertaken, and indeed the
22 people with whom it works.
23
24
25
Santa Marta and Grupo Eco: popular cultural
26 activism in Rio
27 Santa Marta is located on the steep hillside of Dona Marta in the
28 historic Botafogo neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro. Migrants from the
29 north began to populate the hillside during the 19th century, making
30 homes out of wood and stucco, a prelude to the significant Brazilian
31 rural-to-urban shift beginning in the 1940s. Continual population
32 increase through further migration, a lack of water and electricity,
33 and the muddy hillside were challenges residents faced. These were
34 exacerbated by the lack of legal recognition for the settlement, which
35 deprived residents of public services until the 1980s.
36 Today, houses are made of brick, and running water and electricity
37 have been installed in homes. The residents who now live there
38 (approximately 5,000) are bounded on one side by a wall built by
39 the government to prevent further expansion, and, on the other,
40 by a funicular to transport people up and down the hillside. Still,
41 inadequate rubbish collection and open ditches pose serious health
42 risks in the favela. Santa Marta’s history of residential activism to
239
1 improve this quality of life includes resistance, struggle, sorrow, and

2 hope. Increasingly, activism in Santa Marta, like the rest of Brazil’s
3 cities, incorporates artistic and cultural expression.
4 The terrain for activism, democratic participation, and citizenship
5 in Brazil has shifted over the last 50 years. In the waning few years
6 of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship in the late 1970s and early
7 1980s, discernible collective action began to emerge. A prominent
8 example is the mobilisation of the metalworkers’ unions and strikes
9 that challenged the military with new leadership for working people,
10 and which gave rise to the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) – the
11 Workers’ Party – and to the Leftist leader, future President, Luiz
12 Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) (Bourne, 2008). It is from
13 here that forms of collective action reverberated out in the 1980s
14 (Dagnino, 2006; Caldeira and Adriano, 2014). A range of groups
15 grew and strengthened, notably slum movements, Black resistance,
16 gender and sexuality movements, and ecological action. These Leftist
17 movements fostered the emergence of a new political imaginary
18 wherein democratic participation became possible (Dagnino, 2006;
19 Ferrero et al, 2019).
20 In the 2000s, a new protagonism emerged in the public space of
21 Brazilian cities – partially in response to the formal integration of the
22 Left in formal governmental and bureaucratic systems. Groups of
23 mostly young, black people living in segregated and stigmatised areas,
24 the favelas, mobilised cultural expression and intervention in the form
25 of painting, writing, film, and other digital and electronic media to
26 occupy spaces historically dominated by the upper classes (Caldeira
27 and Adriano, 2014). Using often aggressive language, they denounced
28 the discrimination against them, refuted their positioning as victims,
29 and resignified the city’s criminalised spaces (Caldeira and Adriano,
30 2014). Beginning in São Paulo, such groups spread across Brazil’s urban
31 environments, transgressing and even inverting the cultural productions
32 of urban space. As cultural productions continue to be a form through
33 which activism, resistance, and social justice are expressed and might
34 occur, it is at this contemporary juncture in Brazilian history and
35 culture that Co-Creation becomes a suitable academic methodology
36 to contribute to such agendas.
37 In 1976 in Santa Marta, eight people came together to publish
38 a community newspaper, The Eco. Headquartered in Itamar Silva’s
39 parent’s home, the paper recorded activities in the community and
40 reflected upon the role of the Residents’ Association (Pandolfi and
41 Grynszpan, 2003). Over time, and as the group expanded its work in
42 the community with ditch digging and cleaning, building housing, or
240
1 cultural activities, they became known as ‘the Eco people’ (Pandolfi

2 and Grynszpan, 2003). Grupo Eco – self-defined as ‘a school without
3 walls’ – was established. It nurtured two major areas of work: needs
4 within the favela, and those in connection with other favelas,
5 institutions, NGOs, government, or universities in Rio. Explicit in
6 its agenda has been a strong cultural focus. Its initial newspaper, a
7 cultural product itself, included publicising cultural events, like samba
8 and festivals; as it expanded, its cultural expressions did, too. Its annual
9 holiday camp was an example of responding to the total absence of
10 vacations for children in the favela who, by and large, stayed in their
11 homes through the summer months. For children, the opportunity to
12 move beyond the walls of the favela safely was rare. This was the first
13 holiday camp offered in favelas in Rio.
14 Another cultural output of Grupo Eco was its arts productions, such
15 as theatre, music, and visual art. One notable example is its theatre
16 group, which formed in 1977 to communicate with residents. The
17 impact of the theatre activities, in particular, resonated with residents.
18 One favela resident recounted her experience in theatre with Eco:
19
20 “I fell in love with theatre. Looking for a theatre group in
21 1992, I found the Eco theatre group in the nursery at Casa
22 Santa Marta. Itamar was an actor. Eventually he invited me
23 to the Eco group for a Sunday meeting. I was very young
24 and I wanted to be an actress. I took theatre courses in
25 other places and tried to become an actress. The Eco group
26 captivated me, and I started working at the holiday camp.”
27 (Favela resident, 43, female)
28
29 Through her school and work with Eco, this resident aspired to
30 and then did go to college in pursuit of a degree and profession in
31 communications. She still volunteers with Eco. From her contacts in
32 the communications industry, the news organisation TVT recorded
33 the holiday camps and published a piece on them, a testament to the
34 influence of Eco, its participants, and their ability to speak to broader
35 audiences about the challenges and possibilities in Santa Marta. The
36 theatre group performed in schools, the samba school of São Gonçalo,
37 other favelas of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and in Santa Marta, and
38 other venues during a short series of tours. The group’s formation
39 and their performances are reminiscent of the Leftist politics and
40 inspirations of Boal (2006) and Freire (2005): theatre brought residents
41 together, introduced avenues of mobility around the city and beyond,
42 called forward discussion of important issues in the urban margin and
241
1 its stigmatisation, and brought some of those discussions with them

2 to the places in which they performed.
3 Perhaps less artistic but no less cultural, another example is from
4 the area of tourism. Another resident is the founder and operator of a
5 tourism initiative in Santa Marta. Born in Santa Marta and a participant
6 in Eco since adolescence, she lives there with her son and mother. From
7 her experience with Eco and while studying tourism at university in
8 the early 1990s, she sought to bring political activism into the domain
9 of tourism. In Santa Marta, she created a social enterprise in her tour
10 to achieve this. She shared that the central aim of her company is “to
11 disrupt favela stereotypes”, which she framed like this:
12
13 “We go to discussions with other groups that are developing
14 tourism in other favelas to develop a communitarian
15 tourism base. We do understand that if we do not talk about
16 the favela then people will never come here and will never
17 develop a different perspective of the favela. We have to
18 work very hard with stereotypes. Sometimes, people come
19 in here reinforcing stereotypes rather than deconstructing
20 them.” (Favela resident, 45, female)
21
22 Walking through the streets and homes in Santa Marta, she shared the
23 favela’s history, sought to educate about and provoke consideration
24 of the challenges the neighbourhood faces, and to foster discussion
25 rather than offering a romanticised or stigmatised image. Her efforts
26 directly resonate with the contemporary efforts to resignify the city’s
27 stigmatised spaces (Caldeira and Adriano, 2014).
28 Cultural expression has been a central role for progressive moments,
29 actions and activism in Santa Marta for more than 40 years. Arguably,
30 Eco’s 40-year-plus existence resides at the heart of this collective
31 mobilisation. That history is evident, too, when walking through its
32 streets. Graffiti frequently splashes across walls with political messages,
33 such as one cascading colourful representation of Santa Marta with
34 the message, ‘The rich want peace to continue to be rich, we want
35 peace to stay alive’. A statue of Michael Jackson about three quarters
36 of the way up the hill celebrates the celebrity-musician from when
37 the area was selected as one site in Rio for the filming of Jackson’s
38 video for ‘They don’t care about us’. That knowledge and statue now
39 helps funnel tourists up the slope to Santa Marta. In its shops, a range
40 of material culture produced by local artists depicts life in the favela;
41 this serves the double purpose of contributing to the local economy
42 and claiming some of the ground upon which favelas are depicted.
242
1 For the purposes of Co-Creation this history is important. Artistry

2 and activism have long been present in Santa Marta. Among the three
3 central actors of Co-Creation’s methodology – artists-researchers-
4 stakeholders – Eco members and residents form a central part of the
5 favela’s stakeholders, while the cultural vibrancy of Santa Marta only
6 expands. A strong historical relationship already existed among the
7 three methodological actors. For the researchers from the Global
8 North who arrived in Santa Marta, the capacity to do Co-Creation
9 became a moment for a meeting of knowledges of the Global North
10 and South, and of community activists, artists, and researchers. Itamar
11 Silva, played a pivotal role in this meeting and process, partly because
12 he is an organic intellectual as the next section explains.
13
14
15
Community partners, academics, and organic
16 intellectualism in Santa Marta
17 Essential to the success of Co- Creation are collaborations with
18 community partners. The community groups and individuals striving
19 to do Co-Creation are numerous and varied. How researchers link up
20 with a community and with whom are points of choice and tension.
21 Working with an entire organisation, people with specific roles, a single
22 individual, a team or group, or an amalgamation of individual activists,
23 artists, or residents – all these bring unique benefits and challenges.
24 Both how people are involved in their community and how they
25 become involved in a project carry significance for the shape, direction,
26 and success of a project. Like other participatory methodologies, Co-
27 Creation raises issues about power relations, hierarchies, and ownership
28 in the research/Co-Creation process, which need to be acknowledged
29 by all participants (Mitchell et al, 2017). The process by which the
30 team of researchers and NGO members established links for the Co-
31 Creation project in Rio de Janeiro, and therefore by which relationships
32 between project members and the community of Santa Marta began
33 to form, occurred through Itamar Silva.
34 From the beginning, some researchers from the Pontifical Catholic
35 University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC) and Grupo Eco worked with
36 the academic drivers of the project from the Global North in the
37 planning and preparation of the workshop. The research team had
38 immediate access to a researcher-community from previous PUC-Eco
39 collaborations. Because Eco opened up their network, the team were
40 able to access a range of people using cultural practices in response to
41 urban stigma, notably: activist-oriented tourism; other tour operators;
42 graffiti artists such as Tick (see Chapter 16); local residents with whom
243
1 the research team could speak and conduct activities, such as urban
2 mapping, photography, and food practices; Escola Bola’s football
3 players and coaches, with whom the research team spoke and played;
4 and slam-poets with whom the research team performed. Partly this
5 was to assist in the development of the project, but partly also it was
6 to communicate to the research team the scope of cultural activism
7 already happening in Santa Marta. To begin setting in motion all
8 of these opportunities, the Eco group brought the idea of working
9 with the research team up for discussion. Eco acted as an advocate
10 for the project, as it represented a transformative methodology using
11 creativity to combat stereotypes, promote social justice, and account
12 for perceptions of various urban actors. The project also sought to
13 bridge Eco’s commitments and agendas.
14 Since the 1970s, the favela had become a prominent area of study
15 for social scientists, notably among urban studies, anthropology,
16 and sociology. Of this work, Valladares (2019: 135) has raised the
17 question: ‘Has the favela become the location of research, rather
18 than its object?’ (p.135). The distinction here is important. The
19 former risks reifying the very social stigmas that have claimed a
20 strong representational form through a variety of knowledge sources.
21 Valladares points to three dogmas in academic research: the construction
22 of the favela as a ‘different’ space, which marks it out as separate; the
23 territorialisation of the favela as a space of and for poverty, which
24 actually fortifies this idea; and the reduction of the idea of the ‘favela’
25 into a single association, undermining the diversity, differences and
26 distinctions of favelas while treating them all the same (Valladares,
27 2019). Santa Marta, in particular, has received considerable attention
28 in the last 15 years because of its designation as the model favela
29 for pacification beginning in 2008, its location within Zona Sul, its
30 spotlighting through investment from the Federal Plan for Growth
31 Acceleration (PAC), and international attention from global sporting
32 mega-events (Gaffney, 2010; Clift and Andrews, 2012). Although
33 Eco’s leadership knew well the debates about research in favelas and
34 the challenges/possibilities that it brings, the organisation welcomed
35 the research team in the spirit of collaboration and being part of their
36 fight for social justice, both of which speak to the group’s community-
37 driven mindfulness.
38 Recognising the numerous challenges of Santa Marta residents
39 and based on his lifetime commitment to improving the quality
40 of people’s lives, Silva’s approach to leadership and political action
41 can be characterised as that of an ‘organic intellectual’. Gramsci
42 (2006) suggested that organic intellectuals carry a unique ability to
244
1 see hegemonic conceptions of the world and bring about modes

2 of thought that challenge and engage with the power structures
3 affronting self-empowerment and sovereignty. Importantly, Gramsci
4 made a distinction between ‘traditional’ professional intellectuals
5 who have established standing through specialised training, roles,
6 and professions (for example teachers, doctors, lawyers, and so
7 on) with accrued socioeconomic statuses that set them apart from
8 other sections of social and political life, and ‘organic’ intellectuals
9 who arise within and in response to political moments and the
10 challenges facing marginalised or oppressed groups. In Silva’s case, he
11 founded and led Eco while also choosing to work with two NGOs
12 and then the Instituto Brasileiro de Analises Sociais e Economicas
13 (IBASE) – a not-for-profit citizenship organisation founded in 1981
14 that contributes to public debates on social issues in Brazil and that
15 seeks to build a democratic culture of rights, strengthen associative
16 fabric of civil society, and broaden citizen participation in policy
17 making (IBASE, 2019). Maintaining his connection to Santa Marta
18 and favela life is evident not only in his employment choices but his
19 residential ones, too.
20 Silva chooses to live in Santa Marta despite having the ability to move
21 out, in what would otherwise be considered an upward socioeconomic
22 change. One professor of sociology who was an intellectual mentor to
23 Itamar spoke about his choice:
24
25 “A striking example is the fact that he did not stop living in
26 the favela, and surely he would have the financial, cultural
27 and intellectual conditions to leave. A lot of people go out
28 and stay connected in a favela, but no longer live there.
29 This is a process of upward mobility that goes beyond the
30 favela’s space. Itamar? No, he still lives there. Most of the
31 favela’s organic intellectuals leave the favela precisely because
32 they are intellectual and organic. Not Itamar. He makes a
33 point of staying in the favela. For me, it’s Itamar’s brand.”
34 (Interviewee, 70, male)
35
36 Silva’s choice to live in Santa Marta illustrates the connection he
37 shares with its people and the community while he drives forward a
38 progressive, consciousness-raising agenda. A further example of his
39 strong connection to Santa Marta, the professor noted, are the holiday
40 camps that he runs each year, remarking that Silva takes a break from
41 work to run these. Using his own holiday time away from work,
42 Silva leads Eco in its engagement with 200–300 children from Santa
245
1 Marta. In doing so, Silva reiterates the enduring relationship that he

2 has developed with the community. That professor further remarked
3 that he has “tremendous admiration for Itamar” and he is not the only
4 one. There are many scholars who research favelas and who admire
5 Silva because, as the professor went on to say, of his “authenticity as an
6 intellectual of the periphery in general and of the favela in particular
7 …. He is one of the favela’s organic intellectuals.”
8 The impact of Silva, Grupo Eco, and their cultural activism is
9 profound. Consider the following testimonies from Santa Marta
10 residents and Eco participants. One woman discussed Silva’s and Eco’s
11 presence in Santa Marta:
12
13 “Itamar is an adviser, someone you can question. Today,
14 I have a relationship with him of respect. Itamar plants the
15 seed for the future. What is the continuity for Eco? Who
16 are the next to continue it? You can’t think of Santa Marta
17 without Eco.” (Resident, 26, female)
18
19 She also communicated the impact her participation had on her:
20
21 “Today, as an adult you may be able to discern issues of
22 inequality, but when you are a teenager, especially in a
23 favela, it is very difficult for you to do so. It is very difficult
24 for you to position yourself in the world. Saying ‘No, I am
25 a beautiful, black woman, I am empowered, I can work in
26 the field I choose’ is difficult. Even to create a hope that
27 you can and are capable of achieving is hard. We know the
28 issues that limit our journey. Women in leadership positions
29 are difficult to find, but we cannot lose hope that somehow
30 we can achieve and achieve together. I think that Eco has
31 brought me, or strengthened within me, if not created this
32 feeling that I and we can win. But it is of no use if your
33 community is not with you, thriving together … . Eco
34 helped me a lot to position myself. I survived in terms of
35 gender, race, being able to speak. I work in an engineering
36 company that has many more men than women. There
37 is the issue of race and gender. I am a woman, black and
38 peripheral.” (Resident, 26, female)
39
40 Another younger resident went as far as to compare the children who
41 participate in Eco with those who do not:
42
246
1 “Eco has been here for a long time. Everyone knows this.
2 Itamar’s ideas spread. Eco is something that cannot die …
3 something we cannot let die. The children who are not
4 in Eco, unfortunately, are in drug trafficking. There are
5 teenagers who went to my classes, they are trafficking now.
6 I don’t keep in touch. They really wanted to show off, to
7 make easy money.” (Resident, 18, female)
8
9 Like the tourism activist previously quoted, these two women and
10 other residents communicated the relevance and importance of Eco
11 and Silva in improving the lives of those who choose to join Eco. The
12 group’s work is a continual community effort to challenge, refute, and
13 combat urban marginality. Silva’s character, coupled with his leadership,
14 prominence, and commitment in Santa Marta with Eco, evince the
15 character of an organic intellectual. For the research team, he became
16 the hinge through which the academic-artist-stakeholder relations
17 were made possible.
18 For researchers seeking to do Co-Creation, recognition and attention
19 must be given to the idea of who has control over a project. Researchers
20 must become comfortable with ceding control. This comes with
21 tremendous upsides in some instances, as well as several challenges.
22 In the Santa Marta case study, links were established with a person
23 and a group with such strong ties to the community that researchers
24 were linked into a network of people and places in numerous ways.
25 Yet, entering into a network of such strong communal ties also brings
26 tension.
27
28
29
Conclusion
30 The research team’s experience of Co-Creation in Santa Marta has
31 led them to recognise that what does and does not work is always
32 contingent on the people in the context of the research itself. In
33 the Santa Marta project, the people with whom the research team
34 collaborated played a pivotal role; these were predominantly Eco and
35 Itamar Silva. The context of Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro, and Brazil’s
36 broader position in the Global South offer further insights into the
37 workings of Co-Creative practices. Through these two important
38 considerations, people and context, this section offers several reflective
39 questions for readers considering Co-Creation as a methodology.
40 Collaborating in the Global South makes us aware of broader power
41 dynamics. The very authorship of this chapter drew together different
42 positionalities. The first author, Clift, is a cultural studies researcher
247
1 from the Global North who has limited time and experience in Rio de
2 Janeiro but is learning; he does not have a grasp of Portuguese beyond
3 a basic level. In Santa Marta, he represents an extreme outsider who is
4 anxious about conducting research that colonises urban marginalised
5 people. The second author, da Silva Telles, has worked as a professor
6 of sociology and urban marginality for more than 30 years. Despite
7 this track record and her location within the Global South, she, too,
8 faces challenges around producing knowledge when trying to write
9 not from the point of view of a researcher but rather from the point
10 of view of urban marginalised people. Is it up to academics to write
11 about favelas? Or is it for its residents to do this? Are there ways of
12 producing knowledge that better enable this to occur? These are
13 questions that have been placed on the table of sociology for some
14 time in the Global North and South. The third author, Silva, has a
15 vested interest in the community but he cannot speak for everyone.
16 Inside the favela, he faces the challenge of producing knowledge that
17 is valuable for residents while acknowledging the impossibility of
18 representing everyone. Collectively, the team comes from radically
19 different perspectives. This chapter itself is a good opportunity to
20 discuss and grapple with these challenges.
21 In the case of Santa Marta and Eco, a rich history of cultural activism
22 and artistry brought together in different ways already exists. It is clear
23 that artistic and creative endeavours in Santa Marta open ‘cracks in
24 the system’ (Mouffe, 2013). Thus, an important aim of this chapter
25 is to recognise the marvellous social and cultural activism that largely
26 goes unnoticed by academia that tends to see things only through its
27 own theories, methods, and views. Co-Creation is an opportunity to
28 produce knowledge through a variety of perspectives; it is one that
29 can reframe how academic knowledge is produced by doing so more
30 on the terms of those about whom it produces that knowledge. This
31 process, however, is neither simplistic nor straightforward.
32 Where cultural activism already exists, researchers from both the
33 North and South risk becoming colonisers themselves of knowledge
34 already in existence. Doing so can reify divisions within a city’s
35 centre and margin. This can also reify the divisions between the
36 Global North and South wherein the South and urban marginalised
37 people are positioned as underdeveloped and known only through a
38 colonialist or neo-imperialist fantasy. In this framing, researchers from
39 the Global North or South descend upon the favela with knowledge to
40 share or pass on to ‘uneducated’ or ‘impoverished’ favelados. Through
41 collaboration, knowledge exchange, and communication, Co-Creation
42 as a knowledge project seeks to directly disrupt this danger. In the more
248
1 collaborative spirit of Co-Creation, the process of creating together

2 enables researchers, artists, and activists/stakeholders to work together
3 to further advance the agendas already set in motion through a new
4 or modified series of actions that develop something that otherwise
5 would not be possible.
6 The artistic and creative elements of Co-Creation are intended
7 to be the instrument that ‘levels’ differential voices or footings that
8 systemic power structures typically reinforce (see Chapter 1). Doing
9 so can generate a respectful and mutually beneficial way of advancing
10 socially progressive agendas. In the Santa Marta case study, this
11 resulted in a collective reflection on Santa Marta from a diversity of
12 perspectives – its challenges and potentiality. Only in a few moments
13 in its history have its leaders and activities been brought face-to-face,
14 without tension, to discuss local projects and dynamics. The process
15 of Co-Creation broke some internal resistances that enabled these
16 discussions to happen. Moreover, the role switching between actors
17 enabled a renewal of views of the favela. Residents and leaders who
18 live in a favela can reproduce the favela based solely on their specific
19 struggles and points of view, and thus lose the ability to account for a
20 diversity of actors and the complexity of demands. Artists, residents,
21 leaders, and activists who participated in the project experience Santa
22 Marta a little more broadly, opening views and potentials.
23 The artist-researcher-stakeholder triad poses an earnest, relationship-
24 focused process for Co-Creation. Who sets the agenda? Engaging
25 with community partners, researchers must recognise that this triadic
26 relationship has several impacts on the possibilities of research. Any
27 entry point into a community opens up opportunities but closes others.
28 In Santa Marta, the Co-Creation project was delimited by working with
29 Silva and Eco. As such, the research team gained access to the people
30 and spaces familiar to this group, but the people who do not regularly
31 engage with Eco were excluded. There is a significant portion of the
32 community that the research team did not reach and there are likely
33 other Santa Marta organisations with whom to work on Co-Creation.
34 One strategy for overcoming this can be ‘snowballing’ from initial
35 contacts to the wider community. Doing so requires time and care
36 to maintain a positive and productive relationship with those people
37 from whom we snowball. This is a seriously challenging endeavour for
38 work that includes numerous researchers who predominantly live and
39 work in the Global North. Nor can we link up with one person just
40 to get to another, which effectively undermines the collaborative and
41 collective spirit of Co-Creation. For researchers, the agenda must be
42
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1 open to change based on the needs, interests, motivations, and passions

2 of those living within a given context.
3 Relatedly, in practice how do Co-Creation participants envision their
4 relationship to the people of a project? Co-Creation requires researchers
5 to be diverse in their interactions. In some instances, researchers can
6 lead whereas in others they can be participants. The ability to shift our
7 roles and interactions is always contingent upon the location, the time
8 available to people, language differences, and so forth. How close or
9 how far are the researchers and the place chosen for Co-Creation? In
10 Santa Marta, people are already engaged in the artistry and activism
11 aligned in response to iniquitous conditions.
12 In this position, researchers must ask: What is our role here? What
13 and how do we contribute? Do we bring anything new to the table?
14 Are we just incorporating these forms of knowledge production in
15 the academy (and in doing so are we at risk of becoming colonisers
16 ourselves)? Are we (academic) reporters? Or are we trying to do
17 something new with these groups, where our presence has a positive
18 impact on the artistry-activism already happening? In a context where
19 there is little organisation, such a project would look radically different.
20 Our first task in Co-Creation, then, is to begin to know a place, its
21 people, their organisation, and their histories.
22 If Co-Creation is to be a successful knowledge project to and for the
23 people for whom it claims to represent, speak, and speak with, then
24 it necessarily must openly reflect upon the relationships it develops in
25 the process of its unfolding. Consider that, with Eco, Itamar Silva has
26 been active in the fight against urban marginalisation in Rio de Janeiro
27 for more than 40 years: who, then, is the ‘expert’ or ‘intellectual’ here?
28 Listening is one of the most powerful things researchers can do. Too
29 quickly researchers can become complicit in the writing of the Other
30 (Spivak, 1988; Ribeiro, 2019). Fine (1994) suggested, like Spivak
31 (1988) and Scott (1988), that rather than try to ‘know’ or ‘give voice’
32 researchers should listen to the voices of those Othered, as themselves
33 constructors and agents of knowledge. In this reflective chapter, the
34 research team aimed to listen and write together, a Global North
35 researcher, a Global South researcher, and an organic intellectual of
36 the favela.
37 This reflective illustration, contextualisation, and working of hyphens
38 compel us to constantly locate our work within broader power
39 formations as we consider the roles of those involved. In Brazil, such
40 considerations assist in thinking through Valladares’s (2019) rhetorical
41 question: on whose terms is the favela (re)invented? In thinking through
42
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1 both the processes and products of Co-Creation , asking this question

2 is a necessity in all cities and their margins.
3
4 References
5 Banks, S. and Hart, A. (2018) Co-producing Research: A Community
6 Development Approach, Bristol: Policy Press.
7 Boal, A. (2006) The Aesthetics of the Oppressed (translated by A. Jackson),
8 London: Routledge.
9 Bourne, R. (2008) Lula of Brazil: The Story So Far, Los Angeles,
10 CA: University of California Press.
11 Caldeira, T. and Adriano, S. (2014) ‘Gênero continua a ser o campo
12 de batalhas: juventude, produção cultural e a reinvenção do espaço
13 público em São Paulo’, Revista USP, (102): 83–100.
14 Clift, B.C. and Andrews, D.L. (2012) ‘Living Lula’s passion: the politics
15 of Rio 2016’, in H.J. Lenskyi and S. Wagg (eds) The Palgrave Handbook
16 of Olympic Studies, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 210–32.
17 Davis, M. (2006) Planet of Slums, London: Verso.
18 Dagnino, E. (2006) ‘Dimensions of citizenship in contemporary
19 Brazil’,Fordham L. Rev., 75, 2469.
20 Ferrero, J.P., Natalucci, A. and Tatagiba, L. (eds) (2019) Socio-
21 Political Dynamics within the Crisis of the Left: Argentina and Brazil,
22 London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
23 Fine, M. (1994) ‘Working the hyphens: reinventing self and other in
24 qualitative research’, in N. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) Handbook
25 of Qualitative Research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp 70–82.
26 Freire, P. (2005) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (translated by M.B. Ramos),
27 New York, NY: Continuum.
28 Frenzel, F. (2016) Slumming It, London: Zed Books.
29 Gaffney, C. (2010) ‘Mega-events and socio-spatial dynamics in Rio
30 de Janeiro, 1919–2016’, Journal of Latin American Geography, 7–29.
31 Gramsci, A. (2006) ‘Hegemony, intellectuals and the state’, in
32 J. Story (ed) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, Athens,
33 GA: University of Georgia Press, pp 85–91.
34 Instituto Brasileiro de Analises Sociais e Economicas (IBASE) (2019)
35 iBase, available from https://ibase.br/pt/.
36 Mitchell, C., De Lange, N. and Moletsane, R. (2017) Participatory Visual
37 Methodologies: Social Change, Community and Policy, London: Sage.
38 Mouffe, C. ( 2013 ) Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically ,
39 London: Verso.
40 Scott, J.W. (1988) ‘Deconstructing equality versus difference’, Feminist
41 Studies, 14(1): 32–50.
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1 Spivak, G.C. (1988) ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in C. Nelson and
2 L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana,
3 IL: University of Illinois Press, pp 280–316.
4 Pandolfi , D.C. and Grynszpan , M. (orgs) ( 2003 ) A Favela
5 Fala: Depoimentos ao CPDOC, Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV.
6 Perlman, J. (2009) Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de
7 Janeiro, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
8 Ribeiro, D. (2019) Lugar de Fala, Chapel Hill, NC: Pólen Produção
9 Editorial LTDA.
10 Valladares, L.d.P. (2019) The invention of the favela (translated by R.N.
11 Anderson), Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
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1 16
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5
Artist-researcher collaborations
6 in Co-Creation: redesigning favela
7
8
tourism around graffiti
9
10 Leandro ‘Tick’ Rodrigues and Christina Horvath
11
12
13
14
15
Introduction
16 As the previous chapters have demonstrated, each Co- Creation
17 experience is unique. Project outcomes and dynamics vary greatly
18 from one project to the other depending on their origins, length, the
19 actors who initiated them and the interactions between the originators
20 and other participants. Workshops can be instigated by academics with
21 expertise in research design, by artists familiar with creative techniques
22 or local actors knowledgeable about issues relevant to the community.
23 Roles are, however, rarely clear-cut and several combinations are
24 possible, including those of artist-researchers, community researchers
25 or community artists.
26 This chapter explores an artist-driven Co-Creation experience
27 initiated by a graffiti artist from the Global South who is also an
28 activist embedded in a local community. This bottom-up, organic
29 Co-Creation experience was supported by a group of researchers
30 from a Global North university and the analysis presented in this
31 chapter has been produced collaboratively by the artist and one of the
32 researchers. This close collaboration between artist and researchers and
33 Global South and Global North participants presented the two authors
34 with multiple opportunities to observe how trust-based relationships
35 are developed between participants of different backgrounds and to
36 reflect on the role of the artist as the project initiator, as well as on
37 the researchers’ contribution to both the creative process and the
38 knowledge production.
39 The initiative took place in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Tabajaras
40 & Cabritos in July–August 2019. It was designed by graffiti artist
41 Leandro Rodrigues – aka Tick – in collaboration with four social
42 science researchers from the University of Bath and a group of local
253
1 residents and stakeholders. Its aim was to establish a new walking tour
2 focusing on street art in and around Tabajaras & Cabritos by extending
3 a previous favela tour, which had been discontinued in 2017 due to the
4 increase of violence in the neighbourhood. Including larger sections
5 of the surrounding areas of Copacabana, Bairro Peixoto and Botafogo
6 was seen by Tick as a potential way to make the tour sustainable, as
7 it would allow guides to avoid areas of risk on days of armed conflict
8 in the favela. The redesign also gave the opportunity to shift from
9 the tour’s previous focus on favela lifestyle, local history and political
10 resistance to a new narrative about creativity, socially engaged street
11 art and collaboration between artists and communities living on the
12 margin. While this shift required painting additional murals in the area
13 and renovating some of the existing ones, it was seen by the participants
14 as an opportunity to attract new audiences who normally avoid favela
15 tours, change visitors’ perceptions about disadvantaged communities,
16 improve residents’ skills and self-esteem and create new synergies
17 between them and the visitors.
18 Situated in the city’s South Zone between Copacabana and Botafogo,
19 Tabajaras & Cabritos stretches between the streets of Siqueira Campos
20 and Real Grandeza. It is crossed by a wooded hiking path that offers
21 spectacular views of the city’s landmarks. The community’s 4,243
22 inhabitants (Census, 2010) have access to electricity, running water,
23 sanitation and healthcare. The arrival of the UPP (Pacifying Police
24 Unit) in 2010 brought about a period of relative peace and prosperity,
25 which contributed to urban growth, gentrification and rising property
26 prices (Almeida, 2014).
27 A study undertaken in 2012 by Rio de Janeiro-based business
28 management consultant SEBRAE (Brazilian Support Service to
29 Micro and Small Entrepreneurs in Rio de Janeiro) exposed the favela’s
30 potential for alternative forms of tourism including ecotourism,
31 cyclotourism, and community-based, cultural and adventure tourism
32 (Sampaio Correia et al, 2013). It also highlighted that 99 per cent of
33 the residents were favourable to receiving visitors and tourists in the
34 community (Sampaio Correia et al, 2013: 58). The start-up Tabritours,
35 launched in 2012 by certified guide Gilmar Lopes, exploited the
36 opportunities created by the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016
37 Olympic Games to employ up to 220 residents during these large
38 events. It was, however, discontinued in 2017 after the Olympics were
39 over and the security issues returned (Interview Gilmar Lopes, 2019).
40 Tick, who initiated the workshop, had been working with Tabritours
41 previously. He was also familiar with Co-Creation methods since
42 he was involved in a previous Co-Creation initiative in the favela of
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page 255 Artist-researcher collaborations in Co-Creation
1 Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro, in the summer of 2018 (see Chapters 4,

2 5 and 15). The communication between Tick and the group of four
3 researchers from Bath was facilitated by the fact that one member of
4 the team was a graffiti writer. After about one year of preparatory
5 planning, Tick invited the researchers, along with local stakeholders
6 and members from the community, to contribute to the collaborative
7 design of an open-air street art gallery and a walking tour in his
8 neighbourhood. The participants agreed on using Co-Creation to
9 develop a shared understanding of local challenges and opportunities
10 which would underpin the tour’s narrative. Co-Creation was selected for
11 its potential to make unheard voices emerge and to combine practice-
12 based knowledge that exists within the community with scholarly
13 understandings of sustainable and ethical tourism developed by the
14 researchers. It was anticipated that further reciprocal benefits of using
15 this methodology would include opportunities to test Co-Creation in
16 a context of urban disadvantage and examine its potential to promote
17 an exchange between epistemologies of the Global South and North.
18 Co- Creation aims to create a safe environment in which all
19 participants commit to respect each other and recognise and
20 mitigate power inequalities existing within the group. In this case,
21 such inequalities included diverging levels of artistic skills, unequal
22 access to financial resources (the initiative used EU funding for the
23 Co-Creation project), and the uneven distribution of academic and
24 community-based knowledge. At the start of the six-week experiment,
25 focusing on the redesign, participants defined Co-Creation as a
26 methodology seeking to counter stereotypes, promoting equality,
27 creativity and new synergies between participants, and encouraging
28 alternative visions that take into account stakeholders’ perceptions. The
29 group agreed that, to be successful, the workshop should help them
30 develop a shared vision for the tour, provide participants with new
31 skills and opportunities for self-expression, and increase community
32 members’ networks.
33
34
35
Favela tourism in Rio de Janeiro
36 Tourism in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas started in the 1990s and has grown
37 into an industry attracting approximately 40,000 visitors annually
38 (Freire-Medeiros, 2013). In recent years, a wealth of literature has
39 addressed tours that exploit outsiders’ curiosity about disadvantaged
40 urban areas in Brazil and elsewhere. Such tours have been referred
41 to as ‘slum tourism’, ‘social tours’, ‘reality tours’, ‘cultural tourism’,
42 ‘poverty tourism’ and ‘poorism’ (Burgold and Rolfes, 2013).
255
1 Some suggest that tourists’ main motivation for participating in such

2 walks is either a morbid curiosity for poverty or philanthropy. However,
3 Carter (2017) and Dovey and King (2012) have demonstrated that many
4 visitors are less attracted by poverty than by picturesque vernacular
5 architecture, utopic communities and village-like social links. They
6 often see favelas as inventive, creative and resilient communities
7 engaged in a struggle for self-liberation (Carter, 2017: 424). Such
8 qualities particularly appeal to tourists alienated by neoliberalism,
9 solitude, rationalism or lack of agency in the Global North (Carter,
10 2017: 424). According to Burgold and Rolfes (2013: 166), most favela
11 tours are marketed as ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ and, similar to ecotourism
12 or volunteer tourism, they seek to anticipate and counter tourists’
13 moral doubts by projecting themselves ‘as a more desirable alternative
14 to usual programmes of mass tourism … characterised by sameness,
15 crudeness’ (170).
16 Ethical preoccupations are core to most research focusing on favela
17 tours. Scholars often flag up either their morally dubious aspects
18 (such as voyeurism, intrusion into the residents’ privacy and dignity,
19 exploitation, and markedly asymmetrical relationships between the
20 tourists and the residents) or their positive, philanthropic goals. Most
21 research suggests that, to be ethical and mutually beneficial for visitors
22 and host communities, tours have to avoid excessive and disrespectful
23 photography and zoo-like sightseeing, and should promote agency,
24 contribute to develop residents’ self-esteem and networks, generate
25 material benefits for residents, local entrepreneurs and social projects,
26 and challenge predominantly negative perceptions (dangerous, stagnant,
27 dirty, criminal, lacking hygiene and education) by replacing these
28 with positive attributes (entrepreneurship, initiative, activity, hope,
29 education, culture, creativity and community). Research has also
30 shown that most tours actually do improve tourists’ opinions (Burgold
31 and Rolfes, 2013: 167) even if language barriers and asymmetries in
32 income, social status and mobility often impede genuine exchange
33 between hosts and visitors.
34 While most authors assume that community-based tourism provides
35 ‘a meaningful and transformative experience that is rewarding for both
36 tourists and local communities’, Dürr and Jaffe (2012) also show that
37 ‘cultural productions, from mural to photo exhibitions to movies and
38 socio-religious innovations’ allow residents to ‘take action themselves,
39 using tourism as a means to advance their goals by representing and
40 performing a more favourable image to a global audience’ (2012: 115–
41 6). Therefore, they consider that residents’ involvement in organising
42 and guiding tours, setting up museums, and interacting with tourists
256
1 as artists or artisans provides an opening for more nuanced alternative

2 representations which use global connections to achieve local change
3 (Dürr and Jaffe, 2012: 116).
4 In her analysis of street art in relation to tourism, Klein (2018) noted
5 that the patrimonialisation of street art and its increasing incorporation
6 into processes of urban regeneration since the mid-2000s resulted in
7 the emergence of initiatives seeking to attract tourists to urban areas
8 prominent in street art production. Graffiti tours call into question
9 conventional oppositions between ordinary and extraordinary and
10 touristic and non-touristic places. They propose multidimensional
11 cultural experiences to satisfy the needs of an emerging market for
12 more differentiated goods and services. Similar to favela tours, street
13 art tourism claims to offer a ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ experience to those
14 who seek to discover ‘within a controlled and secure framework’
15 (Klein, 2018: 60) an originally criminalised practice born and located
16 in conflicted or segregated neighbourhoods. However, unlike favela
17 tours, which tend to be community-based and mainly attract tourists
18 from other countries or regions, street art tours are generally offered
19 as private products destined for young urban visitors, both foreign
20 and local (Klein, 2018: 65–66). Thus, street art tourism has a stronger
21 potential to attract local tourists who generally shun favela destinations
22 and also a better capacity to revalorise urban areas, change perceptions,
23 divert attention from the extraordinary to the everyday, and create
24 spaces of participation, conviviality and dialogue.
25 From the researchers’ initial review of favela tourism in Rio, it
26 was found that, while there is substantial research on tourism in
27 Rocinha and Santa Marta, tours in other South-Zone favelas such as
28 Tabajaras & Cabritos constitute an under-researched area. To build an
29 understanding of the South-Zone tours currently on offer and their
30 narratives, the team undertook a series of participant observations
31 on walks run by community-based guides in Santa Marta, Vidigal,
32 Cantagalo and Babilônia. Most of these walking tours had a general
33 focus and promoted a historical approach, with the notable exception
34 of the tour in Babilônia which focused on hiking. Guides addressed
35 the origins of the foundation, naming and construction of each favela
36 and emphasised the residents’ resistance to material difficulties and
37 political adversity. Visits by famous people (such as the Pope, Michael
38 Jackson or Barack Obama) and cultural products (films, videos featuring
39 favelas) were also mentioned. The presence of crèches, schools, non-
40 governmental organisations (NGOs), resident associations, sport and
41 dance facilities, and other social projects inside the communities was
42 equally highlighted. Guides indicated the best views, but not all of
257
1 them encouraged tourists to buy local drinks, food or artefacts. Tours

2 were presented as authentic experiences, although it was not always
3 clearly explained how they contributed to the community. The
4 presence of the UPP, police pacification, political and security issues
5 were mentioned sporadically and, in some cases, visitors were warned
6 from taking photographs in certain places.
7 While street art was visible in most favelas, it was rarely made
8 prominent in the tours. In Cantagalo and Santa Marta, murals
9 representing residents carrying water or construction materials were
10 used as mere illustrations for local history but no attention was dedicated
11 to their aesthetic qualities. In Cantagalo and Vidigal, guides mentioned
12 some local artists and initiatives aiming to establish open-air galleries.
13 However, tours generally failed to discuss how these initiatives related
14 to street art culture in Rio de Janeiro and none of them provided
15 information about the techniques and styles used by the artists. In
16 contrast, a feminist-themed street art tour observed in the city centre
17 around Olympic Avenue provided some biographic data about female
18 artists and a more coherent narrative about their difficulties and
19 messages. Yet contextual information about the city’s graffiti scene
20 and artists’ distinctive aesthetics were not included in this tour either.
21 The literature review and the observations allowed the artist and the
22 researchers to develop an in-depth understanding of the niche market
23 on which the tour designed by Tick intended to focus. Developed at
24 the intersection of community-based tourism and street art tourism,
25 the tour in Tabajaras & Cabritos could tap into local guides’ knowledge
26 of the community including local history, social projects and lifestyle
27 while also providing information about street art’s aesthetic evolution,
28 role and day-to-day functioning in Rio’s South Zone and its impact on
29 favela populations. This original and authentic angle appeared to have
30 a strong potential to attract a diverse tourist population including local,
31 Brazilian and foreign visitors, thereby offering multiple opportunities
32 to confront and challenge stereotypes about favelas.
33
34
35
Leandro Tick and socially engaged street art in
36 Rio de Janeiro
37 This section will introduce socially engaged graffiti artist Leandro
38 Tick (see Figures 16.1 and 16.2). Tick was born in the Northeast of
39 Brazil and arrived in Tabajaras & Cabritos in 1992 at the age of eight.
40 A self-taught artist, he started using spray paint around the age of 13
41 and completed his first wall in 2001 at the age of 17. He first began to
42 produce murals in the neighbourhood using magazines and relied on
258
1 Figure 16.1: Self-portrait by Tick.

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33 online media and contact with other artists to improve his technique.
34 He has progressively developed a figurative style, using bright colours
35 and natural elements including birds, plants, flowers and trees. Today
36 he is known for his photographic portraits, distinctive cityscapes
37 representing symbolic rather than realistic favelas, as well as for his
38 interest in collaborative, participatory projects.
39 Street art gained prominence in the context of urban marginality in
40 New York in the 1960s and 1970s and spread rapidly across the world
41 as an expression of marginalised urban youth (Klein, 2018: 57). In
42 Brazil, artists have used it as a coping mechanism for the long-lasting
259
1 Figure 16.2: Tick painting.

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19
20 challenges of poverty, inequality, and violence (Bates 2017, Manco
21 et al, 2005). In 2009, the year in which Brazil won the bid for the
22 Olympic Games, the government decriminalised graffiti on buildings
23 produced with the owners’ consent. According to Bates, this law
24 reinforced the demarcation between furtive tagging (pichação) and
25 street art (grafite), the first one engaged in the reproduction of the
26 artists’ signatures in a cryptic style, the latter interested in developing
27 a more complex aesthetics with a message. Vital da Cunha (2016: 56)
28 suggests that public (either state or municipal) support for legal graffiti
29 in the run-up to the 2014 and 2016 mega events was part of a broader
30 strategy aiming to improve the city’s image after decades of urban
31 violence (on the violence see Soares, 1996; Machado da Silva, 2008)
32 and to resignify Rio de Janeiro as a ‘beautiful, lush, harmonious city’
33 drawing on previous stereotypes of the beautiful, sensual, and relaxed
34 ‘Carioca way of being’ (Vital da Cunha, 2016: 55). The legalisation,
35 however, has also allowed artists to voice criticism toward social
36 segregation, misgovernment, forced removals, aggressive policing and
37 the assassination of city councillor Marielle Franco in 2018.
38 According to Vilas Boas, street artists can develop participatory ways
39 of thinking about and occupying public space (2015: 181) thereby
40 activating various concepts of the city as a place of encounter, memory,
41 and artistic and cultural activism. Imas (2014) also notes that favela
42 painting presents a ‘discourse of social change and of engagement
260
1 that invites co-participation and co-creation in order to improve the

2 quality of life of favelas from within’ (blogpost). Tick’s engagement
3 with the community in Tabajaras & Cabritos is a good example of this.
4 He has developed strong links with his neighbourhood by painting
5 walls both inside Tabajaras & Cabritos and in the surrounding areas.
6 He has collaborated with local businesses, NGOs and institutions, for
7 example by creating scenery for theatre company Abraço da Paz (‘Kiss
8 of Peace’) in 2014 and by painting a mural in the João Barros Barreto
9 family clinic in 2019.
10 Tick has been exploring various avenues as an artist, teacher,
11 neighbourhood activist, and event organiser. He has been offering arts
12 workshops to children aged 12–17, initially in Tabajaras & Cabritos and
13 later also in Duque de Caxias with the NGO, Ojubá Axé. In 2006, he
14 brought together over 40 artists for a first encounter entitled ‘Graffiti
15 in the favela’ in which residents were also invited to participate. He
16 collaborated with the Green Star Movement from the US, participated
17 in the collective exhibit of the group Eixo Rio and hosted several large-
18 scale graffiti encounters, including successive editions of ‘Artitude’ in
19 2006, 2008, 2015 and 2018.
20 In 2007, he co- founded the social project CALLE to attract
21 volunteers to Tabajaras & Cabritos. CALLE, which welcomed
22 volunteers from all over the world, offered art and graffiti courses
23 as well as English, Spanish, yoga, theatre and meditation classes to
24 about 50 young people aged 8–18. Tick was also actively involved in
25 ‘Viva Bairro’, a cultural project which started in 2015 and sought to
26 identify and involve multiple stakeholders in changing perceptions
27 and improving the environment. In Tabajaras & Cabritos, the project’s
28 main objective was to integrate existing cultural and environmental
29 initiatives, such as community gardening, environmental education,
30 graffiti classes, the training of young local tourist guides and the
31 signposting and maintenance of tourist trails. Due to worsening
32 insecurity, the end of the project funding and the departure of some
33 core members, many of these activities came to a halt in 2017. Tick,
34 however, remains confident that a street-art-focused walking tour
35 can be made sustainable and would help residents to develop agency,
36 skills and networks. He believes that, as places of creativity where
37 an important part of the origins of Rio de Janeiro’s culture resides,
38 favelas will always attract and fascinate visitors. He seeks to promote a
39 form of community-based tourism that would be able to channel this
40 fascination towards equal and mutually beneficial encounters between
41 communities and visitors.
42
261
1
Co-Creating a street art tour in Tabajaras & Cabritos
2
3 Dürr and Jaffe (2012) suggest that community-based tours engaging
4 with globally and nationally circulating spatial imaginaries can draw
5 ‘on positive images of local cultural achievements … to combat the
6 stigma of poverty, violence and crime’ (2012: 120). Street art plays a
7 prominent role in performing cultural resilience, since it simultaneously
8 provides evidence for creativity and local culture, represents collective
9 memory, strengthens resilience and networks of solidarity, and
10 contributes to the residents’ self-esteem and well-being. The research
11 in Tabajaras-Cabritos aimed to capture the interplay between the artist,
12 stakeholders and residents by observing three events: a stakeholder
13 consultation meeting, a collective painting and a walking tour designed
14 by Leandro Tick.
15 The stakeholder meeting took place at the João Barros Barreto
16 family clinic. Tick invited the four researchers and a mixed group of
17 nine residents and stakeholders to get involved in the inception of a
18 walking tour. The stakeholders were social workers, NGO members,
19 and professionals working in tourism, healthcare, sport and education.
20 The vice-president of the Residents’ Association and a graffiti artist
21 from Duque de Caxias also joined the meeting. Several participants
22 accumulated different roles and some of them had previously
23 contributed to similar projects in other favelas. The meeting was
24 chaired by the artist, who briefly introduced the two interconnected
25 aims of his initiative: transforming the neighbourhood into an open-
26 air urban art gallery relevant to both local and international audiences,
27 and developing a sustainable walking tour in Tabajaras & Cabritos,
28 Copacabana, Bairro Peixoto and Botafogo with local guides telling
29 the story of the area through street art.
30 Participants were invited to make suggestions about the project’s aims,
31 content and methods. The most important goals emerging from the
32 discussion concerned the involvement of vulnerable young people in
33 collaborative networks and the destigmatisation of the favela. Including
34 teenage residents in creative collaborations was recommended by a
35 health professional as a way to counter tendencies of self-harm among
36 local youths. The founder of an educational NGO saw attracting
37 foreign tourists and changing their preconceptions about favelas as an
38 effective way to act on the perception of Brazilians at the same time.
39 Participants suggested including art, culture, creativity, gastronomy
40 and social projects into the tour. They recommended strategies
41 successfully tested in other favelas, such as involving local leaders and
42 social projects, constructing networks of solidarity, organising cultural
262
1 events and a barbecue focusing on collective memory. The latter

2 suggestion was accepted as a means to raise residents’ awareness about
3 the project and involve them in selecting themes for the open-air
4 gallery. The invited graffiti artist, Carlos Bobi, talked about the pros
5 and cons of sponsorship and shared his experience of organising the
6 largest charitable graffiti painting in Latin America. This annual event,
7 the ‘Meeting of Favela’, requires that participating artists engage with
8 local residents and discuss their designs with them in order to obtain
9 their permission to paint. Attracting prominent visitors, foreigners and
10 the press was suggested as a way to avoid the cancellation of collective
11 painting by the police. Finally, participants agreed on meeting on the
12 following Sunday for a barbecue followed by the collective painting
13 of a mural.
14 The Sunday event brought together the artist, the researchers, and
15 some of the residents and stakeholders. The painting was led by Tick
16 in collaboration with one of the researchers, who is also a graffiti
17 writer. Since the order of the painting and the barbecue was reversed
18 due to logistic reasons, the theme and the design of the painting were
19 improvised rather than discussed and set collectively. The participants
20 painted the word Co- Criação (‘Co- Creation’ in Portugese) on a
21 geometrical background (see Figure 16.3). This simple design allowed
22 even beginners to participate in the colouring. Once the design was
23 completed, the two artists drew the contours and all participants signed
24 their names. At the end, Tick painted a broken guitar and the words
25 ‘#Pressaõvive’. This was to commemorate Alessandre Duarte, known
26 as Pressaõ, the director of the local samba school, who was killed in a
27 shooting on 17 July 2019. The painting was followed by a barbecue
28 where the participants continued their discussions with other residents.
29 A week later Tick invited the group of researchers to test the
30 two-hour walking tour he had designed and to comment on it (see
31 Figure 16.4). The tour departed from Copacabana, crossed Tunnel
32 Velho where the group entered Tabajaras & Cabritos on the Botafogo
33 side through the area known as Villa Rica. Participants enjoyed the
34 view on the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas and stopped at several murals
35 on the way. Finally, they crossed the centre of the favela where most
36 restaurants and businesses are located and returned to the formal city
37 on Siqueira Campos Street. The tour focused on street art both inside
38 and around the favela and provided explanations about facades and
39 murals created by a variety of artists. It evoked collaborations between
40 various artists as well as occasional sponsorship by local business owners
41 in exchange for advertising. Tick talked about the code of conduct of
42 the artists, the maintenance of open-air artwork and the dynamics of
263
1 Figure 16.3: The workshop participants posing in front of the mural they painted
2 together in Tabajaras & Cabritos.
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17 Source: Christina Horvath.
18 working with the community. The urban development of Tabajaras
19 & Cabritos before, during and after the Olympic Games was equally
20 addressed and some social projects were briefly mentioned. The tour
21 visited several murals painted by Tick himself, including portraits of
22 residents, cityscapes and designs created for institutions and businesses.
23 After the walk, the researchers provided Tick with their feedback on
24 the tour. They found the combination of the community focus and
25 street art authentic and arguably distinct from all the tours previously
26 observed. Nonetheless, they noted that compared to other walks,
27 Tick’s tour was less politically engaged and an overarching narrative was
28 missing. They recommended including more background information
29 about the favela context, as well as the history of street art in Rio de
30 Janeiro with particular focus on prominent artists’ styles, aims and
31 political messages. The development of two versions of the same tour,
32 the one diving more in-depth into street art techniques and history
33 and the other providing more details about street art’s connection with
34 the favela and its social projects, was also suggested.
35 Some of the feedback was concerned with organisational and security
36 issues such as keeping the group together, indicating the itinerary and
37 the length of the walk in advance, providing information about the
38 level of walking difficulty, and guidelines on security. Other comments
39 confronted the artist with the expectations of the stakeholders who
40 wanted gastronomy and social projects to be emphasised in the tour.
41 Based on the outcomes of both the stakeholder consultation and the
42 literature review, the researchers recommended that Tick increase the
264
1 Figure 16.4: The walk in and around Tabajaras & Cabritos.

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
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27
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29
30
31
32
33
34
35 Source: Leandro ‘Tick’ Rodrigues
36
37 benefits for the community by including a break in a bar or restaurant,
38 encouraging the consumption of food or drinks in the community,
39 and advertising services available in Tabajaras such as the mountain
40 trail or a samba or martial art experience. They also advised facilitating
41 spontaneous encounters between visitors and residents through visits
42 to local institutions and social projects when security permits.
265
1
Conclusion
2
3 This final section will attempt to assess how Co-Creation worked in
4 this particular case study and to draw some broader conclusions about
5 the role of artist(s), researcher(s) and community participant(s) in Co-
6 Creation projects.
7 As a socially engaged street artist, Tick was the driving force behind
8 this particular Co-Creation initiative. From the start, he was convinced
9 about graffiti’s potential to integrate different viewpoints, record the
10 community’s history and memories, and promote fair exchanges of
11 knowledge. As a member of the community, he was familiar with key
12 challenges including insecurity, stigmatisation, isolation and the lack of
13 state and municipal support for community-based art projects. Known
14 in Tabajaras as an independent agent with integrity and authenticity,
15 he was able to successfully mediate between the researchers and the
16 community and use his longstanding networks to involve residents
17 and stakeholders with relevant complementary experience in the
18 dialogue. His participation in previous attempts to develop sustainable
19 community-based tourism also facilitated the exchange between
20 academic and vernacular ways of knowledge production. Due to his
21 familiarity with artistic and pedagogic techniques and his experience
22 of working with his students and other artists, Tick knew how to
23 involve non-artists in the collaborative painting of a mural. Moreover,
24 the involvement of communities in identifying locally relevant themes
25 and the collaborative elaboration of designs were already part of his
26 methodology aiming to promote a positive vision about being a citizen,
27 valuing local history and caring about the place where people live.
28 Although Tick approved the Co-Creation ethos and had an in-
29 depth understanding of it, this was not always sufficient to keep the
30 process fully in line with the Co-Creation principles. Despite careful
31 planning, the process often took unexpected turns and unfolded
32 in unpredictable ways due to unforeseen circumstances. Thus, the
33 collective painting was preceded by only one consultation meeting
34 with stakeholders, which some key local actors (for example the
35 leader of the environmental education project) were not able to
36 attend. Only the stakeholders residing in Tabajaras took part in the
37 subsequent painting and this was not preceded by collective decision
38 making about the theme and the design. Participants acquired some
39 basic painting skills during the event, experienced feelings of pride
40 and ownership, broadened their networks, engaged in discussion with
41 the researchers and each other, and contributed to shaping the street
42 art tour with their comments. However, they did not become equal
266
1 partners in the creative process, which remained under the artist’s

2 control. This was particularly perceptible when Tick spontaneously
3 added the symbol of the broken guitar to the collectively painted
4 work, turning it into a commemorative wall with a political message
5 relevant to the community.
6 The experience has also revealed that, while Co-Creation has the
7 potential to enable communities to initiate positive change in their
8 neighbourhoods and develop agency, the process itself is dependent on a
9 number of external factors which cannot be fully controlled by them. It
10 exposed that the time, effort, involvement, dedication, professionalism,
11 and goodwill local actors invest in the process is not always sufficient
12 to fight the problems of insecurity and lack of political support and
13 funding which can affect and undermine the process. Due to the lack
14 of government support for arts-based community projects in Rio de
15 Janeiro’s favelas, many residents have lost their faith in state-funded
16 initiatives and feel abandoned. The foreign research funding made
17 available for this case study could only temporarily alleviate the general
18 lack of resources for Co-Creation projects in Tabajaras & Cabritos.
19 This leads to a reflection about the contribution of the researchers
20 to the Co-Creation process. While the researchers relied on Tick’s
21 network to access the community and benefited from his technical
22 aptitude, dedication and leadership throughout the process, they
23 contributed to the project with funding for honoraria, paint and
24 consumables, their experience of academic knowledge production and
25 access to international channels of dissemination. The outcomes of the
26 literature review and participant observation enabled the researchers
27 to critically assess the artist’s methods and tour draft and provide him
28 with constructive feedback. Through close collaboration with the artist,
29 they exposed him to different methodologies and ways of knowledge
30 production. Their paper presentations and publications will continue
31 to contribute to the artist’s international renown beyond the lifetime
32 of the project. The mural painted with the researchers’ support and
33 collaboration has become part of the open-air gallery. We can conclude
34 that the artist- researcher collaboration was ethical and mutually
35 beneficial overall and the underlying power relations were balanced.
36 Although this six-week experiment did not fully comply with the
37 Co-Creation principles at all times, it contributed to raising the artist’s
38 and stakeholders’ awareness of ethical issues about community-based
39 tourism, the potential of Co-Creation methodologies and the challenges
40 and possibilities of a street art tour. The tour drafted by Tick was the
41 most Co-Creative outcome of the research insofar as it was shaped
42 by expectations voiced by stakeholders, the artist’s street-art-specific
267
1 knowledge and the researchers’ suggestions based on the literature

2 review and participant observation. This collaboration could constitute
3 the first stage of a longer process leading to the consolidation of the
4 street art tour through further Co-Creation events aimed at eliciting
5 feedback from the stakeholders and residents, testing the tour’s ability
6 to attract tourists and impact on their views and measuring its impact
7 on the community.
8 Finally, it is worth reflecting on what makes Co-Creation initiatives
9 successful in general and how they differ from other forms of artist-
10 driven initiatives involving communities. In this particular case study,
11 the Co-Creation was based on a close collaboration between the artist
12 and the researchers which evolved progressively over one year through
13 online correspondence, face-to-face encounters, collaborative work,
14 discussions, and shared social experience. Although the artist had
15 participated in partnerships based on principles similar to those of Co-
16 Creation, these projects did not involve researchers. The contribution
17 of researchers enabled Tick to raise his awareness of the challenges
18 and risks involved in making his street art tour community-based and
19 ethical. The academic research that accompanied and supported the
20 process complemented his practice-based, instinctive understanding
21 of the benefits of tourism for the community. However, this close
22 collaboration between the researchers and the artist may not be
23 necessary in the case of researchers who are also practising artists or
24 of socially engaged artists familiar with academic research methods.
25 The initiative also revealed that roles such as ‘artist’, ‘researcher’,
26 ‘community member’ and ‘stakeholder’ are rarely clear cut, Tick being
27 an artist, a community member and a local stakeholder at the same
28 time was a good example of that. Further research would be needed
29 to investigate through a range of different case studies whether the
30 artist’s prominence in the elaboration of the collective artistic outcome
31 observed in this case study is a general rule for all artist-initiated Co-
32 Creation workshops. This could also shed light on the importance
33 of the quality of the Co-Created artwork or artefact compared to its
34 contribution to community well-being and collaborative knowledge
35 production.
36 Note: The authors would like to thank all participants of the Co-
37 Creation workshop in Tabajaras & Cabritos for their time, contribution
38 and comments.
39
40 References
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42 residents’, Rio on Watch, 14 May 2014.
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1 Bates, B.R. (2017) ‘Participatory graffiti as invitational rhetoric: the

2 case of O Machismo’, Qualitative Research Reports in Communication,
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4 Burgold, J. and Rolfes, M. (2013) ‘Of voyeuristic safari tours and
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8 Carter, C.L. (2017) ‘Utopia and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro’, Journal
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10 Census (2010) (online), Brazilian government, available from https://
11 www.ibge.gov.br/ estatisticas/ sociais/ educacao/ 9662- censo-
12 demografico-2010.html?t=destaques [accessed 13 August 2019].
13 Dovey, K. and King, R. (2012) ‘Informal urbanism and the aste for
14 slums’, Tourism Geographies, 14:2, 275–93.
15 Dürr, E. and Jaffe, R. (2012) ‘Theorizing slum tourism: performing,
16 negotiating and transforming inequality’, European Review of Latin
17 American and Caribbean Studies, (93): 113–23.
18 Freire-Medeiros, B. (2013) Touring Poverty, New York: Routledge.
19 Imas, M. J. (2014) ‘Favela painting: building community, social change
20 and emancipation through an OrgansparkZ/Art installation’, [online],
21 available from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/favelasatlse/2014/10/22/favela-
22 painting/ [accessed 07 June 2019].
23 Interview Gilmar Lopes, 23 July 2019.
24 Klein, R. (2018), ‘La ciudad y el turismo: experiencias desde la gestión
25 del street art’, Sociologia: Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do
26 Porto, thematic issue Cidade, cultura e turismo: novos cruzamentos, 54–71.
27 Machado da Silva, L.A. (2008) Vida Sob Cerco: Violência e Rotina
28 nas Favelas do Rio de Janeiro . Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova
29 Fronteira – FAPERJ.
30 Manco, T., Neelon, C. and Lost Art (2005) Graffiti Brasil – Street
31 Graphics, New York: Thames and Hudson.
32 Sampaio Correia, A., Cunha de Oliveira, A.P., Olivieira, A.S.,
33 Modesto, J. and das Graças Magnavita , M. ( 2013 ) Estudo de
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35 de Janeiro: SEBRAE.
36 Soares, L.E. (1996) Violência e Política no Rio de Janeiro, Rio de
37 Janeiro: Top Books.
38 Vilas Boas, V. (2015) ‘Artistic engagement as a way of cultural heritage
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269
page 271
1 17
2
3
4
5
Capturing the impact of
6 Co-Creation: poetry and street art
7
8
in Iztapalapa
9
10 Joanne Davies, Eliana Osorio-Saez, Andres Sandoval-
11 Hernández and Christina Horvath
12
13
14
15
16
Introduction
17 Various chapters of this book have argued that Co-Creation, as an
18 arts-based knowledge practice, helps improve participants’ skills, well-
19 being, social capital, self-esteem and resilience, and that it strengthens
20 community cohesion while also addressing stigmatisation attached
21 to disadvantaged urban areas. This chapter proposes a reflection on
22 whether and how these benefits can be measured.
23 Evidencing knowledge and transformative change resulting from
24 Co-Creative projects can be challenging for a number of reasons. Arts-
25 based projects tend to produce outcomes which are either intangible
26 (such as shared knowledge, experience or understanding) or creative
27 (such as collective paintings or literary works). While the first type of
28 outcome can be assessed by measuring their transformative impact on
29 behaviour, the second type can only be evaluated using aesthetic criteria
30 which may not be able to take into account the experience produced
31 through the creative process. Moreover, measuring transformative
32 change resulting from Co-Creation projects currently constitutes an
33 under-researched area. Scholarly research has so far mainly focused
34 on impacts emerging from urban regeneration projects (Evans, 2005;
35 Matarasso, 2009) or educational projects (Anderson, 2009; Forrest-
36 Bank et al, 2016; Michels and Steyaert, 2017) Recent research in
37 these areas has drawn attention to the tensions between short-term
38 quantitative approaches and longer- term qualitative approaches
39 (Matarasso, 2009) and has identified indicators likely to demonstrate
40 social transformation, such as a decrease in criminal or antisocial
41 behaviour, a positive shift in reputation attached to a place or group
42
271
1 of people or increase in volunteering, public– private- voluntary

2 sector partnerships, educational attainment, individual confidence
3 and aspiration (Evans, 2005: 14–15). Besides, the quasi-experimental
4 design has proven successful in evidencing arts projects’ positive effect
5 not only on individuals (Forrest-Bank et al, 2016) but also on families,
6 larger groups (Michels and Steyaert, 2017), neighbourhoods and even
7 entire cities (Anderson, 2009).
8 In line with these findings, this chapter seeks to test the efficiency
9 of a quasi-experimental mixed-methods approach to evidence Co-
10 Creation’s impact and to advance our understanding of knowledge
11 production processes within Co-Creation. Quasi-experimental designs
12 generally require the manipulation of an independent variable using
13 non-equivalent groups, pre-test, post-test, and interrupted time-series
14 designs (Campbell and Stanley, 2015). To achieve this, the authors
15 recruited two non-equivalent groups of participants from two lower-
16 secondary schools in the neighbourhood of Iztapalapa, in Mexico City.
17 The groups were involved in a creative poetry writing workshop which
18 resulted in a collective volume, the painting of a mural illustrating the
19 poems and a public poetry reading event.
20 Iztapalapa was selected to be the setting of the workshop for being
21 one of the city’s most marginalised districts (Mier y Terán et al, 2012)
22 with high levels of violence, unemployment, irregular housing, water
23 scarcity and transportation deficiencies (Vergara, 2009). As a Global
24 South city with striking inequalities in access to culture, education,
25 art (La Silla Rota, 2016) and green spaces (Alvarez, 2012), Mexico
26 City seemed an ideal testing ground for Co-Creation. In addition, the
27 city has a longstanding legacy of arts-based approaches reaching back
28 to the 1920s Muralist movement. For nearly a century, governmental
29 and municipal institutions have been promoting socially engaged art
30 at the neighbourhood level in the city, by sponsoring both bottom-up
31 and top-down projects using public art to spread social and political
32 messages (La Silla Rota, 2016; Folgarait, 2017 ).
33 The chapter will first set out the collaborative design of the case
34 study, before discussing how the Co-Creation workshop impacted the
35 participants, their families and the neighbourhood. The authors will
36 then turn to the assessment of the case study, including the evaluation of
37 the quasi-experimental approach to evidence this impact. The chapter
38 will end with a reflection on processes of knowledge production within
39 Co-Creation and some recommendations about how epistemologies
40 from the Global North and South could be combined to improve
41 our understanding of how knowledge is shared in Co-Creative ways.
42
272
page 273 Capturing the impact of Co-Creation
1
Co-Creating a poetry workshop in Iztapalapa
2
3 This case study was initiated by an interdisciplinary group of researchers
4 from the University of Bath, England, composed of members from
5 the Global North and South. The group organised several stakeholder
6 consultation meetings, involving head teachers, teachers and non-
7 academic staff from the two selected lower- secondary schools
8 in Iztapalapa, members of ‘Alas & Raíces’ [‘Wings & Roots’] (a
9 governmental organisation having a longstanding expertise of working
10 with disadvantaged groups in Mexico City using arts methods), a
11 collective of four poets called ‘Centro Transdisciplinario Poesía &
12 Trayecto’, and a street artist, Oscar Román. The aims of these meetings
13 were to carry out an analysis of local needs based on the experience
14 of the school staff and to tap into the partners’ respective expertise to
15 develop a series of Co-Creative activities aligned with both the schools’
16 needs and the ten Co-Creation principles advocated in this book.
17 The first five of these principles reflect Co-Creation’s inclusive ethos
18 by encouraging participants to build strong, trust-based relationships,
19 commit to mutual respect and address issues related to traditional
20 hierarchies. The other five principles anticipate potential challenges
21 and conflicts which might arise during the collaboration and seek to
22 provide practical guidelines throughout the process (see Figure 1.1,
23 Chapter 1).
24 The design took as a starting point a model elaborated by the
25 organisation Art from Ashes (AfA, nd), which was modified through
26 a collaborative process to align it with the concept of curricular
27 autonomy. Curricular autonomy is understood as the principle that
28 allows each educational community to decide how to use a certain part
29 of their school day to reinforce key learning, explore other activities
30 with pedagogical value or develop social impact projects (SEP, 2017).
31 Accordingly, workshop objectives were shaped to respond to specific
32 issues identified by school staff, as well as to incorporate methods
33 and techniques that the artists had found effective in similar contexts.
34 A quasi-experimental design (Campbell and Stanley, 2015) was selected
35 for the project’s evaluation. The dependent or outcome variables were
36 organised into four conceptual groups, corresponding to the four most
37 pressing issues identified by the school staff: an aggressive/violent school
38 climate, disciplinary problems and low student participation in the
39 classroom, students’ lack of interest for community affairs and students’
40 disbelief in their own capacity to make changes in their community.
41 Two schools participated in the project: one acted as the treatment
42 school and the other as a control school. These roles were assigned
273
1 randomly. All students at both schools were invited to take part in the
2 project on a voluntary basis. To approach students, the project team
3 visited every classroom to perform a brief poetry reading, explain
4 what the project would involve and invite participants to volunteer.
5 This allowed the grouping of participants by their interest in poetry,
6 so that students from different grades and ages could work in the
7 same curricular space. All participating students were given detailed
8 project information in writing, as well as consent forms for their
9 parents to sign.
10 First, participants from both schools answered a questionnaire with
11 information about the dependent variables, as well as background
12 information about the schools, themselves and their families (‘pre-
13 test’). Subsequently, the students at the treatment school participated
14 in the Co-Creation workshops. These consisted of three sessions of
15 poetry writing over two consecutive days, guiding students through
16 creating first collective and then individual poems. In this framework,
17 writing was used as a tool for the students to develop their voices
18 and perceptions of themselves as actors for positive change in their
19 neighbourhood. The collective production of texts allowed for some
20 painful experiences (such as loss, abuse, abandonment by family
21 members and sexual harassment) to surface. More optimistic feelings
22 (including hope, love and dreams about a better future) were also
23 shared. The mutual support between classmates and the encouragement
24 provided by the poets were expressed through smiles, pats and hugs,
25 making the process emotionally charged.
26 The following week, the students at the treatment school took part
27 in two street art sessions to create a mural on one of the outside walls
28 of their school, using imagery from their collective and individual
29 poems. This was followed by a public reading of their poems in
30 front of the mural, to which the whole school, parents and the local
31 community were invited. Both the mural and the public event allowed
32 the participants to share their poems with the community of teachers,
33 parents and neighbours and have their voices heard by all. During the
34 reading, each student received a printed copy of a collective volume
35 of their poems entitled Telesecundaria Iztabalabra: 50 poemas rabiosas de
36 amor y ternura [‘Iztabalabra High School: 50 Enraged Poems of Love
37 and Tenderness’] which contained all four collective and 47 individual
38 poems produced during the workshop. Finally, the students at both
39 the treatment and the control schools answered the questionnaire for
40 a second time (‘post-test’). After this, poetry workshops were also
41 delivered in the control school to ensure that the students there also
42 benefited from the experience.
274
1 The poetry and street art workshops were specifically designed to

2 strengthen the integral development of students. They privileged an
3 approach to art as therapy rather than skills development or a focus on
4 artistic quality. Using poetry and street art as a means of expression,
5 workshop participants linked artistic production with their emotions
6 both on a personal level and as part of a community. As highlighted
7 earlier, the project was designed to have a positive influence on
8 the selected four target areas (school climate, classroom discipline
9 and student participation in the classroom, student self-efficacy in
10 community affairs, and student participation in the community/
11 neighbourhood) in order to:
12
13 • promote greater respect and tolerance among young people from
14 diverse cultures and backgrounds (improve school climate);
15 • encourage young people’s participation in group settings (increase
16 student participation in the classroom);
17 • increase young people’s self-confidence to promote community
18 participation (encourage greater self-efficacy);
19 • promote greater respect for poetry and art and their power to change
20 lives and communities (increase community participation).
21
22 The impact of the project was expected to extend beyond the level of
23 the school to the entire community. Using creative writing as a process
24 as well as a tool to describe the immediate environment can lead to
25 a deeper knowledge of individual and collective identity. The poetry
26 workshops used the construction of metaphors and other stylistic
27 elements to enable students to express their reality from their own
28 perspective in order to approach the micro-history of their communities
29 from a variety of points of view. In practical terms, outreach to the
30 community was sought through two activities promoting students’ civic
31 self-efficacy: the public poetry reading and the painting of the mural
32 on the outside wall of the school.
33
34
35
Quasi-experimental design to measure the
36 workshop’s impact
37 The quasi-experimental design for the Co-Creation project’s evaluation
38 is depicted in Figure 17.1. The first school, with 47 participating
39 students (26 boys and 21 girls, aged 14–17), was randomly selected
40 to be the treatment school. The second school, with 33 participating
41 students (12 boys and 21 girls, aged 14–16), was chosen to be the
42 control school.
275
1 Figure 17.1: Flow of participants through each stage of the evaluation.

2
3
Enrolment
4
5
6
7 Parental consent
8
9
10
11 Completed pre-test
12
13
14
Treatment School Control School
15
(n=47) (n=33)
16 Boys = 12
Boys = 26
17 Girls = 21 Girls = 21
18
19
20
21 Workshops
22
23
24
Completed post-test
25
Treatment School
26
(n=46)
27
28 Control school (n=31)
29
30 Workshops
31
32
33
Analysis
34
35
36
37 As highlighted in the previous section, a questionnaire that collected
38 information about the dependent variables, as well as background
39 information about the schools, the students and their families, was
40 administered twice in each school (pre- and post-test). In the treatment
41 school, this was administered before and after the Co-Creation activities
42 whereas in the control school this was administered both times before
276
1 the activities took place. The purpose of doing this was to test for
2 differences in the outcome variables between the pre- and post-tests
3 (that is, before and after the project activities). If differences were found
4 in both the treatment and control schools, then such differences could
5 not be related to the project, but if differences were found only in the
6 treatment school, then it could be suggested that these were related
7 to the project.
8 The questionnaire used items adapted from the International Civic
9 and Citizenship Questionnaire (ICCS) (Köhler et al, 2018), created
10 by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational
11 Achievement (IEA) and applied in Mexico by the National Institute
12 for the Evaluation of Education (INEE) in 2016. The four main areas
13 identified by school staff during the initial meetings as the most pressing
14 issues in their schools and communities were mapped to the contents
15 of the ICCS background questionnaire, as shown in Table 17.1. The
16 full version of the ICCS background questionnaire can be found in
17 the ICCS User Guide (Köhler et al, 2018).
18 In addition to the questionnaire, the research design also included a
19 series of 13 qualitative interviews with the head teacher, a classroom
20 teacher and a non-academic staff member at each school, the two
21 staff members of Alas y Raíces, the four poets who led the poetry
22 workshops and the street artist who coordinated the school’s mural.
23 The questionnaire data were analysed using SPSS (IBM, 2013), with
24 t-student tests used for comparisons. Interviews were analysed using
25 thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006).
26 The following presentation of the results is centred around the four
27 conceptual groupings used in the questionnaire and contains information
28 from the analysis of both the quantitative and qualitative data.
29
30
31
Table 17.1: Themes included in the questionnaire and issues identified in the
32
school and community.
33
34 Issues identified in the school and Concepts in ICCS
35 community
36 Discipline problems and lack of student Open classroom for discussion (7 items)
37 participation in the classroom
38 Aggressive/violent school climate School climate (7 items)

39 Students’ disbelief in their own capacity to Student self-efficacy (7 items)
40 make changes in their community
41 Students’ lack of interest or concern for Civic participation (5 items)
42 community/neighbourhood affairs
277
1 Table 17.2: Results for treatment and control groups concerning how often
2 students raise current political topics for discussion in class.
3
4 N pre-test SD post-test SD Diff t pp d
5 Treatment 44 2.9 1.3 3.5 1.1 0.6 -2.74 0.01 0.41
6 Control 29 2.4 1.4 2.6 1.4 0.2 -1.72 0.20 0.17
7
8
Figure 17.2: Results for treatment and control groups concerning how often
9
students raise current political topics for discussion in class.
10
11
12
Students raise current political topics for
discussion in class
13
14 4.0
15
16
Never --> Always
17
18 3.0 Treatment
19 Control
20
21
22
2.0
23
pre-test post-test
24
25
26
27
28
Open climate for classroom discussion
29 A statistically significant change between the pre- and post- test
30 responses of the treatment group was found in one item within this
31 grouping – that relating to how often students raise current political
32 topics for discussion in class. As can be seen from Table 17.2 and
33 Figure 17.2, there is no statistically significant difference between the
34 pre- and post-test of the control group, t (29) = – 1.72, p > 0.05.
35 The effect size (d = 0.17) is also small. There is however a statistically
36 significant difference between the pre- and post-test responses of the
37 treatment group, t (44) = -2.74, p < 0.01. There is also a medium effect
38 size (d = 0.41). In other words, after participating in the workshop,
39 the average student in the treatment school reported raising political
40 topics to be discussed in class with a higher frequency than 66 per
41 cent of the students before the intervention (see Coe, 2002 for a more
42 detailed explanation of the interpretation of effect sizes).
278
1 Interviewees’ comments help to understand the improvements

2 evidenced here:
3
4 “During the first questionnaire, the students had many
5 questions about the meaning of spaces for discussion in
6 the classroom …. At the end of the project, there was
7 recognition of these terms and how they are practised
8 because they lived these during the poetry workshops.”
9 (Teacher 1)
10
11 “The spaces of creation generated an atmosphere to talk
12 about many things that are not normally talked about in
13 the classroom.” (Head teacher 2)
14
15
School climate
16
17 Statistically significant decreases between the pre- and post- test
18 responses of the treatment group, as well as between the treatment
19 and control groups, were found for two of the questions within this
20 grouping. The results of the first, regarding students’ feelings of not
21 fitting in at school, are presented in Table 17.3 and in Figure 17.3, and
22 the results of the second, related to students’ fear of being a victim of
23 bullying, in Table 17.4 and Figure 17.4.
24 As can be seen from Table 17.3, there is no statistically significant
25 difference between the two responses of the control group,
26
27
Table 17.3: Results for treatment and control groups concerning students feeling
28
like they do not fit in at school.
29
30 N pre- SD post- SD Diff t p d
31 test test
32 Treatment 43 3.1 1.6 2.5 1.4 -0.6 -2.84 0.01 -0.43
33 Control 29 2.7 1.3 2.5 1.3 -0.2 -0.67 0.51 -0.12
34
35
36 Table 17.4: Results for treatment and control groups concerning students’ fear of
37 bullying at school.
38
N pre- SD post- SD Diff t p d
39
test test
40
Treatment 45 2.8 1.5 2.4 1.5 -0.4 -1.91 0.06 -0.28
41
Control 31 3.1 1.7 2.9 1.4 -0.1 -0.37 0.72 -0.07
42
279
1 Figure 17.3: Results for treatment and control groups concerning students
2 feeling like they do not fit in at school.
3
4 At school I feel like I don't fit in
5
4.0
Strongly disagree --> Strongly agree
6
7
8
9
10 3.0 Treatment
11 Control
12
13
14
15 2.0
16 pre-test post-test
17
18
19 t (29) = -0.67, p > 0.05. The effect size (d = 0.12) is also small. In
20 contrast, there is a statistically significant difference in the pre- and
21 post-test responses of the treatment group, t (43) = -2.84, p < 0.01.
22 There is in addition a medium effect size (d = -0.43). That is, after
23 participating in the workshop, the average student in the treatment
24 school reported that they do not fit in at school to a lesser extent than
25 66 per cent of the students before the intervention.
26 As can be seen from Table 17.4, there is no statistically significant
27 difference between the two responses of the control group, t (31) =
28 -0.37, p > 0.05. The effect size (d = 0.07) is also very small. Conversely,
29 there is a statistically significant difference in the pre- and post-test
30 responses of the treatment group, t (45) = -1.91, p < 0.10. There is
31 in addition a medium effect size (d = -0.28). In other words, after
33 school reported to be less afraid of bullying than about 62 per cent of
34 the students before the intervention.
35 Comments from the interviewees reinforce the notion of a positive
36 change in school climate:
37
38 “In the first activities, irreverent language and behaviour
39 were used, because the space lent itself to that, but when
40 we questioned them (me as a facilitator and their fellow
41 students), about their choices – ‘Why do you say this or
42
280
1 Figure 17.4: Results for treatment and control groups concerning students’ fear
2 of bullying at school.
3
4
I'm afraid of getting bullied by other students
5
4.0
Strongly disagree --> Strongly agree
6
7
8
9
10 Treatment
3.0
11 Control
12
13
14
15 2.0
16 pre-test post-test
17
18
19 that’? – this ensured they thought not only of what they
20 wanted to say but also of those around them listening.”
21 (Poet 1)
22
23 “The project and especially the final event was a space
24 where young people felt confident in being and saying.”
25 (Head teacher 1)
26
27 “They were celebrating together, saying ‘Wow, that’s so
28 great’.” (Non-academic staff 1)
29
30
Student self-efficacy
31
32 A statistically significant increase between the pre- and post-test
33 responses of the treatment group, as well as between the treatment and
34 control groups, was found for one question – that relating to students’
35 perceived self-efficacy concerning organising fellow students to make
36 changes within their school.
37 As can be seen from Table 17.5 and Figure 17.5, there is no statistically
38 significant difference between the two responses of the control group,
39 t (30) = – 0.52, p > 0.05. The effect size (d = -0.09) is also very small.
40 In contrast, there is a statistically significant difference in the pre- and
41 post-test responses of the treatment group, t (43) = 2.26, p < 0.05.
42
281
1 Table 17.5: Results for treatment and control groups concerning perceived self-
2 efficacy in organising fellow students to make changes at school.
3
4 N pre- SD post- SD Diff t p d
5
test test
6 Treatment 43 3.5 1.2 4.0 1.1 0.5 2.26 0.03 0.34
7 Control 30 3.7 1.2 3.5 1.2 -0.1 -0.52 0.61 -0.09

8
9
Figure 17.5: Results for treatment and control groups concerning perceived self-
10
efficacy in organising fellow students to make changes at school.
11
12
13 How well do you think you would do the
14 following activities? -Organising a group of
15
fellow students to make changes at school
16 4.0
very badly --> Very well
17
18
19
20 3.0 Treatment
21 Control
22
23
2.0
24
pre-test post-test
25
26
27 There is in addition a medium effect size (d = 0.34). That is, after
29 school reported to perceive him- or herself more able to organise
30 other students to makes changes at school than about 62 per cent of
31 the students before the intervention.
32 Interviewees’ comments provide evidence of students’ increased
33 capability to speak of and address shared problems and overcome
34 stigma together:
35
36 “In the poems, they spoke of their community, their school
37 and feelings, mainly of the affection they were obviously
38 asking for and of the social problems of their community
39 and their need to talk about it.” (Poet 2)
40
41 “What hurts was named; the difficulty of life in this
42 community … Tears that had been held back flowed. It is
282
1 here that poetry helps to name pain, denounce it and heal

2 it.” (Teacher 2)
3
4 “With some students, it was possible to redefine some forms
5 of stigmatisation such as ‘pinche marihuano’ [‘drughead loser’]
6 and ‘useless’. With poetry these were renamed, it was a way
7 to leave that stigma behind.” (Poet 3)
8
9
Civic participation
10
11 A statistically significant increase between the pre- and post-test
12 responses of the treatment group, as well as between the treatment
13 and control groups, was found for one question – that relating to
14 students’ desire to contribute to an online forum discussing political
15 and social issues.
16 As can be seen from Table 17.6 and Figure 17.6, there is no
17 statistically significant difference between the two responses of the
18 control group, t (29) = –1.36, p > 0.05. There is a medium effect
19 size (d = 0.25). Conversely, there is a statistically significant difference
20 in the pre- and post-test responses of the treatment group, t (42) =
21 -2.63, p < 0.01. There is in addition a medium effect size (d = 0.41).
22 That is, after participating in the workshop, the average student in
23 the treatment school reported to be more likely to contribute to an
24 online political forum than about 66 per cent of the students before
25 the intervention.
26 Students’ strengthened desire to contribute to discussions on the
27 topics that affect them and those around them, is also evident from
28 interviewee comments:
29
30 “Once they participate in the workshops, students develop a
31 series of skills that gradually will become part of the school
32 dynamics and hopefully of the family and the community
33 to which they belong … They see art as an alternative form
34
35
36 Table 17.6: Results for treatment and control groups concerning students’ desire
37 to contribute to an online forum discussing political and social issues.
38
N pre- SD post- SD Diff t p d
39
test test
40
Treatment 42 3.5 1.2 4.0 1.0 0.5 -2.63 0.01 0.41
41
Control 29 3.0 1.4 3.3 1.3 0.3 -1.36 0.19 0.25
42
283
1 Figure 17.6: Results for treatment and control groups concerning students’ desire
2 to contribute to an online forum discussing political and social issues.
3
4 Contribute to a discussion in an online forum about
5 political and social issues
6
4.0
Definitely would not --> Definitely would
7
8
9 Treatment
10 Control
11
3.0
12
13
14
15
16
2.0
17
pre-test post-test
18
19
20 of expression and a tool to look for more opportunities, to
21 express themselves and progress, to change the reality in
22 which they live.” (Head teacher 1)
23
24 Overall, we can conclude that although this Co-Creation initiative
25 was modest in its timeframe, it had a positive and relatively significant
26 impact on all four areas evaluated. With regards to the questionnaire,
27 while statistically significant improvements in the responses between
28 the pre- and post-test applications of the questionnaire were not
29 consistent, they were found in at least one item from each evaluated
30 area. Moreover, these gains were only present in the treatment group,
31 which strengthens the evidence in attributing them to the Co-Creation
32 project.
33
34
35
Assessing the Co-Creation process and the
36 measurement tool
37 The following section will discuss the application of the Co-
38 Creation principles throughout the project and explore the efficiency
39 of the assessment methods used to measure the poetry workshops’
40 impact.
41 The initiative in Iztapalapa was designed and carried out bearing
42 in mind the ten Co-Creation principles established in Chapter 1 (see
284
1 Figure 1.1) Principle 10 (‘Creative’ outcomes) was particularly prominent

2 insofar as the activities involved creative writing and painting. In line
3 with principle 3 (’Ethical’), academic ethics guidelines were followed
4 at all times and all artists involved in the project received honoraria.
5 Principle 4 (‘Shared’ outcomes) was guiding the dissemination of the
6 Co-Created poems through the mural painting, public poetry reading
7 and collectively published book. Principles 6 ( ‘Embedded’) and 7
8 (‘Aware’) were also respected, since the project brought together a
9 range of local actors (school staff, students and artists) and relied on
10 the outcomes of the initial stakeholder consultation meetings to pitch
11 the workshop at social issues relevant to the community. The three
12 stages of the project (planning, execution and evaluation) were also
13 aligned with principle 2 (‘Respectful’) that advocates mutual respect
14 among participants.
15 The design of the project, which involved the school staff,
16 researchers, artists, and practitioners, was accomplished in accordance
17 with principles 8 (‘Plurivocal’) and 9 (‘Active’), suggesting that all
18 participants should have their say in the planning of the activities.
19 The Co-Creation ethos also required the acknowledgement and
20 mitigation of the inequalities existing between partners. These
21 included institutional hierarchies within both Alas & Raíces and the
22 team of researchers, the prominence of the epistemologies of the
23 North in the workshop and evaluation design, as well as unequal
24 access to funding and resources (for example, the poets’ honoraria
25 were paid by Alas & Raíces while the other activities were co-
26 sponsored by the Mexican Ministry of Culture and the Co-Creation
27 project). These power inequalities were mitigated to some extent by
28 recognising that each partner’s specific expertise was equally vital
29 for the project.
30 The creative stage of the project was affected by the partners’ initial
31 decision that only the students and the artists would participate
32 in the creative activities. This division between active participants
33 and facilitators seemed to be necessary to enable peer-groups of
34 teenagers from Iztapalapa to find their own voices and express age-
35 and place-related experience of suffering and rejoicing related to the
36 specific challenges of their local environment (Santos, 2014: 90–93).
37 Nevertheless, this set-up triggered a series of binary divisions between
38 facilitators versus participants, adults versus teenagers and researchers
39 versus researched, which could be considered contrary to principles 1
40 (‘Equal’ footing) and 9 (‘Active’ participation). While practitioners from
41 Alas & Raíces were not present during the workshop sessions, school
42
285
1 staff and researchers acted as facilitators and data collectors and these
2 roles excluded them from active participation in the poetry writing and
3 painting. Nonetheless, despite their non-creative roles they participated
4 in the sharing of strong emotions, affect and empathy, which were
5 instrumental to knowledge production and resulted in trust-based
6 relationships (principle 5) not only among the student participants but
7 also between these and the adults present during the workshops, despite
8 the short timeframe of the project and the divisions described here.
9 The assessment stage of the project was also underpinned by principle
10 8 ( ‘Plurivocal’). Although the design of the assessment methods was
11 led by the researchers from the Global North, due to their relevant
12 expertise and prominence as the initiators of the project, all adult
13 participants contributed to the process via the initial stakeholder
14 consultation and continuous commenting during and after the creative
15 activities. The choice of combining student questionnaires with
16 unstructured interviews with all partners was motivated by the desire
17 to equalise the balance of power between all adult participants. This
18 format allowed for sharing ideas about the process, its benefits for those
19 involved, and its possible shortcomings.
20 The quasi-experimental design proved an efficient method overall
21 to evidence transformation in the four targeted areas. It generated a
22 set of data that could be used to fill the gap in the literature about
23 evidencing impact from Co-Creation projects but was also suited to
24 underpin future reports and policy briefs arguing for financial and
25 policy support for Co-Creation activities. The mixed-method approach
26 successfully combined the measurement of behavioural change through
27 quantitative research with insight into the dynamics of the creative
28 process provided by the qualitative research.
29 However, two important areas remained neglected throughout the
30 evaluation process. The first was the voices of the teenagers mediated
31 by their poems, the second was the embodied knowledge generated
32 through sharing the participants’ messages with the larger community.
33 These shortcomings of the evaluation shed light on a particularity of
34 Co-Creation as a knowledge practice, namely that an important part of
35 the knowledge sharing is mediated through the creative process and is
36 therefore inseparable from the participants’ bodily sensations, emotions
37 and affects. In the final, concluding section, we will discuss this in
38 more detail with the aim of making some recommendations about
39 how these shortcomings could be overcome in future Co-Creation
40 projects and how the two most challenging areas could be given more
41 prominence in the evaluation design.
42
286
1
Conclusion
2
3 There were some important limitations to this study. The first
4 concerned the short timeframe of the case study, which was developed
5 over three months. Such a brief intervention could only generate
6 very modest transformation within the complex environment of the
7 treatment school and the community. The second limitation was
8 related to the role of the researchers, who did not actively engage in
9 the creative activities. Involving them more actively in poetry writing
10 and graffiti painting while simultaneously opening some aspects of
11 the design and research processes to student participants could have
12 resulted in more fluid boundaries and less hierarchical relationships
13 between researchers and non-researchers and artists and non-artists.
14 Finally, evaluating Co-Creation from the perspective of the academic
15 partners and the epistemologies of the North constituted a third
16 limitation. Even if the adopted evaluation design sought to engage
17 with a wide range of actors and stakeholders, the assessment privileged
18 methods developed by scholarly epistemologies of the Global North
19 and was more concerned with the changes in student behaviour
20 and perception than with processes of knowledge production about
21 neighbourhood disadvantage and creative outputs. These, however,
22 proved instrumental in building a shared understanding. Furthermore,
23 while the interviews took into account the voices of school staff, artists
24 and academics involved at all stages of the project, they neglected those
25 of the community (in particular parents’ and neighbours’ voices) and
26 their reactions to Co-Created outcomes shared with them through
27 the poetry reading and mural. They also did not sufficiently reflect
28 the perspective of student participants whose voices the Co-Creation
29 process was meant to help emerge.
30 Some of these limitations could be considered as interesting
31 opportunities for future research. Another area to investigate further is
32 the involvement of the epistemologies of the South in the evaluation
33 design. As the case study has revealed, participants’ experience of
34 sexual abuse, insecurity, abandonment and demands for love and
35 respect were primarily expressed in a poetic form through linguistic
36 choices including metaphors, exaggerations and occasionally irreverent
37 language. The poems and their graphic illustration via the collectively
38 painted mural did not need to be high-quality artworks to provide
39 insight into what it meant to be a teenager in Iztapalapa and to mediate
40 those affects, passions, beliefs, faiths and values that Santos (2014) calls
41 the ‘unsayable’. Epistemologies of the North tend to either ignore
42 creative outcomes or to concentrate exclusively on the message they
287
1 carry. Thus, even if they attempt to take the participants’ poetic claims
2 into account, they are likely to translate these into the neutral, objective
3 and rational language of Global North science, which would inevitably
4 dispossess the participants’ emerging voices of their passion, urgency,
5 authenticity and authority.
6 The workshop in Iztapalapa also revealed that social transformation
7 generated by Co-Creation was principally prompted by the powerful
8 emotions felt by those who witnessed the students’ poems. To develop
9 a better understanding of such processes, future workshops should
10 concentrate on embodied ways of producing common understanding
11 and the role that shared narratives of suffering and rejoicing plays in
12 the Co-Creation process. As Santos (2014) argues:
13
14 The epistemologies of the North have great difficulty in
15 embracing the body in all its emotional and affective density,
16 without turning it into one more object of study. … The
17 epistemologies of the South cannot accept the forgetting
18 of the body because social struggles are not processes that
19 unfold from rational kits. They are complex bricolages
20 in which reasoning and arguments mix with emotions,
21 sorrows and joys, loves and hatreds, festivity and mourning.
22 (Santos, 2014: 20).
23
24 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to evaluate existing strategies that
25 seek to close the gaps between Northern and Southern epistemologies
26 and to suggest new ones. However, the authors believe that a dialogue
27 between the two epistemologies is necessary to fully explore Co-
28 Creation’s potential to enact positive transformation based on shared
29 understanding. They therefore recommend incorporating recent
30 approaches inspired by the epistemologies of the South such as ‘inter-
31 knowledge dialogues’ proposed by Dietz and Mateos Cortés (2013)
32 or Esteva (2019), which seek to amalgamate knowledge from the
33 North and the South; strategies recommending ‘warming up reason’
34 or ‘corazonar’ (Santos, 2014: 97), which argue that knowledge can
35 only turn into action on the condition of being ‘soaked in emotions,
36 affections, and feelings’ (Santos, 2014: 97); the ‘demonumentalising of
37 written knowledge’ (Santos, 2014: 188), which seeks to place different
38 cosmopolitics on an equal footing; ‘deep listening’ (Santos, 2014: 178);
39 and ‘democratic negotiation and maintenance of equivalent forms of
40 knowledge in permanent tension’ (Lins Ribeiro, 2018: 77). Future Co-
41 Creation initiatives should incorporate some of these strategies not only
42 in the design of their activities but also in the ways they are evaluated.
288
1 Note: The authors present their gratitude to all those who helped

2 design and facilitate this Co-Creation intervention in Iztapalapa: Dr
3 Irene Macias and Professor Hugh Lauder (University of Bath); Karloz
4 Atl, Cynthia Franco, Canuto Roldán and Alain Y. Whitaker (Centro
5 Transdiciplinario Poesía y Trayecto); Oscar Román; Anelvi Rivera
6 Milflores and David Hernández Villeda (Alas y Raíces, Secretary of
7 Culture in Mexico); the staff and the students of Telesecundaria 52,
8 as well as Director Irma Hernández.
9
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23 segregación residencial y mejoramiento del espacio público en la
24 Ciudad de México’, Sociologias, 14(30): 118–55.
25 Santos, B. de S. (2014) Epistemologies of the South: Justice against
26 Epistemicide, New York: Routledge.
27 SEP ( 2017 ) Autonomía curricular en el Nuevo Modelo Educativo ,
28 Mexico: SEP, available from https://www.gob.mx/sep/documentos/
29 la-autonomia-curricular-en-el-nuevo-modelo-educativo.
30 Vergara, R. (2009) ‘Iztapalapa o el inframundo’, Revista Proceso,
31 1704: 26–7.
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
290
page 291
1 18
2
3
4
5
Conclusion: lessons, implications and
6 reccommendations
7
8
9
10
11
12 This volume has approached Co-Creation from a variety of different
13 disciplinary angles (planning, political theory, philosophy and literature
14 to name but a few), reflecting the different positionalities of researchers,
15 activists, practitioners and artists from the Global North and South who
16 have contributed to the chapters. It has revealed the hybrid character
17 of the roles that actors can hold and raised further questions about
18 Co-Creation strategies. From their multiple viewpoints, authors have
19 explored the possible aims, outcomes and impacts of Co-Creation, the
20 spaces in which it unfolds and the complex power relations involved
21 in the process.
22 This concluding chapter will reflect on their contributions, seeking to
23 identify key themes and draw out comparisons between the chapters in
24 order to understand the evolving concept of Co-Creation. It will also
25 highlight emerging directions for further research and formulate some
26 recommendations for activists, researchers, artists, and practitioners
27 interested in pursuing Co-Creation initiatives.
28
29
30
The aims of Co-Creation
31 The broad scope of areas covered in this volume – ranging from
32 community engagement, civil participation and knowledge production
33 to political activism and advocacy – have raised very different and
34 sometimes contradictory expectations in relation to Co-Creation.
35 Some authors limited Co-Creation’s aims to sparking dialogue between
36 individuals, groups and institutions, building or engaging communities,
37 bringing art closer to the underprivileged, awakening civil imagination,
38 and constructing alternative understandings of neighbourhoods and
39 their challenges. Others went further in their claims for transformative
40 change, suggesting that Co-Creation should seek to advance social
41 justice either indirectly, by disrupting traditional thinking and
42 hierarchies and decolonising knowledge production, or directly,
291
1 by mediating between communities and power holders, balancing

2 interests, and advocating for alternative visions to be incorporated into
3 future policies supported by the state.
4 These differences raise questions about whether Co-Creation is
5 an actual method or rather an umbrella concept under which very
6 different aims can be brought together and, indeed, whether it has
7 to fulfil all these aims in every particular case in which it intervenes.
8 While one aim of this volume was to address the distinction between
9 ‘co-creation’ as citizen participation in public policies and Co-Creation,
10 reconceptualised as an arts-based knowledge process acting on the
11 external image and self-perception of disadvantaged communities to
12 promote equality through creativity, the two sets of meanings proved
13 resistant to such separation.
14 We can conclude that Co-Creation, although it may pursue social
15 justice and community engagement through different means, will
16 always promote agency, collaboration between participants and
17 alternative visions taking into account different perspectives rather
18 than inertia, separation and status quo.
19
20
21
Roles and positionalities
22 If Co-Creation as a knowledge practice retains some of the original
23 meaning of ‘co-creation’ as a political process, we need to understand
24 how the term’s underlying connotations affect its reconceptualisation
25 as a collaboration between artists, researchers and communities. Does
26 this imply that, like ‘co-creation’, Co-Creation is possible without
27 artists, researchers or communities?
28 Research and practice discussed in these chapters have shown the
29 multiple advantages of involving both artists and researchers in Co-
30 Creation. Many artists are familiar with adopting roles of mediators and
31 facilitators and know how to break down inhibitions and incentivise
32 participation through tactics of play and hands-on creativity. They
33 can also play key roles in disrupting hierarchies and encouraging
34 more subtle, tangential and dialogic engagement with issues at stake,
35 as we have seen through the examples of community film making
36 (Chapter 6), the artist-designed playful stakeholder consultation in
37 Greater Paris (Chapter 9), reorientation of community tourism through
38 street art (Chapter 16) and poetry written by teenagers in Mexico
39 City, directing community attention to issues of violence and abuse
40 (Chapter 17). Other chapters have highlighted the added value provided
41 by academic partners who brought not only information and research
42 methods to Co-Creation projects but also material resources, funding,
292
page 293 Conclusion
1 symbolic legitimation and networks that can be key to making the

2 process sustainable, although the limitations of working with academic
3 partners are also recognised in Chapter 12.
4 Some case studies have also revealed how fluid the boundaries can
5 be between categories such as ‘artist’, ‘researcher’ or ‘stakeholder’.
6 For instance, Itamar Silva, leader of Grupo ECO in Rio de Janeiro,
7 acted simultaneously as a resident, stakeholder, activist and community
8 researcher in the Santa Marta case study (Chapter 15). Laura Barron
9 (Chapter 11) was able to lead the Street Beats Band project in Vancouver
10 thanks to her dual positionality as artist-researcher. Leandro Tick
11 (Chapter 16) could initiate the collaborative redesign of a community-
12 based walking tour in Tabajaras & Cabritos thanks to his experience
13 and networks as an artist, activist and community member. Familiarity
14 with each other’s practices, languages, and methods of knowledge
15 production allowed partners to communicate and build bridges
16 between different disciplines, viewpoints and modes of expression.
17 According to these examples, the overlaps between multiple roles are
18 not only inevitable but a very condition of knowledge sharing among
19 multiple actors. Further research should explore how Co-Creation
20 processes are affected by the positionality of their initiators, whether
21 they are artists, researchers, or communities.
22
23
Power and the state in Co-Creation
24
25 One of the key underlying themes running through many of the
26 chapters has been the issue of power, and the inequalities that can
27 undermine Co-Creation, for instance through the involvement of the
28 state or power imbalances between participants. A number of chapters
29 draw on examples of experiments between power holders (the state or
30 municipality) and communities (see, for example, Chapters 8, 9 and
31 13) where Co-Creation is drawn on as a method for dialogue between
32 the two. However, although participants’ voices can be brought forth to
33 be heard in novel ways through Co-Creation, they are not necessarily
34 listened to or acted upon by those in power. As a result, the artists
35 and researchers involved in the process run the risk of cooptation and
36 may be discredited in the process, perceived as agents of the state and
37 betraying the trust of community partners.
38 This raises the question of whether Co-Creation necessarily needs to
39 be a bottom-up process, and whether state-sponsored Co-Creation can
40 ever lead to truly inclusive practices of knowledge production. When
41 powerful state actors are implicated in the process, examples from this
42 volume (for example, Chapter 9) suggest that their hegemonic position
293
1 in the power hierarchy is likely to dominate the overall relationship

2 between actors. This ‘aestheticisation of public policy’ may omit the
3 narratives that those in authority chose to ignore. But this also raises
4 questions about whether, in fact, the process of collecting narratives
5 through artistic expression has a value in itself for those who tell their
6 stories, even if those in power are not listening. This ‘civil imagination’,
7 drawing on an exercise in ‘artistic citizenship’ (Chapter 3), makes visible
8 the conditions of marginalisation by engaging actors in collaborative
9 art projects that promote and enhance community well-being. This
10 in itself has the potential to create new knowledge and understanding,
11 both within communities and also beyond, which opens up possibilities
12 to challenge traditional perspectives and narratives coming from those
13 in dominant positions.
14
15
16
Process and outcomes
17 In this volume, the working definition of Co-Creation involves
18 the process of knowledge production through collective creative
19 endeavour. This raises issues about how knowledge production
20 actually takes place, and how communities can both feed in their
21 situated knowledge through artistic creation and also contribute to
22 knowledge dissemination. The authors of Chapter 6 shed some light
23 on this, through a discussion of how young people actively performed
24 an alternative sense of place as a reaction to their local stigmatised
25 community spaces, in highly affective ways. Their Co- Creative
26 project aimed to reconfigure voice, subject, agency and embodiment,
27 to enable young people to tell their story and (re)create the narrative
28 about their experiences of living in a marginalised neighbourhood.
29 Project participants used a variety of multimedia methods to explore
30 their mobility though the neighbourhood and examine their situated
31 and embodied knowledge through creative practices. Their stories
32 were then (re)told through an exhibition involving photos, posters,
33 video and panel talks, as well as an interactive exhibit where audience
34 members could contribute their own ideas. Such an example illustrates
35 how Co-Creative practice can generate affective imaginaries through
36 creative processes, the outcomes of which can then be shared with
37 others through embodied practice.
38 Outcomes from Co-Creation can take various forms, responding
39 to the call for Co-Creative dissemination. They may materialise in
40 the form of scholarly research papers, presentations or other similar
41 paradigmatic forms of knowledge. But they can also take shape in
42 embedded and embodied forms of knowledge, including artworks that
294
page 295 Conclusion
1 remain in the urban setting under study (such as in Chapter 16), poetry

2 performance (Chapter 17), or more intangible forms of outcomes,
3 such as the interpersonal connections and networks created, and the
4 empowerment of participants as in the case of the Street Beats Band
5 (Chapter 11). One fundamental thread running through these outcomes
6 is the question of accountability, and the justifications provided for
7 the knowledge claims related to these outcomes, in representing the
8 lives and perspectives of others. For this reason, dissemination that is
9 Co-Created is key since it allows participants to tell their own story
10 through appropriate media that expose their knowledge in authentic,
11 powerful ways.
12
13
14
Space and place
15 The issue of space and place intervenes at various levels in the book.
16 Several chapters investigate whether the neighbourhood is the
17 most appropriate scale for Co-Creation interventions, or whether
18 Co-Creating on wider, municipal, metropolitan, national or even
19 international scales is possible and desirable. While many authors
20 explore Co-Creation at the neighbourhood level (Chapters 4, 6, 13,
21 17), some look beyond the neighbourhood to a wider grouping of
22 municipalities (Chapter 9), or to the metropolitan level (Chapter 14).
23 The chapters illustrate that the appropriate scale is that which is
24 responsive to the context in which it is designed. In some cases,
25 as shown in Chapter 10 through the example of literary festivals,
26 itinerant events creating their own, nomadic communities can become
27 alternatives to Co-Creation which still successfully address at least some,
28 if not all, aims of Co-Creation.
29 Also relevant is the definition of a Co-Creation community, and
30 whether it should be place-based or not. The very process of Co-
31 Creation, bringing participants together to share experiences and
32 knowledge, can create communities that did not exist previously, but
33 who interact through embodied actions to reveal forms of knowledge
34 that coalesce around a shared experience and exchange (Chapter 11).
35 Another issue is the role of space and the built environment in processes
36 of Co-Creation (Chapter 7). Urban spaces intervene in the production
37 and reproduction of social practices, and as such, can be an important
38 element in Co-Creation initiatives. Chapter 13 also illustrates this, with
39 the Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) being a focus, a facility and
40 a space for Co-Creation projects.
41 At the global level in relation to space and place, the labels North
42 and South have also generated discussion. Authors have not only
295
1 concurred in saying that a binary North-South divide was artificial

2 (Chapters 2, 4, 5, 15), but they have also demonstrated that such labels
3 were not always relevant and masked more complex differences that
4 were at times more marked than the North-South division. This is
5 not to diminish the important historical differences between global
6 regions, due to colonisation and the enduring postcolonial hegemonic
7 structures that persist today. But it is to recognise that each country,
8 city and neighbourhood is subject to different socioeconomic, political,
9 and historical structures, which impact on the conditions of urban
10 development experienced by local communities.
11
12
13
Impact
14 The volume has also explored the possibility of measuring impact
15 resulting from Co-Creation (Chapter 17). Beyond the difficulties
16 involved in evidencing and quantifying change in participants’
17 behaviour, this attempt was also confronted with questions about
18 how to interpret creative outputs such as artworks or artefacts and
19 how to take into account emotions and subjective experiences which
20 are intrinsically linked with the process of knowledge production.
21 Who is entitled to measure tangible outcomes such as poems, music
22 performances, murals, photovoice exercises, affective mapping and
23 collaborative video films, as well as the learning processes facilitated by
24 their making and sharing? What is the purpose of evaluating the impact
25 of creative projects on community well-being if not the desire to justify
26 resources dedicated to their production and convince funders of their
27 usefulness, which leads almost inevitably to their instrumentalisation
28 and the denial of their value in themselves? These questions have been
29 touched on in this volume, but would warrant further detailed research,
30 to explore the impacts of Co-Creative projects in more depth, and
31 to examine self-reflexively our own positionality as researchers, artists
32 and participants, in relation to the significance of the evaluation of
33 Co-Creation projects.
34
35
36
When and how to use Co-Creation?
37 Finally, the authors have also reflected on when to use Co-Creation as a
38 strategy and how to overcome difficulties that may arise throughout the
39 process. From the chapters, it appears that Co-Creation is potentially a
40 lengthy process, since it requires trust that can only be built over time.
41 Moreover, since the process is largely spontaneous, its outcomes are
42 unpredictable to a certain extent. Given that top-down approaches tend
296
page 297 Conclusion
1 to be seen as hijacking the creative process and submitting it to a specific

2 agenda, the best-case scenario may be when communities reach out to
3 researchers and artists, when relationships between the participants are
4 horizontal rather than vertical, when enough time and resources are
5 allocated for the processes without any external pressure (for instance,
6 from the funders) to produce specific outcomes. However, given the
7 current expectations from science, and the structures of funding for
8 creative projects through cultural institutions and academic research,
9 the likelihood of such a constellation is relatively low.
10 Several chapters have found, however, that Co-Creation was a
11 particularly useful strategy in contexts in which formal kinds of political
12 agency were weak or non-existent. These include situations of political
13 reorganisation, uncertainty (Chapter 5), inequality and oppression
14 (Chapters 3, 4 and 6) in which regenerating a civic capacity allows
15 participants to act as agents involved in the processes of change. This
16 is the case for instance in cities with significant inequalities where
17 the dynamics of change are strong and disruptive and multiplicities of
18 different actors are involved in these processes. Co-Creation in such
19 situations and contexts then helps groups of researchers, inhabitants,
20 artists and other actors become consciously aware of their own
21 individual and collective agency and collectively produce forms of
22 knowledge which recall past, present and future possibilities.
23
24
25
Conclusion and recommendations
26 This volume concludes with a series of recommendations, derived
27 from the previous chapters, that consider Co-Creation as a process
28 of generating shared understandings and dialogue through creative
29 approaches rather than a methodological toolkit that is applied
30 mechanically regardless of the context. These recommendations are
31 therefore necessarily general, and participants of Co-Creation initiatives
32 are left to adapt them to their own needs.
33 According to the experience of the authors of this volume, to
34 be successful, Co-Creation should consider adopting the following
35 principles:
36
37 • Identify issues that people genuinely care about, as a way to generate
38 participation.
39 • Open up new possibilities in terms of what can be imagined and
40 what can be made, and allow participants to play leading roles in
41 imagining, designing and building their futures.
42
297
1 • Set overarching common goals around which people from different

2 backgrounds can cluster.
3 • Establish some ground rules to create safe spaces.
4 • Encourage cooperative processes in which people with common
5 interests can work together non-hierarchically towards change they
6 want to bring about, using their diverse skills and experiences.
7 • Identify inequalities between participants (linked to socioeconomic
8 status, age, mobility, North-South divide) and devise strategies (such
9 as a process in which different skills are acknowledged and valued)
10 to balance power hierarchies.
11 • Concentrate on broad and diverse changes that need to take place.
12 Change may need to happen involving various places, spaces and
13 people, including the participants themselves.
14 • Nurture intimate exchanges at a smaller scale to develop trust-based
15 relationships and to address hierarchical assumptions.
16 • Broaden small-scale Co-Creation initiatives to engage with larger
17 communities. This can be achieved by working with young people
18 and involving their families or by creating opportunities that bring
19 people together such as through exhibitions, collective paintings or
20 poetry readings, shared meals or parties.
21 • Use creative approaches and arts methods to facilitate work across
22 disciplines and power structures, confront ideas on new grounds,
23 express ideas and listen to each other differently, disrupt habitual
24 dynamics of power, express and take criticism.
25 • Avoid colonising knowledges already in place. Use strategies
26 like ‘political listening’ to identify these knowledges and use
27 ‘scientific’ research methods critically (for example, by relying
28 on post-qualitative inquiry and decolonial theory) to balance the
29 epistemologies of the North with an increased focus on flows of
30 affects and emotions.
31 • Allow participants to contribute as little or as much as they wish at a
32 pace that lets them move flexibly from simple ways of contributing
33 to more lengthy, complex and sophisticated ways.
34 • Be prepared to cede control over some aspects of the Co-Creation
35 project to other participants.
36 • Use comparative approaches to identify common problems and seek
37 solutions on a wider scale.
38 • Close Co-Creation processes with an assessment of whether and
39 how goals have been achieved, and what has been learned.
40 • Involve participants in ‘telling the story’, by sharing insights, creating
41 solutions to issues, identifying opportunities and making changes
42 to available infrastructure.
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CO-CREATION IN THEORY AND

© Policy Press 2020

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN 978-1-4473-5396-6 (paperback)

Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race,

Cover design by Clifford Hayes

1 10 Can literary events use Co-Creation to challenge 155

1 and self-sustainable economic projects, and urban and regional planning,

1 Annaleise Depper is an engagement practitioner at the University

1 as an arts-based method to promote social justice in disadvantaged

1 Department of Media and Communications, in the School of Social

1 University of Mexico (UNAM). She is member of the National

1 to a growing need for co-produced knowledge, this book proposes to

1 intellectual, and value sensations, emotions, experience and memory.

1 approaches of countries located in the so-called ‘Global North’ have

1 understanding of Co-Creation and to critically explore it in a range

1 potential to open ‘cracks in the system’ and to ‘allow us, through

1 developed using Co-Creation, who is best positioned to develop and

1 Figure 1.1: Co-Creation principles.

1 towards shared creative objectives. Some of the ethical issues addressed

1 their ‘approaches will be different from established norms, creating

1 Co-Creation, researchers or artists seeking to reach into communities,

1 based in European or North American geographical settings. For a

1 tour focusing on street art. Building on a collaboration between

1 Beebeejaun, Y., Durose, C., Rees, J., Richardson, J. and Richardson,

1 Heron, J. (1996) Co-operative Inquiry: Research into the Human Condition.

1 groups and initiatives into a restrictive narrative of co-creation. In

1 would produce different arguments and concepts, and include voices

1 up new dichotomies and hierarchies and could potentially repeat the

1 as a result of participatory research as projects progress. This critique

1 is being submitted to the dialogues, a questioning of taken for granted

1 incorporation into international aid and development practice could be

1 the North but also by governments themselves, cementing what he

1 acknowledging different forms of knowledge and debate. However,

1 up 50 years ago in her famous ladder of participation, with differing

1 particular issues/problems. Such approaches become further embedded

1 there are no spaces being claimed by and through Co-Creation in the

1 for Vila Autodromo, a favela threatened with demolition to make way

1 practice, questions exist about whether some of these are coopted by

1 and academics need to be alive to these differences and to take them

1 Fernandez (2019) ‘Decolonizing Participatory Action Research (PAR)

1 Pritchard, S. (2017) ‘Rethinking the role of artists in urban regeneration

1 citizenship. She argues that the boundaries of ‘the aesthetic’, ‘the

1 between the three partakers (photographer, photographed subjects

1 The emergence of relationships beyond the sanction of the nation-

1 photographs of the Palestinian population, tend to be privileged due to

1 The concept of artistic citizenship requires that there is no separation

1 is it concerned with controlling or repressing the population, but rather

1 cohesive urban spaces, Co-Creation is a methodology that puts into

1 Meade, R. and Shaw, M. (2007) ‘Editorial: Community development

1 seriously questioning the processes that produced and naturalised these

1 underdeveloped, ‘ﬁrst world’/‘third world,’ core/periphery,

1 Assuming as a point of departure continuity in the existence of

1 neighbourhoods while, on the other hand, optimistic studies celebrate

1 designed by a local community leader, Itamar Silva (see Chapter 15), the

1 guides allowing the emergence of an interactive collective dialogue

1 themes and issues discussed through this kind of collective exercise

1 role of local actors belonging to marginalised communities is seriously

1 affective mapping. It addressed Co-Creation’s capacity to use these

1 Said, E. (1978) Orientalism, New York: Vintage.

1 setting is involved in both restaging the interactions that partly produce

1 presuppositions we have just identiﬁed as natural to it. First, the

1 In this dense paragraph are encapsulated several of Lefebvre’s most