Manifesta 15 Barcelona announces its first participants for the pre-biennial process!

From the Rjiksakadamie in Amsterdam to the Gustavo Gili in Barcelona, the Manifesta teams are hard at work bringing Manifesta 15 Barcelona to life, as well as looking ahead to future editions of the biennial. Manifesta 15 Barcelona has created a new framework for social and ecological research, actions and interventions. For this edition, the Manifesta 15 team selected ten research participants who will be working across the metropolitan region of Barcelona and are at the heart of this new approach as a part of the pre-biennial phase. Over a year before the biennial officially opens, the participants have taken on the role of investigating specific thematic components in the three interconnected nodes identified by the Manifesta 15 team: how to imagine a future (along the Besòs river), how to manage imbalances (the Llobregat delta) and how we want to care and be cared for (the Collserola mountain range). They will be in close collaboration with local experts and communities, forging new and alternative ways of calling attention to the climate crisis, as well as identifying certain eco-social transformations needed in the region. Four of these participants have been asked to focus on a special research project that explores Catalan educational renewal movements. The project sheds light on how these historical movements have contributed to societal changes and what they can teach us today. The findings presented after this research phase will serve as the foundation of the conceptual framework of the biennial and will be presented in the autumn of 2023. The key pillars of the conceptual framework will provide a departure point for the Open Call for local projects which will be launched in September 2023!