Page 282 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2015282In Spain we have a few examples of public institutions designed as laboratories in them- selves. The main example is Medialab-Prado.176 Attached to the department of Arts, Sport and Tourism of Madrid City Council, it was started up in 2000.This citizens’ laboratory is designed to produce, explore and disseminate cultural projects derived from experimentation and collaborative learning based on digital culture. To implement them,it has created an open platform that allows citizens to be part of the processes, shaping or altering them, and has built an active network of users who support these collaborative projects, classifying the different user profiles by interests (artistic, scientific, technical) and level of knowl- edge of the matter.Medialab-Prado structures its lines of work around different main themes: creative usesof electronics and programming, research and reflection on network culture, interdisciplinary discussion on the commons, and sound and audio-visual creation.Medialab is a living space that offers courses, lectures, workshops, seminars and debates and furthermore provides a workplace where the cultural mediators who manage them report, advise and bring users together to implement collaborative work.Medialab has established itself as a reference in the study and dissemination of cultural innova- tion by promoting access to knowledge through the use of free and copyleft licenses, and is fully integrated into its community. It also makes use of distributed knowledge networks.Another example can be found in Castile and León, namely LAVA (Laboratorio para lasArtes de Valladolid), a space organisationally responsible to the city’s council and open to the artistic community. Its premises are availablefor projects and encourage creative freedom, as the space allows this. It consists of three rooms (White Room, Black Room and Room 221) and the Concha Velasco theatre. The professionals who manage LAVA provide technical assistance to the artists, helping them promote proposals and seek funding.Its main objectives are to bring together the various agents of the most innovative contem- porary creation and citizens, encouraging the latter to participate through various initiatives such as exhibitions, workshops, courses, con- certs and plays. It is a centre designed to bring together ideas and resources and is based on the cross-cutting nature of the disciplines that make it up.One of the projects it is currently developing in relation to new technologies is bit:LAV,177 which began at the end of 2014. This labo- ratory is devoted to research and the creation of digital art and was devised as a virtual and physical platform for works in progress in the field of digital creation and art. It is a space for meeting, discussion, dissemination and experi- mentation.The aim is to encourage and support artistsand projects put together through open and interdisciplinary cooperation that result in interdisciplinary works which are shown at the LAVA itself and/or at the venues with which it is coordinated. The laboratory makes available toFocus 2015. Museums and New Technologies