We launch La Descomunal, the first urban community in Lleida

Since last February, La Baldufa, together with the Fundació Champagnat, the UE Gardeny and the City Council of Lleida, we have launched La Descomunal.

La Descomunal is the first Urban Community of the city of Lleida. The Urban Communalities are an initiative of the social economy program of the Department of Enterprise and Labor of the Generalitat and aim to improve the commons and create new mutual aid projects that generate a social and unique impact in each territory, especially for those people who are in vulnerable situations. Currently, 22 communities have already been created throughout Catalonia.

In our case, the project is applied in Zone 09 of the city of Lleida, with the neighborhoods of La Mariola, Turó de Gardeny and Blocks Juan Carlos (a space characterized by a strong socio-territorial fragmentation and where eminently working class families with many economic and social difficulties reside); also in the neighborhoods of Instituts, Sant Ignasi, Escorxador, Pius XII, Universitat, Joc de la Bola and Horta de Lleida.

The objective is to protect and strengthen the economic and community network through the social and solidarity economy of the city. All this, giving value to new mutual aid projects that can be born from the efforts of the neighborhood and associative network, local commerce, mutual support networks and working people. Specifically, we work from three lines of action: the Enre9 network (culture), the Remou network (sports) and the Enter network (labor insertion).

The Enre9 network
The Enre9 network is the cultural network, headed by La Baldufa, which aims to develop activities that promote culture in the community.

We firmly believe in culture as an axis of social transformation and with the project of La Descomunal we want to generate actions, projects and events that are motivating for the area. We focus especially on the core of the area of La Descomunal, Zone 09, a space where, historically, there has been no cultural programming of popular access.

Today, from this network we have already launched some proposals:

• The School of Arts. A space to work interculturally and host a range of cultural activities available to everyone. At this point, workshops are underway in theater, choral (in conjunction with the work of the community team of social services linked to the neighborhood and the city council), djmbe and cajón. New courses are expected to be added in January.

• The Enre9 Festival. Enre9, a performing arts festival that combines professional shows with other artistic expressions born from community and social work, was born on May 2022. The festival aims to empower and energize the territory and its inhabitants, and by May 2023 the second edition is expected to be held.

• La Descomunal is going to... Together with the City Council, social services and other entities of the neighborhood we are carrying out cultural and artistic accompaniments to neighboring families in the area to make a public work and bring equal access to quality culture, taking advantage to generate new spaces of union and social bonding. We have also launched specific cultural visits for the elderly people of the area, with the collaboration of the community team of social services in the area and the llar of retirees of the civic center of La Mariola.

• Meetings of freelance artists. We have also launched an initiative to meet the artists of the cultural field who live or act within the margin of the area of the Community. The objective will be to be able to accompany them and provide a network through common objectives and initiatives.

• La Descomunal hits the streets. One morning a month La Descomunal will be installed somewhere in the city to be more visible to the citizens and explain the projects that are underway and in which people can participate. These sessions will always be accompanied by some cultural activity such as storytelling, live music, theater...