No Estem Sol*s

Les Corts district of the city of Barcelona has promoted No Estem Sol * s, a social project that links artistic interventions into public spaces with the collective of older people in the Les Corts district of Barcelona. During the months of November and December, the cultural entity Rebobinart has been in charge of producing this initiative designed by the artist Octavi Serra. Using art as a tool for social transformation, this project aims to strengthen citizens’ ties with the elderly in the Les Corts district in order to offer them new avenues of social support and to establish the presence of the elderly in public space.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, older people have turned out to be one of the most vulnerable groups of the population, not only due to the impact of the virus on health but also due to the effects derived from confinement. In response to this context, No Estem Sol * s is proposed as an artistic initiative that pays tribute to this group and at the same time proposes new forms of accompaniment to the elderly.

The project consists of several phases in which different agents are involved. Initially, we have worked with entities in the territory to select the great people who will participate. During November, the journalist Carlos Márquez has interviewed the participants and the photographer Laura Abad has photographed them in public or private space. Finally, the artist Octavi Serra during December has transformed the most representative portraits and messages into artistic interventions that will be applied to the electricity boxes located at the traffic lights of the Las Cortes neighborhood. The result of these dialogues and interventions can be consulted on the web http://noestemsols.rebobinart.com/.

The set of artistic interventions to the public space aims to create a transversal social and artistic project, through which citizens will be able to become aware of the importance of this group for the life, identity and history of the neighborhood. In the same way, networking to carry out the project wants to highlight the importance of the entities and associations of the territory and their link with the elderly.