Guadal video from nu project on Vimeo.
The makers of ‘Guadal: Journey To A Post Crisis Economics’ are travelling to Andalusia this month to document and and share in the experience of community resistance to the austerity imposed on the people of the region by the troika and the Spanish state. They already have an interesting journey ahead but are still looking to connect with other community projects in the region. If you can help with contacts or offer other support such as assistance with Spanish-English translation, organising events, accommodation or funding please get in touch.
Source – http://guadal.org/guadal-the-film/
The economic crisis since 2008 has created misery for millions of people in Europe, especially southern Europe. Austerity imposed by national governments, the EU, the IMF and others have failed to create solutions, in fact, they have made things worse. Unemployment in Spain has hovered around 25%, with youth unemployment at around 50%. Hundreds of thousands of families are being evicted from their homes. Millions are facing poverty. The economic crisis is really a humanitarian crisis.
In Andalusía, a region that has perennially faced hardship and exploitation by wealthy elites, this crisis is even worse. But if it is a microcosm for the worst that this crisis has to offer, it has also become fertile ground for community-led solutions with new models of cooperation, solidarity, and innovation.
This project, Guadal: journey to a post crisis economics, will tell the stories of these community-led responses to the economic crisis and the new models that are emerging, new models that could point the way toward a new economics, not just for Spain, but for communities across Europe. We’ll make a long-form documentary film, as well as create and publish multimedia content throughout our journey, on our website, Guadal.org, and through social media.
But Guadal: journey to a post crisis economics is more than a film. It’s also a serious action research project, seeking answers to some important questions for movement building, innovation diffusion, and international solidarity. As we go, we’ll connect people leading projects on the ground with each other, and with people leading projects in our town of Totnes, Devon, home of Transition Town Totnes and the Transition movement, making them active participants in what we hope will be a recursive, emergent journey of inquiry, relationship building, and story telling.
The Guadalquivir runs through the heart of Andalusía. Guadal is an Arabic word meaning ‘river’ and is an apt metaphor for the currents of change affecting how people are trying to live their lives in response to the economic crisis. We will visit the places where these community-led responses have emerged – Málaga, Almería, Granada, Córdoba, Marinaleda, Sevilla, Jerez, Marbella and Coín. We will look at the successes and the failures, trying to tease out the useful lessons for others. What’s working and what isn’t? Are there new models that can be replicated elsewhere? What are the wider movements and ideas gaining traction? Transition Towns? Economics for the Common Good? 15M and neigbourhood assemblies? Permaculture? Via Campesina? We’ll meet the people doing the work on the ground and see first hand what a new kind of economics looks like.
We’ll begin filming during the Summer 2015, and hope to release the film at the beginning of 2016. We will be posting blogs all along the way and inviting wide participation, and, hopefully, building a network of solidarity, too. The connections we make will become part of an extended community, and the film, as well as the website, will be become tools for each of the projects we visit that they can use for outreach, communications, and educating. We’ll show the film at the Transition Film Festival and enter other festivals around Spain, and we’ll share it with the thousands of community-led initiatives through our connections with the Transition Network and other networks.
The journey begins, here…