HAS/ZTAPENAK: cultural innovation for educational experimentation

One of the proposals selected by the KSIgune Connections 2022/23 call, HAS/ZTAPENAK was the result of collaboration between UPV/EHU lecturers and members of the InnoKLab research group, Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz and Asier Amezaga; Karraskan, a professional association for the promotion of innovation in culture and the innovation culture; and Cultumetría, an organisation devoted to the evaluation of cultural projects and policies.

The aim of this proposal was to put forward other frameworks to approach the social, as well as new ways of doing things that bring sociological practice into design and experimentation. On the research level, the project offered the opportunity to test methodological and conceptual tools for the analysis and design of cultural innovation and to map potential areas of research.

Finally, through contact with entities and professionals from hybrid, trans-disciplinary and open fields, the project aimed to offer students professional horizons with a more open and personalised projection, making other fields in which sociology could be deployed visible.

The results: immersion in culture, sociological design

The project involved the participation of 49 students who were organised into 3 working groups (in Basque and Spanish), and 3 entities from the CCI sector, Garaion, Horman Poster and Cocina de Guerrilla. It all started with the emptying of a classroom, which was used as a "COVID classroom" during the pandemic and was re-named "La 14" in this practice. While the classroom was emptied, the adjacent warehouse was filled, making the "inertias" and "infrastructures" that underpin the university's educational work visible. The subject has been developed in collaboration with these three entities, which have put forward tools for students to respond to the challenge of designing an event in which the concepts and debates addressed in the classroom are deployed and which enables us to expand on what we understand by society.

The event took place on 16th December at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication. Each of the groups organised an activity in one location. The first group built a door of problematisations in which they invited passers-by to share their problems. The second, set up the Santo Tomás de Aquí-No festival, moving many of the elements of the fair that would take place a week later in Bilbao and Donostia. The third took the previously emptied classroom - "La 14"- to propose a staging that highlighted many of the experiences that took place in the design process. These activities were captured in the Immersion in culture, sociological design video (available in Spanish/Basque), which also includes the assessment of several of the actors involved.

In the words of the UPV/EHU lecturers: "Cultural innovation has proven to be a tool for transforming the classical notion of the classroom, which has generated uncomfortable but extremely productive clashes and frictions, both among students and at the institutional and faculty level, making it possible to question and expand teaching tasks and the university's relationship with other entities"

HAS/ZTAPENAK hopes to continue in the 2023/24 academic year, following the success of the connection between undergraduate students in Basque and Spanish and entities from the cultural and creative industries sector in the previous academic year. To do so, in addition to counting on several of the entities that participated in the previous academic year, it will try to involve more agents from the university and the sector.

For more information:

The "Immersion in culture, sociological design" video is available on the UPV/EHU Youtube channel.

The KSIgune Connections 2023/24 call for applications is open until 27th October.