Narrative:
SITUATION BEFORE THE INITIATIVE BEGAN
Participation’ is the name of a street in Orcasitas because perhaps this is one of the places in which this word has been made most real since from the 1970s this district has undergone an intense remodelling process with the focus on democratic public participation, later consolidated as a model for creating a city.
However, the 1990s were years of retreat for social movements in general and in Orcasitas, although to a lesser extent. There was also a certain relaxation in the neighbourhood, for various reasons: individualism, the famous ideological crisis, the scarce adaptation to the new times by those who were once innovators and, above all, the invasion of society by a policy that reduced participation to the right to vote every four years. The lack of the districts’ influence on the model of the city has in turn been the cause and consequence of all this. This is when the traditional identity as a “working class district” and its implication of community links disappeared. For all of this it was necessary to recover self-esteem and launch new proposals.
ESTABLISHMENT OF PRIORITIES
The main priorities of Active Orcasitas were:
To reinforce the district’s identity. A new “district debate at the root of the project” occurred.
Tangible objectives in the form of urban, social, educational and environmental improvements proposed by the neighbours in public consultation. Some of these have already been carried out.
The setting up of a framework for better neighbourliness in the district, the Orcasitas Agreement.
Modernisation of the association’s premises and incorporation of the dynamics of networks for the information society.
Self-knowledge as a district. The public consultation served to show the neighbours’ needs and expectations.
FORMULATION OF OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGIES
Objectives | Strategy |
- Contribute to the local and democratic development of the district. | - Public consultation and strategic plan. |
- Revitalise the district association. | - Enlivenment of Orcasitas Forum (network of associations). |
- Recover the social pulse of Orcasitas | - Impulse of a community project. |
- Contribute to the integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the district. | - Civic Agreement and its development and implementation in education. |
- Incorporation of new methods for public participation. | - Active Orcasitas: method in three phases. |
- Impulse to districts’ participation in the model of the city. | - Declaration for the districts. Impulse for district associations. |
- Sustainability | - Creation of the environmental committee and impulse for heating community. Inclusion of ecology section in the Orcasitas Agreement. Start of energy saving measures in the district. |
MOBILISATION OF RESOURCES
The project’s support structure was:
Orcasitas Neighbours’ Association: Responsible for promoting the initiative and launching the idea and also the organisation to request a grant from Madrid City Council to facilitate the project’s financial resources. Madrid City Council provided a grant of €18,000 for the start of the project which became self-financing after the first year by the association itself.
Orcasitas Forum: Network of organisations that deposited and owned the project. The organisation monitors its progress and defines priorities, objectives and schedules. The Orcasitas Forum consists of the following organisations:
L’Orcasitas Teatro.
Asociación de Mujeres Meseta de Orcasitas.
Parroquia de la Preciosa Sangre.
Orcasitas Solidaria.
A.VV. Orcasitas.
Revista Orcasitas.
Agrupación Deportiva Orcasitas.
Mancomunidad de calefacción de Orcasitas.
Foundation Iniciativas Sur. Asociación Juvenil de Orcasitas.
Active Orcasitas office
Consisting of four technicians who animate the project according to the neighbours’ needs:
Eloy Cuellar Martín: Coordinador del Orcasitas Active Project
Carlos Sánchez Santos: Técnico
Francisco Rosa Novalbos: Técnico
Juan Antonio Cachinero Fuentes: Técnico de Diseño y maquetación.
Equipo de Apoyo a la Oficina Técnica (Voluntarios)
Iván Pascual Fernández.
Marta López-Rey González.
Ainoa Santos Luna.
Miguel Peral París.
José Manuel Penabella Calero.
Diana Santos Luna.
Almudena Cerezo Ibáñez.
Gema Aguirre López Rey
Purificación López Ortiz
Dolores García Pizarro
Isabel Contreras. (Coordinación Área Educación)
Santiago Anes Benito. (Coordinación Área Vivienda)
Mª Antonia García-Heras Sánchez
Natividad Fernández
Juan Eugenio Mora
Technical office support team (Iniciativas Sur Foundation)
Francisco Palomera Camarero. (Coordinación Formación y Empleo)
Juan Cordero Recuero. (Coordinación Ecología)
Luis Fernández ( Apoyo Formación)
Participating and supportive intellectuals
Special mention throughout the process
District general assembly (the main decision-taking organisation)
PROCESS
The Orcasitas participation model started in the 1970s and is based on direct democracy. The following describes the steps taken based opn the expericne of Active Orcasitas, which summarises the form of creating a city as undergone by this district of Madrid.
\At the end of 2004, the Orcasitas magazine, distributed free and very popular with the residents of this district, included a leafet inside with the headline, “Three steps to achieve a better district.” It was the announcement of the Orcasitas Active Project through a document that encouraged neighbours to reactivate the district once more.
The proposal, from the Orcasitas Forum, issued a challenge: achieve the massive participation of neighbours in the context of a very intensive process to recover the pulse of the district and at the same time to define the Orcasitas of the 21st century.
The leaflet, which summarised the project very graphically, specified three steps, tegether with their dates:
Public consultation: To know the neighbours’ proposals. Perhaps the first step would be the most difficult in the project.
For Active Orcasitas this was a test which would define the viability of the next steps. The initial work was carried out with great effort by many of those involved. More than 7000 documents of the civic agreement and the consultation were distributed through letterboxes, innumerable posters were put up and more than 15 presentations made explaining the project. The objective, described in a meeting of the Orcasitas Forum, consisted in achieving more than 1000 signed commitments.
The response was a formidable, in only three conferences which together totalled no more than 10 hours, despite the January cold, more than 1100 persons signed their undertaking with names and surnames with Orcasitas and rose to the challenge.
Participation conference: To prioritise the proposals and order them among all in a strategic plan for the district.
The next step consisted of preparing a document describing the district’s situation as a social diagnosis. Based on this document, a conference was held on 12 March which had two moments, the first with technicians and experts making up the thematic meetings according to the priorities based on the consultation: housing, employment, education and ecology.
Each meeting was co-ordinated by an expert in the matter accompanied by persons from the Orcasitas Forum. They were given a project files to collect all the solutions proposed in the sessions.
They worked, discussed and gave their best. They found it difficult to reach agreements but, finally, each meeting proposed five possible solutions. They were asked for specific, practical proposals for the district.
There was something of everything, some more specific and some more generic, but all of them laden with the future. This moment ended with the signing of the Madrid Districts Declaration in which numerous associations joined and the purpose of which was to contribute to bringing the districts out of the invisibility in which they were immersed, reclaiming their inclusion in the city’s projects.
The second moment was the presentation of the solutions to the neighbours for the most interesting proposals and solutions to be prioritised by voting, in which there was mass participation.
Signing of the Civic Agreement: The results we used to prepare a strategic plan, described in the publication of Orcasitas. First public agreement.
The Orcasitas agreement is the first civic agreement in Spain promoted by social organisations. It was signed between 27 and 29 January, 2005 by 1126 neighbours of Orcasitas.
RESULTS ACHIEVED
Results | Ámbit |
Strategic plan for Orcasitas | Improved living conditions for persons and local development. |
Constitution and stable functioning of the Orcasitas Forum | Changes in the decision taking processes including the institutionalising of the associations, revitalising of the district associations. |
Public consultation | Recovery of the social pulse in Orcasitas |
Contribution to the integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the district | Changes in the population’s conduct and attitudes. |
Incorporation of new public participation methods | Improved co-ordination and integration among those involved, organisations and institutions. The project has been taken as a reference in many ambits. The project book was distributed to neighbourhood associations in Spain and presented in many conferences. |
Interaction with various institutional/base mechanisms for initiatives in the districts. | Impulse to the participation of districts in the model of the city. Improved institutional capacity at national, regional and local levels. |
Ecology and environmental committee. Management of the heating community among all the groups in the Orcasitas Forum. Incorporation of solar panels in the heating centre. Distribution of thousands of low consumption bulbs among the neighbours of Orcasitas to achieve a considerable saving of CO2 in the district. | Incorporation of the discussion on sustainability. Changes in national and regional policies and strategies at the social, economic and environmental levels. |
Preparation of a new discussion as a district: “vulnerable districts” | Recognition and identification of opportunities and specific limitations. |
Renewal of installations, modernisation of infrastructures, repair of buildings, changes in the use of land for neighbourhood initiative and incorporation of new equipment and urban furniture proposed by the neighbours. | Changes in the use and assignation of human, technical and financial resources at local and national levels. |
Orcasitas Voltage Project: Conversion of the old high voltage pylons into artistic elements, “Animated structure” designed by the neighbours. | Collaboration with Intermediae programme. |
SUSTAINABILITY
Financial: The project started from a neighbourhood initiative and was driven thanks to a grant from the Public Participation Department of Madrid City Council with an initial aid of €18,000. Despite the success of the neighbourhood participation in the project (easily exceeding the Agenda 21 institutional initiative), this help was not maintained over time and the neighbours had to pay the upkeep of the technical office. This support was carried out thanks to the volunteers and the only costs were for material.
Social and economic: The Orcasitas Agreement gave rise to numerous initiatives to promote gender equality such as the preparation of materials for infants containing the values of the declaration made by the neighbours, paid for by the Orcasitas Forum education committee. The Orcasitas Women’s Association prepared a film on the contribution of women in the process of remodelling the district.
Cultural: The Intermediae project, which arose as a result of the Active Orcasitas initiative, is converting the old high voltage pylons that cross the district into an animated structure.
Environmental: Setting up of solar panels in the heating centre, participation of Orcasitas Forum in the “Day of the Earth,” preparation of materials in the Orcasitas magazine paid for by the Environmental Committee. Initiative to distribute low consumption bulbs to the neighbours and individual checking of consumption.
Institutional: Except for the financing of the initial phase of the project, this initiative has been undertaken without any institutional support.
LESSONS LEARNED
Strong points:
The first lesson learnt is that any initiative in the area of public participation must be focused on those aspects that are fundamental for people’s daily lives (housing, employment, transport, quality of life) to which transverse aspects are incorporated (sustainability, education, values, culture, identity, etc), the participation being a transverse vehicle and not an end in itself.
Another aspect concerns communication. In Active Orcasitas the messages were easily understood by the public. It is necessary to make an effort to avoid technical terms and appeal to referential frameworks to reach the majority.
The most important aspect concerns intensity. Proposals were made to the public featuring a limited duration with a planned start and end. Routes were set up with an extremely clear high point (the three steps) and defined objectives, the specific results being checked within a short time.
The method can contribute to structure vulnerable districts since it represents an opportunity for dialogue with the community. In this sense, the project is very exportable.
Areas for improvement: The fulfilment of the initiatives presented by the neighbours depends on the later negotiations with the institutions, which introduces a factor of uncertainty in the process.
Voluntary work is not sufficient to undertake the project so a “technical office” is necessary; this dedicates much effort to dynamising and impelling the actions. The problem with this is that it is possible to die from success if the technical office cannot respond to all the proposals from those involved.
The implementation of the method implies an “emotional rise” for the district that must then be managed, especially remembering that government departments show interest only when the initiative is present in the communications media.
TRANSFERS
The practice can be replicated easily since there is a clear and simple method that can be applied in different communities, taking into account the cultural elements and features. There is a publication that explains the entire method used, in which technical aspects can be consulted to carry out the three fundamental steps described.
The practice has been chosen by the Regional Federation of Neighbours’ Associations of Madrid (FRAVM) as a reference model for the associations in Madrid. It has also been used by the Carlos III University as a practice for local politics students in matters of public participation. The practice has also been described in numerous conferences including in the Volunteers’ School in the region of Madrid. Numerous associations, councils and neighbourhood groups have requested information about Active Orcasitas.
