From
December 14th to 16th 2012 the I Seminar on Local Agroecological
Promotion, organized through the PIC and supported by Grundtvig Lifelong Learning Programme, took
place in Barcelona. More than 80 people participated in it, mainly
from Catalunya but also from other regions of Spain (Galícia, Euskal
Herria, Canarias, Andalucía, Extremadura, Madrid...). The attendees
were mainly experienced people, engaged in different kinds of
Agroecological projects, who showed high affinity with the conceptual
and methodological framework proposed for the seminar. The event
quickly turned into a hard working atmosphere, in which everyone was
highly self-motivated, sharing their experiences, learning from each
other and networking for their project. This created a high level of
exchange between inputs and discussions, allowing us to build a
common ground of how to further promote Agroecological practices in
our local communities.
Although
the objectives and methodology proposed were very ambitious, the
general evaluation of the seminar gave a highly positive response
from the participants. The working-by-projects approach, and the
hands-on methodology based on in-depth participatory techniques,
allowed us to deal with different and innovative methodologies, and
at the same time opened different discussions related to the
complexity of Agroecology diffusion in our de-farmed postindustrial
countryside. Working on three real case studies presented by their
creators and representatives built up an emotional atmosphere in
which we all got deeply involved in discussing the different
realities. Participants and organizers of the three selected projects
were highly satisfied with the outcomes of the seminar, in terms of
both the methodological and strategic contents of each case study. At
the end, everyone asked for a second edition of this seminar, to take
place in one of the locations of the three projects we worked on
during the seminar.
From
May 2013 we have worked on the conclusions of the seminar, which will
be published in an online document as a “Guide for Local
Agroecological Promotion”. This Guide will compile every document
and participatory piece of knowledge produced and collected during
the seminar. Hopefully we will be able to edit some audiovisual
documents with the most interesting outcomes of the seminar, such as
the main talks, concluding remarks and some interviews of
participants and speakers. For these documents, which will be posted
in our open-access blog, we arranged a crowd-funding campaign in
order to allow us to manage the technical and compilation work needed
to analyze the results, and communicate the outcomes.
