Clayton's Madrid blog

Wednesday 16th November 2011 — posted by clayton

We arrived into warm Madrid Sunday evening (13 November) and tested the tapas in a couple of local Spanish restaurants in the centre of the city. On Monday we paid our first visit to Medialab Prado to meet with the staff and formulate the plans for the next two weeks. We were also treated to a tour of the new building, currently under construction, that will house a much larger operation for Medialab Prado next year.

We then ventured to the artist collective space La Tabacalera only to find it was closed.

Tuesday we visited Matadero and Centro Centro. Matadero is a vast cultural quarter still in development, and slowed down as a result of the financial crisis. The complex of buildings plays host to a combination of public and private institutions such as Intermediae (closely connected to Medialab Prado), as well as organisations that specialise in a variety of creative forms including architecture, cinema and music.

“Centro Centro“http://centrocentro.org/centro/home is again another large organisation managed by the city council of Madrid and opened recently in 2011. The building contains a small scale performance space, a variety of exhibition spaces, public areas, and a viewing tower to see the city from a height.

We’ve got a busy evening schedule of events to see, including live art as part of the AccionMad festival managed by Matadero, and Madrid en Danza, a citywide showcase of international dance performances. We may even get some freebie tickets from David Rodriguez, aka Tina Patterson, a very well connected individual based here in the city.

Of course there are many activities at Medialab Prado too, and I’m particularly interested in experiencing the Friday Open Lab, and I have numerous other contacts to follow up. From now I’ll be working with Medialab Prado on evaluation, fundraising, and if required, some elements of business planning. We also had a an explanation of the MakerBot 3D printing device by Dani Pietrosemeli of Medialab Prado – he’ll be leading a workshop on this at the weekend. You can see some examples of the items that can be produced here thingiverse.com

Image: Participants at Centro Centro taken by Clayton