ACCESS challenges: how Lisbon is taking it

ACCESS challenges, how Lisbon is taking it

As ACCESS enters its second phase and the world deals with the pandemic reality, Culture in Lisbon is both focusing on the territory that has been chosen to work upon and the constraints that will emerge from it and from the global and local context.

To Lisbon the choice of a territory was defined by its basic aspects: peripheral to the center, lacking on (institutional) cultural life and venues, removed from the ’denser’ transport grid. These basic aspect were accompanied by the conscience that they were just that: basic. That to be able to work in the territory and to develop a ULG in that same territory, the Culture in Lisbon team would need to physically explore it. To humanly engage with it, to meet its inhabitants and to understand the social fabric beyond the numbers and statistics. As all over the world, the pandemic has been an obstacle to this objective, challenging the team not only on how to get into the territory but also how, in the future, will be able to liase with the people, as the “humans” are the core of all ACCESS actions and objectives.

Embracing this as a challenge and not as a difficulty was, from the first moment, the adopted perspective. To gather contacts and to identify other agents – from the social and cultural sector – is now in due course and step by step a full image of this territory is being reveled. Within this process – it’s important to refer – the Urbact University has been of great value, sharing experiences and ideas.

The following months will bring the start of implementing our SSas as well as, it is hoped, visits and contacts with the identified stakeholders and ULG participants.