Medellin - LiA weeks 3&4
Most of our research over this fortnight happened outside the foundation. We visited four cultural cafés around Medellin: Itaca and Antimateria in Laureles, La Pascasia in La Candelaria, and Casa Loma up in Comuna 13. Each one taught us something different, and often the lesson was what not to do. A couple had a brilliant atmosphere but the café itself was tucked away where nobody would find it. Casa Loma was the one that stuck with me. It is hidden away from the street and built around giving young people a reason to stay in their own neighbourhood, with a recording studio and a photography studio sitting alongside the coffee. That is very close to what we want Barrio Mío to be.
The more valuable part, though, was asking the community directly. We ran group interviews with Mujeres con Futuro, a collective of local women, and with Proyectando Sueños, a folk dance group who perform representing Picacho. We asked both the same thing: what do you actually want from this café? What drinks, what food, what decoration, what activities? The answers were not the ones we had assumed, and we ended up rebuilding a lot of our early ideas around them. Proyectando Sueños also treated us to a few of their traditional dances, which was a real privilege to watch. At the end of the fortnight we presented our first proposal back to the team and got a proper round of feedback, which was humbling and genuinely useful.
Outside the project, we took a weekend and went to Cartagena with the rest of the group. It could not have been more different from Medellin: flat, coastal, colonial and about ten degrees hotter. It was a brilliant few days, but the odd thing was coming back. Landing in the valley again felt like coming home, which is not something I expected to be saying four weeks in.
Next up is turning all of this research into something Picacho can actually use.
Hello!
My name is James McLean, and I am currently pursuing an integrated master’s program in Physics at the University of Leeds.
My research project , in the realm of Bio-nano-Physics , focuses on an imaging technique known as mass photometry, which aims to observe the landing sites of polysaccharides without the necessity for external markers.
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