Liberating Spaces

Thanks to my very good friends Christine (@mccarthymadsen) and Matthew, I could meet today Alice Fung (@00alice) and Indy Johar (@indy_johar) from 00:/. Very interesting people. I wanted to meet them because in Factoria Ciudadana we have already started to work on the project of opening a The Hub in Barcelona. Already other social entrepreneurs in Barcelona have already been working on the same project for a few months, and we are starting to collaborate to make it real. Alice and Indy have been designing The Hub conceptual space from the beginning. I’ve already expressed my view about The Hub in a recent post. But the interest of talking with them goes beyond it. Their ideas are in tune with how I see the world and its future.

Last Sunday, some people organized in The Hub-King’s Cross a TEDX Volcano (second video below, skip the first 15 minutes, it is just people talking), an original way of bringing people trapped in London to share ideas about a diversity of issues, TED-style. (more…)

I just came back from a fantastic dinner with Daniel Cremin (@danielcremin) and Francine (from Creative Open Workshops). As it is being usual lately, I’ve started with my personal problems. I’ve spent a big deal of time telling them about the situation I am right now, concerning my emotions for someone I met recently about whom I care very much. They gave me amazing advise.

Then, when Daniel went to put money into the parking machine, Francine told me about her work as art therapist for mentally-ill children. She said that it was a great way for them to feel and share emotions. Art is an amazing way of experiencing feelings together with others. Why are we keeping art therapy in the margins? Why aren’t doing art therapy in the schools for everybody, for all ages? This is one of the main points of what I call emotional revolution. We need to feel more. We need to start investing in activities that teach our kids and us how to feel and share these feeling with others. Experiences by which we learn to interpret what we feel, and give us the opportunity to share it with others. We cannot invest all our resources in utilitarian and rational activities, which in great part are forgotten or simply ignored in our lives. Art therapy, as cooking, or dancing, or farming are ways for us to make a new world where emotions become the core of our actions, in complement with our reason. This is what the emotional revolution is all about.

I know nothing about neurology. I probably know less about art. But I know much about creating unfounded, a bit crazy, theories. There it goes one.

Why does art give us pleasure? Or at least, why does it give it to some?

Imagine yourself in front of this Kandinsky painting. For some, this might be an ugly doodle. But for many it is a very appealing piece of art. Why? I think it is in part because of learning. When we look at this painting our brains start to imagine and construct its meaning, they try to find links between its different elements (e.g. shapes, colours, positions, structure, textures…). These links can be old (learned) or new. While watching we learn the new ones as part of the “possible world”, thus new neuronal connections are created linking “things” never linked before. We are learning. This creates a mental pleasure, that in fact, represents the actual building of physical connections between our neurons.