Imagina Madrid is an Intermediae programme, promoted by Madrid City Council’s Department of Culture and Sport, that seeks to explore new forms of intervention in public spaces in which cultural production, environmental sustainability and social urbanism make it possible to imagine and create this city we want to live in. By implementing processes of collective creation between the public and the artistic fabric, Imagina Madrid seeks to transform the city’s public spaces through actions involving urban intervention and cultural activation.

Taking the residents’ desires and dreams as our starting point, together with the proposals of artists and creators, we want to imagine another city. A closer, friendlier city.

New places have been put forward for intervention in this first edition, chosen on account of their particularities, difficulties and potentialities. In each one we will experiment with new proposals to inhabit them without forgetting their history and identity. In this way, these public spaces will become laboratories in which we will be able to investigate their urban dimensions, but also their cultural and relational dynamics.

In order to imagine, situate and design the projects that are going to be carried out, Imagina Madrid is committed to beginning with a participation process in which the public, the network of associations and the creative teams can contribute their knowledge. The first step, which was taken during the summer months, was to record the experiences, emotional connections and memories that the neighbours have in relation to the places that are going to be intervened, and that have been collected in the imaginaries of each place.

We also believe that it is vital to get to know the associations, collectives and entities that are already working in and around each intervention place. They are therefore invited to form part of the list of entities interested in collaborating.

Finally, the creative fabric (artists, creators and other professionals interested in conceiving the city from innovative approaches) presented their ideas for interventions during the public call. A jury of international prestige selected those ideas that will now form part of the working groups.

The working groups will be co-design spaces in which the creators whose ideas have been selected will work with the neighbourhood representatives in a laboratory that will engender the projects that will be undertaken in each of the places in this edition of Imagina Madrid.