Spain
Memory and Future - A joint project: Valencia and Hamburg
The "Stadtteilarchiv Ottensen" is a permanent history agency in Hamburg/ Germany and has more then 25 years of experience in this issue: against the threatend destruction of the district they started to collect documents to increase the image and self-identity of the habitants.
One of the main instruments of "Stadtteilarchiv Ottensen" are tours about several issues of the social, technical and urban history of the quarter. In a special centre they preserve documents, photos (collected by the habitants) and objects of daily live.
Now they are known as point of reference in this issues.
Coordinació Acció i Reflexió
The "Coordinació Acció i Reflexió" is the federation of almost all neighbourhood associations and civil movements to save authentic life in the districts: Ruzaffa, El Cabanyal, El Carmen, Historic Center, "Tabacalera" (old cigrette fabric) Oriolls, Nazaret. They try to organize common actions and debates.
General line of the project
The Neighbourhood associations have a long institutional history and the independent civil movements are complements of these.
With the help and the knowledge of the work in Ottensen the civil-movements of the historic centres of Valencia (El Carmen, Velluters, Ruzzafa, El Cabanyal) can develop their own historic-tours, start to collect objects and documents of daily live and in a long run expose them. The tours will give a new value to the quarter to the residents, the inhabitants of the whole city and to tourists.
Realisation
With the help of the Coordinació Acció y reflexió we could organize a visit of delegates of the Association to Ottensen. A workshop was held to outline own tours in Valencia. A presentation of the work of Stadtteilarchiv in Brussels followed in September 2007.
The "Stadtteilarchiv Ottensen" created an interesting website and power-point presentation of their work and experiences.
For more information on El Cabanyal, please visit this website: http://www.cabanyal.com
A Video portrait on El Cabanyal and the existing problem : Salvem el Cabanyal