Today we interview Alfredo Cohen, director and coordinator of elParlante. The reason is clear: after four long years, his doctoral thesis “Evaluative research for the design of an intervention proposal in edu-communication for active citizenship”, finally came to light, with its corresponding presentation in the Tànger building of the Campus of Communication of Pompeu Fabra University. The research work evaluates part of the methodologies used in recent years within the projects The Common Crossroads and Dismantling, where the theme of intercultural dialogue gains more strength. The conclusions point to a positive interaction by the participants of both projects: an increase in critical awareness and intercultural contact. We would like to ask you ultimately about the impacts, uses and limitations, and ultimately understand what new values and processes will permeate the Speaker from this ambitious academic work in the coming years.
It was a long thesis. What were the elements that made the research more complex?
I assume that all theses are complex and serious research takes time. The greatest difficulty, perhaps, was working with three different institutions: academia, school and city council. It was also complex because the Speaker is a project in permanent construction and because I, as principal investigator of the thesis, am also closely linked to the day-to-day life of the Speaker. Working on both projects for almost 4 years was the greatest advantage and disadvantage, the greatest virtue and problem.
What does it mean for the Speaker to be the object of study of the thesis?
I believe that research is fundamental to any project. More for a social entrepreneurship that seeks to improve the quality of life of people from education and culture. The thesis has helped to give theoretical and methodological support to the actions of the Speaker, that is, it has endowed it with meaning. It has put into perspective and rigorously its possible reaches, its limitations. Initiatives that are not evaluated, that are not measured, cannot demonstrate their impact and are condemned to failure or at least, to remain as an anecdote, as a curious project.
This is an evaluative investigation. Was your ultimate goal to demonstrate the social utility of the Speaker?
Yes, measure their social impact from the educational point of view, from the point of view of communication for social change, and from the intercultural point of view, which is the specific topic of the two projects evaluated.
Why do you focus on the Cruïlla Comuna and Desmuntamites projects?
Because at the time of starting the thesis they were the most active projects in the Speaker. Today La Cruïlla Comuna is a consolidated project. Only in 2016 it was implemented in 7 schools. But especially because these two projects work in the classroom, in formal education and it seems to me that it is the privileged space to generate intercultural dialogues and other types, from edu-communication. It cannot be that the most creative and interesting projects are carried out outside the school. The school is the natural space of training. Young people spend many hours of the day there. If we don’t want to have a good time there, we’ll be unhappy, unmotivated, leveraged young people. They cannot be required to be encouraged to become citizens committed to their own development and that of their community, if they are ever instilled in the classroom.
What evaluative result of your thesis do you stick with?
Con la comprobación que desde la edu-comunicación se puedjar trabajar innumerables temáticas. With the participation and positive assessment of young people in both strategies. With their critical spirit about the narrative of the mass media and about the education they are receiving. I stay with the committed teacher, the director of the school who believes that art can educate, with the technician of the City Council of Barcelona who considers important and very important would be the investment in raising awareness about the richness of cultural diversity. I stay in short, with hope.
However, I am also left with the demonstration that the school must urgently reinvent itself and that it is with the participation of the whole community but especially of the young people with whom these transformations must be proposed and developed.
It explains the main limitation of the edu-communication proposal that comes out of the thesis. Can it be extrapolated to the whole of elParlante?
I could answer you that economic and technical resources are a difficulty, as well as the lack of training and interest of teachers in some cases. But I think if you ask me for fear The main one Limitation, I would tell you that it is about political will. It is a matter of ethics, of social commitment. Society needs an active and committed youth, respectful of difference, inclusive and supportive. Those of us who feel this responsibility must do what is necessary to provide young people with more and better information about what is happening, but above all to generate spaces to listen to them and promote their expression. This requires more conviction than resources.
In conclusion, are young people more critical, with less prejudice, more dialoguing, after having participated in Desmuntamites and La Cruïlla Comú?
More critical for sure, is what the results show. More dialogue, I would also say that at least during the workshops and the general implementation of the projects, many spaces of dialogue are generated between, inclusively, young people who normally did not participate during the usual classes. If they have less prejudices now than before, it is difficult to say. Things change, sure, but how it will affect them in the future would be part of other research. It is difficult for someone to have no prejudice, or to be eliminated with a few workshops. The young people said that the project teaches them to “judge the book beyond the cover”, but the prejudices correspond to stereotypes and these are entrenched ideas that depend on agents of socialization such as family, school, politics and the media, to which they are permanently exposed. These projects seek to generate debate around them, spaces of dialogue to discuss them from the respect, which I believe is a first step, and very important.
What does the future hold for the Speaker, taking into account the work and what was learned in this thesis?
elParlante enters a stage of consolidation as social entrepreneurship, as a sustainable company capable of mobilizing people and generating active citizenship from education and communication. The thesis shows the horizon, utopia, the need to give scientific rigour to social projects. The future has to do with measuring each intervention, measuring from the quality to improve, to carry out projects of greater impact, with the same responsibility and passion.