Today we interview Alfredo Cohen, director and coordinator of elParlante. The reason is clear: after 4 long years, her doctoral thesis entitled “Evaluative research for the design of a proposal for intervention in educommunication for active citizenship” finally came to light, with its corresponding presentation in the Tànger building of the Campus of Communication of the Pompeu Fabra University. The research work evaluates part of the methodologies used in recent years within the projects La Cruïlla Comuna and Desmuntamites, where the theme of intercultural dialogue has more strength. The conclusions point to a positive interaction on the part of the participants of both projects: an increase in critical awareness and intercultural contact. We wanted to ask you ultimately about the impacts, utilities and limitations, and ultimately understand what new values and processes will permeate elParlante from this ambitious academic work in the coming years.
It’s been a long thesis. What elements made the research more complex?
I guess all theses are complex and serious research takes time. The greatest difficulty, perhaps, was working with the times of three different institutions: the academy, the school and the city council. It was also complex because elParlante is a project in permanent construction and because I, as the principal investigator of the thesis, am also closely linked to the day-to-day life of elParlante. Working on both projects for almost 4 years was the biggest advantage and disadvantage, the greatest virtue and problem.
What does it mean for elParlante to be the object of study of the thesis?
I believe that research is fundamental to any project. More for social entrepreneurship that wants to improve people’s quality of life through education and culture. The thesis has helped to give theoretical and methodological support to the actions of elParlante, that is, it has endowed it with meaning. It has put into perspective and rigorously its possible scope, its limitations. Initiatives that are not evaluated, that are not measured, cannot demonstrate their impact and are doomed to failure or at least, to remain as an anecdote, as a curious project.
This is evaluative research. Was your ultimate goal to demonstrate the social utility of elParlante?
Yes, measuring its social impact from the educational point of view, from communication for social change, and from interculturality, which is the specific topic of the two projects evaluated.
Why did you focus on the Cruïlla Comuna and Desmuntamites projects?
Because at the time of starting the thesis they were the most active projects in elParlante. Today La Cruïlla Comuna is a consolidated project. In 2016 alone, 7 schools were implemented. But especially because these two projects work in the classroom, in formal education and I think it is a privileged space to generate intercultural and other dialogues, from educommunication. It cannot be that the most creative and interesting projects are done outside of school. The school is the natural space for training. Young people spend many hours of the day here. If we don’t get them to have fun here, we will make young people unhappy, unmotivated, leveraged. They cannot then be required to be citizens committed to their own development and that of their community upon leaving compulsory education if they were never instilled in the classroom.
What evaluative result of your thesis do you choose?
With the verification that from educommunication you can work on countless topics. With the participation and positive evaluation by young people in both strategies. With their critical spirit about the narrative of the mass media and about the very education they are receiving. I stay with the committed teacher, the director of the school who believes that art can educate, with the technician from the Barcelona City Council who considers investment in raising awareness about the richness of cultural diversity important and very serious. I’m left with hope, anyway.
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 educommunication 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 about the main limitation, I would say 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 the most critical people, with less prejudices, more dialogue, after participating in Desmuntamites and La Cruïlla Comuna?
More criticism for sure, is what the results show. More dialogue, I would say that also, that at least during the workshops and the general implementation of the projects, many spaces for dialogue are generated between, including, young people who did not normally participate during the usual classes. Whether they have less prejudice now than before is hard to say. Some things change, sure, but how it will affect them in the future would be part of another investigation. It’s hard for someone to have no prejudices, or for them 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, which are entrenched ideas that depend on agents of socialization such as the family, school, politics and the media, to which they are permanently exposed. These projects seek to generate debate around these stereotypes, spaces for dialogue to discuss them with respect, this I think is a first step, and very important.
What is the future of elParlante, taking into account the work and what has been 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 rigor to social projects. The future has to do with measuring each intervention, measuring qualitatively to improve, to carry out projects with more impact, with the same responsibility and passion.