The Independent Creative Space is a social economy project that we are promoting in Cordoba for recovering publicly owned buildings into sharing work spaces for the creative and cultural industry.

Recovering abandoned publicly owned buildings

This project began in 2010 after finding a great amount of abandoned publicly owned buildings in our city, which due to various reasons could not find the economic funds required for their maintenance. As each day goes by with these buildings remaining closed, their recovery becomes even harder in the future.

We researched different uses for their recovery allowing the building restoration with no public funds and generating a collective benefit. We also believed in actions driving the economic activities that are based on creativity, shared management and good quality jobs.

New economic model based on the local talent

The Independent Creative Space offers shared work spaces at an affordable price, with sharing resources and a continuous cultural and training programming. Thus we want to increase the key role of creative/cultural industries in Cordoba’s productive model and we believe in an economic model based on supporting local talent.

Throughout the project’s life we have known many national and international initiatives with vast experience in the management of this kind of spaces. We also had the opportunity to visit some of them in person and learn from their experience. You can find more information about these initiatives in the story of the project.

10 Ideas for an Independent Creative Space in Cordoba

In may 2010, we decided to publish a document called “10 Ideas for an Independent Creative Space in Cordoba” summarizing our project’s goals. This dossier breaks down the social, cultural and economic objectives that we want to achieved through the recovering of abandoned publicly owned buildings into shared workspaces. The local public administration did not show much interest in spite of the more than 15000 downloads that has had from its publication.

Here you can find link to the document “10 Ideas for an Independent Creative Space in Cordoba”

The Independent Creative Space in the Pergola

We presented our Independent Creative Space’s project to the competition for the management of Pérgola de los Jardines Duque de Rivas in Cordoba. This competition was announced by the City Planning Office in march 2011. We applied for the completion together with Zum creativos, who contacted us about the project and wanted to help us in making it real. The project was supported by numerous national and international organizations, and by many creative and cultural companies of our city.

Two years later and spite that our proposal was the only one meeting all the requirements for the first stage of the competition, the City Planning Office has not yet ruled the competition. However, we keep working in proposals allowing the recovering of public patrimony from colaborativa.eu. In February 2013, we published #DisponibleEnCórdoba, a web application cataloging abandoned public patrimony of our city.