San Agustín del Sur Tourism Office!Interactive exhibition October-November 2015!Natalya Critchley!Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Caracas, Venezuela!

Urban segregation and exclusion deserve a sustained exercise of reflection and action to bring together, to include.!!

The existing divisions turn public space into territories.!

Art, as a social process can serve as a mediator to bring together what is separated and create links where exclusion operates.!!

Tourism is a good strategy when tied to social practice, !to break through, to recognise and link together.!!!!

Schools are a sounding board for a vision of the city which !strives for social and spatial integration.!!

All of this comes together in the San Agustín del Sur Tourism Office, !an exhibition with the community of one of the most traditional !and emblematic barrios of Caracas.! !!

For two months the Tourism Office held more than 16 multidisciplinary workshops with three schools in San Agustín del Sur. We made drawings and paintings out in the streets and in the museum. We visited the neighbouring Organic vegetable garden Bolívar Uno and had corporal expresion exercises on the huge maps to think about the kind of city we would like to have. These individual and collective maps were installed progressively in the museum hall. More than 300 children participated, the majority of whom had never entered the museum even though they live just across the road.!!We held discussions on the possibilities for local tourism in several locations with academics and neighbours, cooking workshops on afrovenezuelan traditions in the Museum café and visits to the barrio organised by local students. They also printed t-shirts in a silkscreen workshop held in the museum for this budding business.!Above all we had enormous fun using the fantastic Room 2 of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Caracas as a laboratory where all who participated were left with the desire to continue this project.!!

Exhibition designed and organised by Natalya Critchley !Workshops, texts, routes and photography by Cheo Carvajal!Videos and photography by Edgar Carrasco!Corporal expression workshops and photography by Héctor Gonzalez and Carlos Fabían Medina!Lighting, photography and mounting by Pedro Laya !Photography, workshop and mounting assistants Laura Bastidas and Liseth González ! !Special thanks to Franklin Sánchez, David Lezama and Carmen Julia López in the MAC!The PAC students from Unearte for the maps!All the students from Don Pedro, Juan Landaeta and Elías Rodriguez schools for their participation in the workshops and exhibition!6th form students from Don Pedro school and their teacher Sara Landaeta for the heritage route!Dhailis Rodriguez for her support at Metrocable San Agustín del Sur!Daniel Mezones for the silkscreen workshop!Reinaldo Mijares at Teatro Alameda !San Agustín neighbours, Nelly Ramos and Emilio Mujica!The Huerto Organopónico Bolívar Uno collective at Bellas Artes !Colectivo Hijos del Sol for their afrovenezuelan cooking workshops!!Natalya.critchley@gmail.com!!

All of the videos and reviews of activities can be seen on the Arte y Ecologia facebook page!and in the Youtube accounts of Edgar Carrasco and Natalya Critchley! !Acción NC en el MAC (action by NC in the MAC)!https://youtu.be/jF_CUdCQo4o?list=FL9vJ_6kthRccpIXFOKcKoAQ! !Hablan quienes colaboran (the collaborators speak)!https://youtu.be/Jacg7kzSD_c! !Taller señaletica (signals workshop)!https://youtu.be/bMY5b8hcrf0! !Reconociendo los iconos de mi parroquia (recognising the landmarks in my community)!https://youtu.be/SlmpbFpMLzA! !Taller 3 de noviembre, jovenes pintan la ciudad (3rd Nov workshop, kids paint the city)!https://youtu.be/tiRlYs4QOVg! !Stops videos en stop motion de los talleres (Stop motion videos of the workshops)!https://youtu.be/kzAFlHO_T6o! !Arte y ecología, huertos organoponicos (Art & ecology, organoponic garden)!https://youtu.be/y8SRWS1j85E! !Recorridos de San Agustín ( visiting San Agustín)!https://youtu.be/UU5ceUqX-ME!!