What kind of rurality do we want to be?

Santa Elena is a rural region with a rich cultural heritage, experiencing big and fast changes due to the fact that the city is growing and many persons are moving up to the hills looking for less stressfull life conditions. Also because of the abundant natural enviroment, Santa Elena has become a centre of attraction for local and international tourists. For the people from this region it has been a great challenge to react to all of these influencing factors. With our projects we intend to offer tools to the people to ask themselves and to find their own answers to the question: What kind of rurality do we want to live in? We design projects with community members which open spaces for reflection and learning about their own regional heritage and the possibilities to protect it - and at the same time being open to the possibility of shaping their identities in a different way.

The Espacio Arte Foundation supports and participates in different local groups and intiatives which are engaged with practices around art, preservation of the local cultural heritage and the generation of social processes, as they are: MOVIMIENTO CULTURAL SANTA ELENA, the Consejo de Cultura de Santa Elena and the RED DE TURISMO DE SANTA ELENA.
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Movimieno Cultural Santa Elena
The Movimiento Cultural Santa Elena brings together three organizations working in Santa Elena by means of creating, promoting and amplifying artistic and cutural processes in this territory, paying special attention to those dinamics related to the cultural heritage of the region.
We are interested in strengthening bonds between the cultural and natural heritage of Santa Elena and its young generations, developening strategies of reapropiation around those issues.
The Movimiento Cultural Santa Elena is composed by Fundación Espacio Arte and the groupe Dimensión Bosque.

An old dream is about to become truth:




Santa Elena REAL - A social and imaginary map of the (real) Cultural Territory of Santa Elena?