Agreement to promote the rehabilitation of Can Ricart and create the Campus de les Arts

New impetus for the rehabilitation of Can Ricart, which should host the Campus de les Arts, an ambitious project located in the 22 @ district of Barcelona that has not finished starting due to lack of financing. This Friday, the agents involved –Government, Barcelona City Council, 7 universities and 19 centers of higher artistic education – have made common front and have signed the framework agreement to develop the project of the University campus. In Can Ricart, the Campus de les Arts will have 6,800 square meters for the development of its projects.

The project, led by the Barcelona University (UB), requires an investment of between 14 and 18 million euros, which will be requested from the European Union through the fondos Next Generation. Although obtaining this financing will mark the development of the complex’s works, the intention of the signatories is that in 2022 the institutional agreements are closed and the project design is finalized, so that between 2022 and 2025 the rehabilitation and urbanization works are tendered and executed. The objective is that the teaching activity can start in 2026.

The ‘Minister’ of Research and Universities, Gemma Geis; the deputy mayor of Culture and Education of the city council, Jordi Martí, and representatives of the collaborating institutions have attended the event held in the Aula Magna of the historic building of the UB and have chaired the rector, Joan Guàrdia, and the project coordinator, Carles Martí.

First thematic campus in Spain

Guàrdia has celebrated that the signature supposes a first step on the part of the institutions and administrations to create what will be “the first thematic campus “in Spain aimed at research, innovation and interdisciplinary artistic training. Although he has recognized that this project “has perhaps taken too long to start, now there is no one to stop it”, and will allow promoting artistic research, the transfer of knowledge and the specialization of teacher training in artistic disciplines.

For Guàrdia, the project will reinforce the geographic centrality of the arts and education of Barcelona, ​​”city of universities and science”, and that of Catalonia, which will also see its institutional and educational framework strengthened.

“Sprout” artistic knowledge

For her part, the ‘councilor’ has stressed that the Campus de les Arts will “reappear knowledge and the arts” and has reaffirmed the will of her department to collaborate institutionally with the Barcelona city council in order to find funding. Jordi Martí has ​​valued that it will be an interdisciplinary space that will stimulate artistic production, the creation and training of new talent and the strengthening of the cultural sector from a space “loaded with urban history”.

The agreement has been signed by the ‘councilor’ for Research and Universities, Gemma Geis, the Councilor for Culture and Education, Jordi Martí, and representatives of the UB, the Autonomous University of Bellaterra (UAB), Pompeu Fabra (UPF), the Polytechnic of Catalonia (UPC), the University of Girona (UdG), the University of Vic and the UOC, in addition to higher artistic education centers such as the Theater Institute or the Musicians Workshop.

Devised in 2018

Related news

The Campus de les Arts project was born in 2018, promoted by the UB following a proposal from the CoNCA (Consell Nacional per a la Cultura i les Arts). Once the basic parameters (objectives, future location in Can Ricart, participation of the administrations, financing, calendars) had been defined and presented to the nineteen university or higher artistic education centers in Catalonia, at the beginning of 2019 the promoting Working Group was constituted from the Campus de les Arts to Can Ricart with institutional representatives from the nineteen centers as well as from CoNCA and HANGAR, Center for Research and Artistic Production, under the coordination of the UB.

As a result of this work, the platform that brings together the 7 universities involved and the 19 university or higher artistic education centers in Catalonia emerged. These centers currently number about 8,000 students offering undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the disciplines of fine arts, design, music, theater, dance, film, and conservation and restoration. The Campus de les Arts aims to share new resources and develop new joint activities between universities and centers with the aim of tackling some of the main challenges posed by higher artistic education in Catalonia. In particular, it is proposed to achieve, from a complementary and interdisciplinary approach, a significant increase in the third cycle and artistic research, including a strong perspective of knowledge transfer, as well as the expansion and specialization of education teacher training. artistic.