Apropa Cultura presents a new project entitled El Museu s’Apropa in partnership with Barcelona City Council, involving 10 Barcelona museums that organise visits to care homes and centres to bring culture to elderly people who cannot get out and about.
Apropa Cultura celebrates its 15th anniversary with over 130 cultural venues in 44 Catalonian municipalities, bringing culture to over 2,600 social entities throughout the region.
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Apropa Cultura celebrates its 15th anniversary with over 130 cultural venues opening their doors to the users of over 2,600 social entities. The inclusive cultural network now operates in 44 municipalities throughout Catalonia, and this year expanded its reach to the Balearic Islands.
In order to build bridges between social and cultural sectors and make culture more inclusive, accessible and diverse, Apropa Cultura has organised more than 363,000 cultural outings for groups of vulnerable and disabled people since 2006.
The network is continually expanding and among the cultural venues and organisations added to its list of affiliates during the last season included the Cruïlla Festival, the Museum of the History of Catalonia, the Fundació Suñol and the Tibidabo Amusement Park.
This morning, Barcelona’s Teatre Romea hosted the annual presentation ceremony of the Apropa Cultura season, led by the journalist Rosa Badia and attended by Natàlia Garriga, the Government of Catalonia’s Minister for Culture; Anna Figueras, the Secretary for Social and Family Affairs of the Government of Catalonia’s Ministry of Social Rights; Magda Casamitjana, the director of the programme for handling highly complex mental health cases for the Government of Catalonia’s Ministry of Health; Gemma Tarafa, Barcelona City Council’s councillor for Health, Ageing, and Care; Joan Ramon Riera, Barcelona City Council’s councillor for Children, Youth and the Elderly; Daniel Granados, Barcelona City Council’s Cultural Rights Delegate; Ferran Mascarell, Third Vice-President of Barcelona Provincial Council; and Ignasi Miró, the “la Caixa” Foundation’s Director of Culture and Science. The presentation featured performances by Ricard Gili, conductor of Locomotora Negra, and the Gili-Romaní Jazz Quartet, and was also attended by representatives of cultural venues and institutions from around Catalonia.
Watch the streamed Annual Apropa Cultura Presentation Ceremony at the Teatre Romea
#MaiSoles
The 2021/22 Apropa Cultura season is dedicated to dependent or isolated elderly people, one of the groups that has been hit hardest by the COVID19 crisis. Their access to culture has been particularly limited, with vulnerable people such as these seeing the sharpest drop in the number of cultural outings they have been able to make.
To address this situation, under the banner #MaiSoles, Apropa Cultura will focus its efforts on people who live in care homes or who live in their own homes but are users of day centres or programmes for sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia-related conditions. These are the people who have suffered most from loneliness, an ever growing public health problem. Apropa Cultura plans to join forces with its many affiliates to bring them some company.
Now that cultural venues can return to full capacity and a certain level of normality, Apropa Cultura calls on them to take collective responsibility for ensuring that vulnerable people are not excluded from accessing culture due to their personal situations.
Apropa Cultura is organising the 2021 Accessibility and Diversity Day ‘Never Alone. Culture and isolated and dependent elderly people’. This cycle of talks about elderly people will be held at the Picasso Museum on 22 November, and is organised in partnership with the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, and will include participative musical activities. An orchestral morning for Alzheimer’s and other dementia sufferers in partnership with the OBC, the OSV, the OJC and the OCGr. The El Museu s’Apropa project, organised by ten Barcelona museums, will also be launched.
El Museu s’Apropa
One of the key new features of this season is the El Museu s’Apropa project, a programme of activities organised for care home residents by the museums in the Apropa network, set up in response to the COVID-19 crisis by Barcelona City Council’s Municipal Institute for Social Services. Designed for people with mild dementia who live in care homes, the programme is intended to provide stimulation, help combat isolation and loneliness, and improve their mental health.
Ten Barcelona museums currently belong to the network: the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, the Picasso Museum, the Museu de Ciències de Barcelona, the CCCB, the Museu Frederic Marès, the Museu d’Història de Barcelona, the Museu Etnològic i de les Cultures del Món, the Museu del Disseny, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and the Fundació Suñol. Educators from these museums visit care homes and organise artistic activities for people who cannot go out.
Projects such as this demonstrate how much work there is to do. The challenge facing Apropa Cultura, working with all the other organisations involved, is to identify the real needs of vulnerable people and develop solutions to improve their lives. This requires more than just opening doors: it also means going out to people to ensure that nobody is left out.