The Fabra i Coats Contemporary Art Centre in Barcelona has been coordinating a project, since March 2015, with another four institutions, under the name of Living In-between, searching for ways of conversing and interacting with the different realities of the Sant Andreu district. Under the hypothesis as to what could happen if an art centre were to become involved in local problems, listen to them and converse with these realities, working at a city scale, we initiated collaboration with different entities in the district.

For the second phase of the project, the centre is working on the cross-cutting programme Weaving the City, which aims to show, activate and experiment with other forms of building and creating a city based on contemporary cultural practices and networking with different initiatives. Two of the local lines that the centre is developing in this second phase are the research on commerce and the neighbourhood model and on local community memories.

Since June different activities have been carried out at the Palomar Market in Sant Andreu, which will begin to be renovated in the summer of 2017 and will be temporarily relocated for 18 months next to Fabra i Coats. At the Art Centre there is an exhibition currently on show about the San Roque Market project by the Community Mediation Department of the Quito Museums Foundation. This 5-year initiative researched and produced interventions to make local knowledge and networks of this market visible against the tourism plans and the social stigma regarding the San Roque neighbourhood. Another project, Terrotorio Archivo, by the Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia (Leon) is also being exhibited, which includes the visual and oral memory of different districts in Leon and Salamanca based on domestic custodians, a website and different spaces for community interaction.

The Popular Market Memory project is proposed within this framework; an intervention project in Sant Andreu's Palomar Market, which aims to encourage debate about local market and commerce models, identify stories and memories about the market and local commerce and, above all, promote the idea that visiting the market and local shops helps build a neighbourhood. For this purpose, a chocolatada-workshop event will be held in the market and in addition a space for capturing memories and a small exhibition of materials from the San Roque Market exhibition on display at the art centre will be installed. This area for popular memory will serve to gather and reveal the memories and stories about the market and local commerce, and also as a place where workshops and interviews can be held with stallholders and locals and others who use the market and the local shops in the neighbourhood.

The project has various working stages. The first stage involves the gathering of photos and the recording of interviews to create the popular memory space. For the second phase, between February and March, the Art Centre will create and display the popular memory exhibition. And finally, with a more long-term view, we hope to be able to create a market memory and interpretation area in the temporary market and that this area will serve as an example that will also be included in the new market once it is finished.

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