September was a busy and exciting month for the project team, with a series of public events in Esmeraldas and Quito, Ecuador. This included exhibitions of the project’s creative outputs, research talks, and a symposium. These events provided a wonderful opportunity for a wide range of team members (including peer researchers, community researchers, and various team members from Mujeres de Asfalto, the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito and Northumbria University) to come together to celebrate the project’s creative outputs, work together, and learn from each other, as well to share learning from RECLAMA with the invited speakers at the symposium and public lecture in Quito.
These events were a central aspect of the RECLAMA project, and were particularly important in relation to making visible and celebrating the rich and diverse heritage of Afro-Ecuadorian women that has been the focus of our project activities. The activities in Quito and Esmeraldas enabled us to share the findings and achievements of the project with a wide audience, including academics, representatives from local NGOs, politicians, members of the Afro-descendant community, activists, and an interested general public, as well as research participants, and family and friends of those involved in the research. The RECLAMA team were also interviewed on local radio and television.
ESMERALDAS
Our opening event took place on 16th September, at the Universidad Luis Vargas Torres in Esmeraldas. This included the premiere of one of the RECLAMA documentaries, exploring the importance of food and gastronomy for Afro-descendant communities - and particularly women - in Esmeraldas. Afterwards, peer researchers spoke about their positive experiences and the skills they had gained through being involved in the RECLAMA project.
Later that day, we opened the first public exhibition of the creative products, in Esmeraldas city. These creative products explore themes of food, spirituality, aesthetics and dress, and included photos, artwork, an altar, a jigsaw puzzle and a cookery book, as well as photos providing a behind the scenes glimpse of project activities over the last two years. It was really important that the creative outputs were first exhibited in the province where they were created, and the exhibition drew an audience of local interested people including many Afro-Esmeraldeños. The exhibit opened with marimba dance and music, after which the peer researchers took the audience around the room to view and explain the significance of the practices and knowledges captured in the photographs and other artwork.
QUITO
The following week, the project activities moved to Quito. The RECLAMA exhibition was installed at FLACSO Ecuador, where it was on display between 22nd September and 2nd October, hosted by Arte Actual FLACSO. The peer and community researchers travelled to Quito for the opening of the exhibition, and had the opportunity to share their experiences of the project, as well as insights into the processes of creating the outputs, and the meaning behind these. The exhibition opening also provided a first glimpse of a second documentary, focusing on the distinct religious and spiritual practices of the Afro-Ecuadorian community of Wimbi, Esmeraldas (which will be uploaded to this website in due course). We received many positive comments about the exhibition, including ‘Thanks for filling this space with so much wealth, learning, history and warmth’ and ‘The final presentation was an absolute joy and a privilege to share in’.
On Friday 23rd September, we held a research symposium for invited speakers and participants at the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito. This event brought together activists, practitioners, academics, and artists, including members of the RECLAMA advisory board, bringing initial findings from RECLAMA into conversation with leading thinkers on Afro, black and indigenous feminisms, feminist political ecology, and environmental racism. The event provided an opportunity to reflect on race, racism and knowledge production in academia, and created a safe space for these vital conversations across academia and activism.
The final event was a well-attended public lecture, hosted at FLACSO on the evening of 23rd September, a conversation on the vital role of collective memory in the anti-racist struggles of Pacific and Latin American women. Juana Francis Bone, Sofia Zaragocin, Astrid Ulloa and Mara Viveros all shared their reflections and experiences on these topics, and the discussion was chaired by Antonia Carcelen-Estrada. This event was also livestreamed. This event provided another opportunity to bring the experiences of RECLAMA into conversation with wider theorising around race and feminist political ecology, particularly making connections with research in Colombia, through the contributions of our Advisory Board members, Astrid Ulloa and Mara Viveros.
And so ended a whirlwind few weeks of activity for the RECLAMA team. It was wonderful to share so much of the RECLAMA project with a wider audience, and for the team members from the UK to finally meet and work with those in Ecuador. We hope that the project will reach many more people; do join us on November 16th for the first UK showing of the creative outputs (in Newcastle). Sign up here.
All videos and photographs by the RECLAMA team