CRIANÇA MUTUA by Mamalyona is a research-action project promoted by the Welfare and Development Association (ABD) together with BAU, College of Arts and Design, which combines research, training and conciliation to support mothers in situations of social vulnerability. These situations include youth, single parenthood, economic precariousness, isolation or lack of studies and work experience.
The project is configured as an experimental space where material and textile research becomes a driving force for personal and collective transformation. The ABD and BAU have developed a training programme aimed at developing creative skills, textile creation techniques, teamwork and community organisation of care. The content is built in a flexible and participatory way, responding to the emerging needs of the group itself, which reinforces its collaborative and living dimension.
During the last editions, lines of applied research have been developed around sustainable and low-impact textile techniques. Work has been done, for example, on felting wool from Collserola shepherds’ sheep, exploring its potential as a local and regenerative material. They have also experimented with printing on silk, the production of biodegradable dyes created from organic waste from their kitchens, and the design of cooperative garments (ponchos and tunics) that respect the diversity of bodies, mobility and breastfeeding.
CRIANÇA MUTUA puts the sustainability of life at the centre, not only from an ecological but also from a social perspective. One of its most significant characteristics is the integration of parenting into the training process. Mothers come to the textile creation workshops accompanied by their babies, who are an active part of the space and times of the project. This allows women who have been forced to interrupt their studies or work trajectories due to motherhood to resume their training processes without renouncing care, thus breaking with exclusionary models and promoting a structural transformation in the ways of learning, producing and living together.
In short, CRIANÇA MUTUA by Mamalyona is not only a training programme, but also a laboratory of social and material practices that investigates from everyday life, weaving networks of mutual support, shared knowledge and forms of production rooted in experience, territory and affective ties.
Team
Solange Dalannais, Heloisa Barbosa, Elena Baliarda, Mercedes Boronat, Laura Garzo, Josep Pagà.
