La Fábrica Cultural is a project with different areas, with training areas for
all types of dance, music, theater, and other workshops;
another part has shows with live music, theater, puppets, movies,
the programming is very diverse and we also have a restaurant.
But we don't work there.
There are two of us, we both studied film, we opened in July of 2009.
It started from a get together, as well as the dream of, or more like
the intention of starting a cultural center, a cultural center
with workshops and small shows , we decided to do
all of this in two months.
This place used to be a pharmacy, it went bankrupt one day and since then
we’ve been renting the space.
Attendees from all of Córdoba,
are between 18 and 35 years old,
depending on the type of show that we're having.
What we’re looking for is social diversity to be a meeting point in our space.
that is what we are looking for.
We are a non-profit organization. Being just the two of us,
Meetings aren't tedious, they are lengthy discussions. It’s really good
because we compliment each other's potential. I'm in charge
the artistic side of things. I coordinate the shows and day to day activities
that happen. We are open from Wednesday to Saturday, and for all workshops.
My partner Matías takes care of all of the parts that I find boring, which
I don't understand, all of the structural and financial aspects…
We work with a lot of independent producers, many from Córdoba and at
national level as well. I believe that it’s really interesting because
novel ideas came from that. Today we work with around, I don’t know,
10 to 15 producers on a monthly basis who are developing their own space.
A percentage of ticker sales, or publicity
agreements is divided – we try and divide the income equally.
We work with, well, with a website that controls everything
because once the information is finalized it goes to
the page, from the page it goes to a a printer that works with us.
It works very well.
There is a girl dedicated to internet marketing with
social networks like
Facebook, Twitter, and also email marketing, we have a big data base
with 25,000 people more or less, that does a lot for us.
And this year we’ve started a magazine that will be printed in the daily paper
with the monthly programming schedule, we were printing 5,000
copies, we distributed them all over town, from the university, to all
of the cultural and social hubs, that basically work from the center, in
books stores, and later with flyers.
Because there were only a few people it cost us a lot to coordinate it all.
Yeah, I think you can say so, after 3 years I believe it cost us a lot, it’s
a long process to maintain it, it takes a lot of effort,
it took us a long time and many hours, to get where we are, to think about how,
it’s always the most difficult, when you talk about sustainability, but we
worked, and worked, and searched, and I believe that now, we found
a middle ground where, we are satisfied with the
work that we are doing.
At all our artistic events
we always have a bar, that's like the income, basically
our only income. Income also comes from our workshops,
this year we will have between 25 and 30 workshops,
we also work with the teachers, 70% goes to the teacher and
30% stays here. The agreement that we have today
for productions is varied, not really an agreement, and a lot is in the middle of
the press, designs, but they are all productions of our shows.
The producer or the artists take
one hundred percent of the tickets, and we keep
the money from the bar.
Until today we were not against it at all
but we don’t take external funding, it is a short term goal, but
we don't want the space to depend on that, because of, well, nothing,
we know the day that that doesn't exist we must continue working.
We work with a lot of projects that are, well,
ideological exchange most of all, we work with other spaces and organizations,
also with the university, there’s a program in particular
with an exchange that interested both of us.
We work with a lot of work groups for different activities and
we communicate a lot with other spaces in our city,
or we make productions together as well, that also lets us know what
is happening on the other side, so we have a good relationship with the other
spaces, but for now they are informal.
The talent in Córdoba is incredible, I study film so from that point of view
I was already fascinated by the production that was in
Córdoba that seemed very interesting, the knowledge of, from visual artists
music, theater, film, I don't know the organizations that exist
that work in the neighborhoods, the puppet show networks, there are a lot of them,
so many shows, so many artists, in fact we have
a lot of shows from Buenos Aires and they do very well here.
The legal part, well, all the different parts of the association cost us a lot,
everything to do with authorization, but nothing, there’s nothing, when you
know nothing about this side of things, there’s nothing to do but look into it,
and there are things that they don't tell you and you have
to just do them, with the schedule too, it happened on the artistic side at first,
finding a line of work that you don’t know
it’s the hardest, but there was never a time
when we had to close because of difficulty.
We spoke to the neighbors a lot, and since then we still do.
We had meetings with the building occupants, we went and
told them about the project, it’s not like talking to just anyone, it’s like
another neighbor.
"Tercer lugar" has the goal of working with people with disabilities.
They formed this group and started working twice a week
to create workshops and a monthly event, called
"La Matiné" which happens on Saturday evenings, it’s a party, with live bands
it’s really beautiful. Something that we always talk about,
is that the bar at the shows, that it’s like
our Bible or at least until now we always did things
that way, from communication, and printing, the show is always the
center of attention here.
Culture, identity and work.
Now the idea is to start registering all of the shows, and installing a
radio here inside the space, ideally each organization has their space
to do as they please.
We would like to develop more in the online film area.
Now this year we are working with a newspaper, named
El Comunal that we got, which came out in 2013,
and works with social organizations, about political, cultural and social matters.
We were looking for a new space that’s social, political,
a space within society where we’re not, this interests us a lot
going forward as a future objective.
And La Fábrica doesn't belong to any
network, this year I believe we're going to think about changing that,
working with networks, working with organizations, doing activities outside of
our space, this is something that also interests us.
Advice, we let them chat, like, I don’t know, the space is a way of communicating,
it’s just an experience, I don't know if it’s something we could teach
I don't know if it’s like that.
It seems like the conversation always occurs with everyone,
and many things come out of that, this is something we’ve learned a lot.
Subtitles: Jamaal Taylor. Proof-reading: Victoria Price.
Coordinated by the initiative PerMondo (Mondo Agit).