15 March 2022

Social challenges La Salle: promoting a more inclusive society through art and technology

Engineering and Digital Arts students from La Salle Campus Barcelona-URL will participate in the 'La Salle Social Challenges' project, an initiative that fosters collaboration and relationships between different generations and disciplines through the co-creation of interventions in which technology plays a key role. The researcher Leticia Duboc leads the project, in which La Salle-URL students will participate together with citizens.

"Our program seeks to be open, equitable, socially fair, sustainable, accessible, inclusive, intergenerational, interdisciplinary and fun," explains Leticia Duboc. The theme of the project focuses on inclusive and intergenerational societies, reflecting on how it is possible to age well in society, and consists of four challenges:

  1. Unwanted loneliness, social exclusion and boredom
  2. Physical changes and its effects
  3. Housing problems / urban space
  4. Workload and emotional load

The program consists of four meetings, held between the end of March and mid-May, in which there will be technical talks, social talks, testimonials and workshops with experts. The participants will be divided into 10 teams (made up of two Engineering students, two Digital Arts students and a volunteer) and will have a mentor from the area of ​​philosophy and social sciences.

"We seek the reconciliation of different visions of the world to create interventions that combine technology and art, and recognize their responsibility by introducing them into society," says Leticia Duboc. The groups will conceptually explore the proposed challenges, develop and implement prototypes, test these prototypes and, finally, in the session on May 19, they will present the projects and reflect on the experience.