Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona

On 12 November 2020, the event Lesbos: The situation of refugees five years later was held online with a view to discussing the current situation on the island of Lesbos and examining what has been happening over the past five years.

During the event, organised by the AMB Area for Intrenational Relations and Cooperation, the winners of the 2020 Social Ideas Contest (which this year turned around means of reusing life jackets), were also announced.

Both the discussion and awards ceremony were carried out in cooperation with the association Lesvos Solidarity, Badalona Comunicació, the European Institute of Design, Cristina Mas,Journalist at ARA newspaper, and Xavier Aragall, expert at IEMed.

Participants included members of various public administrations, NGOs, professors and students from design schools in Barcelona and residents of the metropolitan area of Barcelona. 

The AMB once again asserts its commitment to receiving refugees

During the welcome speech, the Vice-president of the AMB Area for International Relations and Cooperation, Ernest Maragall, reminded attendees of the commitments made by the AMB on March 2020 and stressed the urgence and the need to receive refugees.

To contextualise the situation from the past five years, participants watched the trailer to the documentary Lesbos, an Island that Waits, produced by Barcelona Comunicació. The documentary's directors, Susana Soldado and Raúl López, shared the experiences they had while filming.

A round table discussion was held, in which Cristina Mas and Xavier Aragall presented the situation of migration policies over the past five years in terms of asylum and resettlement requests by refugees, and also talked about this year's complex situation.

In 2020, the situation on the island has been extremely complicated: the fire in the Moria Camp, the assaults on NGOs and journalists and the health situation resulting from COVID-19 have deteriorated coexistence and undermined the guarantee of rights on the island. Cristina Mas gave a first-hand account of the conditions in the new Kar Tepe Camp, where the people waiting in the Moria Camp have been relocated, and those in the Pipka Campa, a facility run by Lesvos Solidarity, where refugees are offered decent conditions, psychosocial support and healthcare.

Xavier Aragall pointed out that, "the discourse of many European states has changed over the past five years. They apply the notion of ‘flexible solidarity', which means that they are willing to cover the cost of deporting asylum seekers."


Much more than a design contest, an act of commitment

The second part of the event served to recognise the award-winning projects from the 2020 Social Ideas Contest, co-organised by the AMB and the association Lesvos Solidarity. The contest, targeted to students studying industrial design and industrial engineering at schools and universities, promotes the creation of original, effective and sustainable ideas for giving new life to the numerous life jackets that have helped thousands of people, which are currently piling up on the island of Lesbos (Greece). The aim of this competition is to raise awareness among young people in the metropolitan area and encourage their involvement in transformative activities by appealing to their academic interests.

As part of the third edition of this contest, awards were given to two projects:

• Acquaponic Cultivation, developed by Emma Calvo and Anna Mestres. This project involves reusing life jackets to produce a cultivation system in which the nutrients the fish deposit in the water help the plants grow. The proposal was singled out for the award due to its technical quality and strong symbolic power, in which water becomes a life-giving element.
• INFANTUM – Recycled cloth diapers, by Maria Hernando Ribas and Alice Albieri Lavo, in which life jackets are used to produce nappies. This project earned the award thanks to its original nature, as it explores the needs and lack of resources in refugee camps. Particular consideration was also given to its symbolic power.