Max Award for community opera “La Gata Perduda”

The CWI's DIS group provided an interactive platform for facilitating the co-creation of the Opera. Max awards are the most important performing arts awards in Spain.

Publication date
11 May 2023

In the EU-H2020 TRACTION project, CWI’s Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group developed the Co-Creation Space (CCS). The Co-Creation Space is a web-based application through which people can share thoughts and communicate through media, guided by a facilitator in an effort to create a piece of art. It was one of the tools used for the development of La Gata Perduda (The Lost Cat), a novel opera co-created by the Liceu opera house in Barcelona and residents from the vibrant Raval neighborhood.

Max Award

The Opera has won a Max Award (“Los Premios Max de las Artes Escénicas”). These awards are the most important performing arts awards in Spain, comparable to the Tony Award (USA), Laurence Olivier Award (UK), or Molière Award (France). The awards are named after Max Estrella, the protagonist of Bohemian Lights, which is considered to be one of the most outstanding works of Spanish theatre of the twentieth century.

La Gata Perduda tells the story of an iconic cat statue stolen from the Raval. The opera presents a struggle of a controversial neighbourhood rebelling against oppression and manipulation by the upper class establishment, and embodies the spirit of diversity, resistance, and hope.

Co-Creation

To support artistic co-creation dynamics, and as part of their effort on digital humanities, the DIS group developed the CCS, a platform that supports professionals and community members from diverse backgrounds to engage in creative discussion about media in a ‘safe space’. Developed over the three years of the TRACTION project, the tool embodies a user-centered process, from gathering requirements through focus groups, mapping user journeys through personas, use cases, storyboards, and wireframes, and evaluating the tool through usability studies. The tool is an example of the human-focused intelligent systems researched at CWI.

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