Casa Gallina

Casa Gallina is a transdisciplinary cultural project whose programming is focused on learnings and actions relating culture, community, and the environment. The project is located in Santa María la Ribera, a neighborhood of Mexico City, where it seeks to facilitate synergies inside the local communities.

Through its platforms, Casa Gallina seeks to promote, inoculate, encourage, and revitalize initiatives and proposals about resilience, the environment, creative models of associations, life styles of responsible consumption, as well as alternative models of social interaction. Casa Gallina also seeks to strengthen local community networks, as well as alliances with initiatives from other areas that share similar interests to establish processes of dialogue, work, and exchange.

Strategies

Biocultural diversity

Ongoing since December 2019

Re-viewing territories

Ongoing since May 2021

Community Resilience: Tools and Networks During Physical Distancing

Ongoing since March 2020

Publications

Trazar lo común, los territorios que nos habitan (Tracing the common, the territories that inhabit us)

Sabores y saberes de la milpa (Flavors and Knowledge from the Maize Field)

Ahuiyameh ihuan nemachtiliz in milpa (Flavors and Knowledge from the Maize Field)

Numeralia

Since 2019

COMMUNITY REACH

11,744
neighbors actively
participating in programs

An average of
522
monthly visitors to the House

49,000
indirect beneficiaries
(number of inhabitants
of Santa María la Ribera)

neighborhood
initiatives

for the common good

Collaborations with
18 local schools, supporting
the creative and meaningful education
of 7,277 children, and
the work of 266 teachers

Testimony

“ We live from an adult-centric perspective,
which is the basis for teaching, but here they
have another pedagogical outlook, where the children can
foster their sense of community, that feeling of support,
it generates a space where they feel safe, and where
we can express ourselves as children or as adults”

- Jessica Martínez, mother of a child participating in the summer course Life In My Environment, August 2022

EXPANSION
IN TO OTHER
TERRITORIES

Link with 269 community
organizations and agents
235 allies have expanded
Casa Gallina's work in
128 communities across
21 states

Reaching 36,719 people
in other territories

Programs of
Environmental
Education

75 schools
236 teachers
5893 students

In Oaxaca, Campeche,
Guerrero, Mexico City, Puebla
Veracruz and Jalisco

books published
and distributed
nationwide:

We Are Maize

Constellations:
A Manual of Tools
for Collective Mapping

Interconnections: Big
and Small Creatures
in the Same World

Life in My Environment

We Make Our River

The Distributed Orchard

Flavors and Knowledge
from the Maize Field

Tracing the Common.
The Territories that Inhabit Us

46%

of the print run
consists of editions in 8
indigenous languages:

    Zapoteco, Maya, Náhuatl, Wixárika,
    Purépecha, Ombeayiüts, Tsotsil
    Tseltal, Mazatec and Totonac

community exhibitions
activated in
8 states

Mexico City
State of Mexico
Nayarit
Tabasco

Quintana Roo
Oaxaca
Chiapas
Puebla

CO-CREATION PROJECTS
WITH ARTISTS

Murals designed
by young
neighbors

Collaborative children’s
board game

Artistic
interventions
in public schools

NUTRITION AND RESILIENCE

A collection of 184
of agroecological seed varieties

Linked to 36 spaces,
focused on their safeguarding,
distribution and exchange.

Family
Orchards

33 neighbor's orchards
linked to Casa Gallina
totaling 44 m² de
of cultivated land

Compost

Organic waste
processed in
Casa Gallina'shenhouse

15 m³ of fertile soil for use
by the community, derived from 344kg of organic residues.

Culinary
Workshops

1,016 participants
in culinary workshops
with local ingredients

Testimony

“ When I was a kid, I'd spend my holidays at the ranch
and since children couldn't drink coffee they'd
ask us to go pick lemon balm, lemon verbena,
and other plants to make us tea. Before we came back to
the city she would give us plants to bring home.
Afterwards we'd write letters telling her
how we were faring with them. Now, what I plant here
goes back to the village”

- Teresa Mendoza, retired elementary school teacher, urban farmer.

EXHIBITIONS ABOUT ECOLOGY
IN EVERYDAY LIFE

125,547
in-person visitors

43,800
online visitors

5,849
participants
in educational
activities

Venues:

·UNAM
Geology Museum,
Mexico City

·Cabañas Museum,
Guadalajara

·La Enseñanza,
San Cristobal de las Casas

·Huerto Roma Verde,
Mexico City

·Contemporary Art Gallery/USBI,
Veracruz

Testimony

“ What I liked most about this visit was
when we learned the different parts of a hummingbird
and put one together like a puzzle. I learned that I can plant
more flowers to get hummingbirds to come and find food ...
and that both humans and animals need nature.”

- 8 year old boy visiting the Exhibiton: Colibríes/ huitziltin/ ts’unu’uno’ob

NEIGHBOR GATHERINGS

“ It is lovely for me to have Emiliano teaching me,
because I spent my entire life teaching youngsters,
it is a pleasure to have a young man teach me now.
Emiliano is a born teacher.”

- Rossi Terán, student in the cell phone and computer training, retired, formerly economic teacher at the University of Caracas

894 participants in
cinema club sessions

During 38 meals 438 neighbors
ate together and
had rich conversations
in Casa Gallina

575 senior citizen
neigbours attended 8 seasonal dances

140 senior citizens
participating in computer workshops
and technical advice sessions

160 neighbors participated
in 11 exchange encounters
with other territories

Testimony

“ Interesting days, wonderful to meet up among 49,000 inhabitants,
to be a melting pot to create alternative forms of kinship in
creation and inspiration. Thank you for bringing us together to
share feelings, stories and knowledge. I hope this dynamic can
expand to more outlying and heterogeneous contexts.
I hope I will chance upon the people I interacted
with today on the streets and continue exchanging
and getting to know them. Hugs now and forever ”

- Miguel H Olano, neighbor who attended the gathering Friends Dining Blindly, July 2022

REPAIR CULTURE

Prestaduría vecinal

2,083 tools loaned 510 neighbors registered

Workshops

12 workshops and advisory with practical application
with 152 participants

Cartography

Allies

Related initiatives

Allies

Casa Gallina strives to build and strengthen networks of alliances with collectives, individuals, civil society organizations and public or private institutions with whom we share common interests. Collaborative processes are built in different formats and frameworks, which weave networks to share resources, strategies and methodologies.

These different alliances aim to enable processes and actions related to critical narratives, so as to trigger collective experiences on ecology, resilience, community liassons and creativity in daily life.

This network is deepened through the creation of new programs and work formats in co-participation with the agents and organizations with which it collaborates. In search of constant expansion, the network is open to constantly integrate new organizations, groups and institutions that share the interests of creating projects in favor of the common good, culture, community and the environment.