LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries, a space for artistic exchange
LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries is, first and foremost, a space for artistic exchange. It was set up with the purpose of establishing an effective alliance between art, design, culture, industry and economic progress, and the goal of becoming a space for interaction and dialogue between art and industrial creation.
It is not a museum nor is it just another venue for the exhibition or dissemination of happening trends, because it throws a special spotlight in production, creation and research into art concepts still being defined.
Another major focus will be what we are calling creative industries which is nothing more nor less than a way of transforming creativity into a cultural asset capable of generating economic growth.
LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre has set itself the goal of disseminating and promoting among diverse audiences a greater knowledge and appreciation of artistic creations, productions of visual industries and applied art, as crucial stepping stones marking the way forward in these early years of the 21st century.
As an art centre, LABoral is fully committed with the development and experimentation of creative activities by artists exploring expressive concepts and connecting the possibilities offered by modern information and communication technologies with the new technological supports for visual arts, industrial design, fashion or videogames.
The Centre is located in Universidad Laboral of Gijon, a striking architectural complex built in the 1950s to provide vocational training to children of the most disadvantages classes. To host this project, the Government of the Principality of Asturias promoted the refurbishment of some old workshops designed for vocational training, though they were never eventually used for that purpose, with over 12,400 square metres of functional space. This unprecedented initiative, located at the North-East of the Universidad Laboral complex, has been conceived as an intellectual, cultural and regenerating element of the economic structure of a region that wants to make the most of the universal vocation of its people and of its industrial tradition to position itself on a par with other leading regions in the world.
