Mobile Week Barcelona engages the entire city with a fusion of art, technology and innovation

• The second edition of Mobile Week Barcelona will take place between 15 – 24 February with more than 80 activities in more than 70 spaces in the city’s 10 districts
• mWeek KIDS is a new initiative that will bring the entire family closer to technology and innovation through workshops and games
• mWeek GALLERY will display the work of 10 artists who integrate technology into their work at a collective exhibition at Disseny Hub Barcelona

January 25, 2018

Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital) is launching the second edition of Mobile Week Barcelona, the event during which art, science and technology come together to create a space for reflection on digital transformation. Following the success of the first edition last year, Mobile Week Barcelona is returning with a proposal that encourages public participation and will open a week before the GMSA Mobile World Congress.

The programme for the event, which will be held between 15 – 24 February, includes more than 80 activities in more than 70 spaces throughout the city and will see the participation of more than 100 speakers. In addition to offering a broader range of activities, Mobile Week Barcelona will establish itself as a multi-faceted civic project thanks to the active participation of Barcelona City Hall and the collaboration of more than 200 partners, local entities, scientific and research centres and spaces for innovation.

Mobile Week Barcelona has scheduled free activities that are open to the general public in order to promote reflection on the everyday future and place citizens at the heart of the digital revolution. Among the most significant novelties of this edition are four activities with different formats: mWeek TALKS, an arena for presenting new ideas or debating and reflecting on the impact of the digital revolution on people’s lives; mWeek LAB, a series of workshops on culture, technology, robotics and science; mWeek KIDS, a full-day event on innovation aimed at families; and mWeek GALLERY, an exhibition centre for disruptive artistic creations in different formats.

mWeek TALKS: an open agora

The mWeek TALKS programme consists of daily discussion panels that will be held either in the morning or the afternoon in each of Barcelona’s districts. Each session will tackle a specific subject, among which matters such as migration, the future of employment, education, health or cities of the future stand out. Examples include a debate titled Los robots, las empresas y mi empleo (Robots, companies and my job), organised by 4YFN and Robot Union, or the round table discussion Migraciones. Las fronteras en un mundo conectado (Migration. Borders in a connected world) on Monday 19 February. On Tuesday 20 February, coinciding with the awards ceremony for d-LAB, MWCapital’s digital transformation programme, a panel will discuss how to combat online bullying with new technology, and on Friday 23 February, another discussion will be held on the next generation of internet.

Participative innovation

The mWeek LAB programme includes more than 40 workshops and activities that will be held in different spaces designed to promote creativity, innovation, digital culture, technology and reflection throughout the city of Barcelona. Highlights include a workshop on mapping video games, which will be held in the Sants-Montjuïc neighbourhood, or an electronic origami masterclass in Sant Andreu.

Mobile Week Barcelona 2018 will bring the whole family closer to innovation with mWeek KIDS, an event that aims to spark interest in new technologies among children and teens. Several workshops will be held on Saturday 24 February, among which those on building a hydraulic hand, designing an electronic character or discovering science with the use of microscopes stand out.

This second edition of Mobile Week Barcelona will again gather together the creations of 10 artists who prove that technology can form an integral part of art. The artwork will be displayed in a collective exhibition called El futuro cotidiano (The everyday future) at Disseny Hub Barcelona from 15 February – 4 March. The artists have been selected from the 55 submissions received after the call for entries issued by MWCapital in November 2017.