awakkuna territorial encounters

launching spring 2027

medellín - santa elena | antioquia, colombia

About

Awakkuna Residencies are currently in development and are designed to bring together academics, researchers, curators, cultural practitioners, and institutions for immersive place-based learning experiences in the Colombian Andes.

A future gathering space for academics, researchers, curators, and cultural practitioners interested in exploring Latin America through cultural intelligence, territorial learning, and relational engagement.

why territorial learning?

Most international programs about Latin America teach participants about the region.

Awakkuna begins somewhere different.

We believe that some forms of understanding cannot emerge from distance alone. They require sustained attention to territory, relationship, and lived encounter.

Colombia is not simply the setting for the residency. It is one of its teachers.

Here, conversations continue while walking mountain paths, preparing meals together, listening to local practitioners, observing ecological systems, and remaining present long enough for different questions to emerge.

Rather than approaching latin america as a destination to be interpreted, participants are invited to enter into relationship with a living territory.

where histories, knowledge systems, and everyday practices become active participants in the learning process.

These territorial encounters are not designed to provide answers about Latin America.

they are, designed to reshape the questions participants bring home.

Medellín

〰️

Santa Elena

〰️

Antioquia

〰️

Colombia

〰️

Medellín 〰️ Santa Elena 〰️ Antioquia 〰️ Colombia 〰️

THE DETAILS

This sample itinerary illustrates the kind of immersive, place-based learning experience being developed for the 2027 Awakkuna TERRITORIAL ENCOUNTERS program.

The structure is designed to move participants from arrival and orientation through deep territorial encounter, field immersion, and collective reflection — honoring the sentipensante principle that genuine understanding emerges through presence, not only analysis.

DATE(S)
spring 2027 (global north cohort) - TBD

Summer 2027 (LATAM Cohort) - TBD

CAPACITY
30 PARTICIPANTS

language
English (Global North cohort) / Spanish (LATAM cohort) 

Location
Medellín & Santa elena - Antioquia, Colombia

Below is a sample 4-day experience illustrating the type of territorial experience currently being developed.

For Academic, Curatorial & Cultural Practitioners
Day One

Arriving in Territory

Threshold / Orientation / First Encounter

Morning

Arrival at the finca. Welcome gathering — coffee, lulo, and introductions organized not through titles and institutions but through a simple opening question:

What brought you here, and what are you hoping to unlearn?

Opening session

Abya Yala as Epistemological Frame 

A guided conversation introducing the territorial and conceptual foundations of Awakkuna — Sentipensante, Ayni, Ayllu, Ch'ixi, Pacha — not as theory to be absorbed but as living frameworks to be experienced across the four days.

Afternoon

First Cultural Imaginary session. Participants engage with a Cultural Imaginary rooted in the Andean territory of Antioquia — decoding the sonic, visual, material, and relational codes of the immediate landscape.

Guided walk through the finca grounds — reading the territory through a relational lens. What does this land carry? What does it ask of us?

Evening

Communal dinner — prepared collectively using local ingredients. Informal conversation around the concept of Confianza — how trust is built through shared presence, shared meals, and shared time rather than credentials and titles.

Day Two

Deep Territorial Encounter

Immersion / Living Knowledge / Collective Intelligence

Morning

The Body as territory 

A facilitated embodied learning session exploring how knowledge moves through bodies, gestures, rhythm, and collective presence — drawing from Afro-diasporic and Andean epistemological traditions.

Participants are invited to engage with movement, listening, and sensory attention as methodological tools — not as performance, but as a way of knowing.

Afternoon

Collective Inquiry Field

This space explores how territorial intelligence might reshape the ways we engage with knowledge across research, curatorial, and cultural practice.

It moves through three interconnected lines of attention:

Territory & Method
How research design, fieldwork, and accountability shift when knowledge is understood as relational and situated.

Relational Practice
How curatorial, institutional, and cultural work changes when engagement with territory becomes reciprocal rather than extractive.

Living Knowledge Systems
How different ways of knowing reshape how Latin American contexts are understood, interpreted, and worked with across disciplines and practices.

Evening

Group sharing — each track presents their provocations. Closing reflection: Coyuntura — reading the living present of the territory we are in.

What is this land asking of the work we are doing?

Day Three

Look Forward & Wrap Up

Field Day / Excursion / Living Archive

Full Day — Field Excursion

A guided immersive journey into the surrounding landscape of Santa Elena and the greater Antioquia territory — designed not as a tourist excursion but as a territorial reading practice.

Possible destinations depending on season and local partnerships:

The Silleteros of Santa Elena 

An encounter with the Silletero community — the flower cultivators whose ancestral practice of carrying elaborate flower arrangements on their backs has sustained cultural memory, territorial identity, and collective pride for generations. A living example of embodied knowledge, intergenerational transmission, and aesthetic sovereignty.

A community listening session 

A facilitated encounter with local practitioners, knowledge holders, or community organizers — structured as a listening practice, not an interview. Participants arrive with questions, not conclusions.

The landscape itself 

Guided reading of the Andean geography — watercourses, agricultural systems, cloud forest ecosystems — through the lens of Awakkuna's territorial intelligence frameworks. How does this land organize itself? What does it sustain? What has it survived?

Evening

Return & Integration 

Communal dinner with local producers and community guests. Informal sharing — what did participants hear, see, and feel that they did not expect?

"The territory often speaks before the formal data arrives."

Day Four

Integration & Sentipensante Futures

Synthesis / Commitment / Closing Threshold

Morning

sentipensante Futures 

Drawing from the full arc of the four days — what futures become visible when territorial intelligence, relational accountability, and embodied sentipensanteknowledge are placed at the center of academic, curatorial, and creative practice?

Each participant is invited to articulate one concrete commitment:

What changes in how I work when I return?

Late Morning

Collective closing

a structured conversation around Ayni: what does each participant owe the territory, the community, and the knowledge systems they have encountered across the four days?

This is not a symbolic exercise. It is the beginning of a relational accountability that extends beyond the residency itself.

Evening

Optional

Individual or small-group sessions with Awakkuna for deeper exploration of how the residency frameworks might integrate into specific research projects, exhibition programs, or institutional initiatives.

Farewell gathering — final coffee, lulo, and the question that opened Day One returned: What did you unlearn here?

Departure.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • The residency is designed for academics, graduate students, doctoral researchers, curators, museum professionals, cultural practitioners, institutional leaders, and organizations interested in engaging more deeply with Latin America through cultural intelligence, territorial learning, and relational practice.

    Participants do not need to work within a single discipline. The residency is intentionally interdisciplinary, creating space for conversations across research, curatorial practice, design, education, cultural policy, and institutional leadership.

  • No. The residency welcomes participants with varying levels of familiarity with Latin America. What matters most is curiosity, openness, and a willingness to learn through relationship rather than assumption.

    Awakkuna is designed to meet participants where they are while inviting deeper forms of engagement with the histories, knowledge systems, and living realities of the territory.

  • Yes. Residencies will generally be organized in English for international cohorts and in Spanish for participants from Latin America, allowing conversations to unfold with greater linguistic and cultural depth.

    Future mixed-language and institutional cohorts may also be developed.

  • Both. Individual applications will be available alongside institutional participation for universities, museums, research centers, and organizations interested in attending as a cohort or developing customized learning experiences.

  • Each residency cohort is intentionally small, allowing meaningful conversation, sustained dialogue, and genuine relationship-building among participants, local collaborators, and the territory itself.

    Current cohorts are anticipated to welcome approximately 25 - 30 participants.

  • Yes. Institutions interested in bringing graduate cohorts, faculty groups, research teams, or organizational delegations will be able to request customized participation options as the residency program develops.

  • Registration is expected to open in Fall 2026, with the inaugural residency launching in 2027.

    Participants may request the Residency Prospectus and receive program updates through the contact form below.

  • The inaugural residency is intentionally rooted in Santa Elena, Antioquia.

    Over time, Awakkuna hopes to develop additional territorial learning experiences across different regions of Latin America in collaboration with local communities, practitioners, and institutional partners.

    Each future residency will remain grounded in the specific histories, ecologies, and cultural intelligence of its own territory.

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