Medialab Prado

Meipi is a relatively recent project. It all started in the early months of 2006, in the kitchen of a shared flat where two friends were discussing urban planning, the Internet and processes that could allow citizens to become more active and have a greater participation in the public life of their cities These discussions between Alfonso Sánchez Uzábal and Domenico Di Siena (in which Francesco Cingolani, in Paris, also took part over the Internet), led to the creation of the first project to link maps, the Internet and citizen participation. However, Meipi as it is now was only born a few months later, when the programmers Jorge and Guillermo Álvaro Rey joined the project. It was with them that the project really came to life and was given the name Meipi. In a few months and advised by Pablo Rey, an expert in web design and usability, the first web platform was launched, to be used for various participation projects, including the Todo Sobre Mi Barrio (All About my Neighbourhood) project, (todosobremibarrio.com), which was set up in collaboration with the Laboratorio Urbano group and the Terapia Urbana (Urban Therapy) project developed in Santiago de Compostela with the collaboration of the architecture studio Ecosistema Urbano within the Galicia Centre for Contemporary Art (CGAC).