In the Alavesa town of Ozaeta, on the shores of Lake Ulibarri-Ganboa, there is a farm dedicated to leisure and creativity: Caserío Omur. It was empty until the Garai ON NaturArtea association started working on it. For four years, the owners have allowed the neighborhood and the hamlet to revive and use the hamlet to carry out workshops and leisure projects.

According to Amaia Gabilondo, the house and the environment are slowly being fixed: “We are still a small partnership. For example, the roof of the Omuch farmhouse is deteriorating and is being repaired.” At the same time, they work from the beginning with programs related to leisure. Thousands of young people and elderly people have participated in the activities organized by them, both from outside and from the Basque Country. Among these initiatives are, for example, learning to make different gardens, creating works of art with elements inherited from nature or transforming the Omuan neighborhood itself into an upland. The activities are not limited to dwellings, but extend from village to village.

In the skirts of the Elgea mountains

The Omur farmhouse is located in a privileged setting, on the slopes of the Sierra de Elgea, and on both sides of the lake. According to Gabilondo, Alto Deba is a lung for the valley, a kind of beach, and many of the leisure activities they organize are carried out there. They take advantage of the richness of the environment, which through workshops and programmes aim to promote a favourable attitude towards nature conservation. “We want to give special value to nature, because we are obliged to leave our descendants a better environment than the one we have received.”

In addition, the association aims to have a good time, as it is a free time group aimed at all the public. They want to promote leisure through creation and participation: “Making art with anything is a good way to have a good time.” In the broadest sense, Garai ON understands art, and Gabilondo is convinced that anyone can be creative: “We are all artists and we all have the artistic sense within ourselves. If you are asleep, we have to awaken that instinct.” The members of the association believe that being creators brings benefits to oneself and society in general, and make those who participate in their actions come to it so that it is a path to the development of a new society.

Heritage conservation is another pillar of the partnership, which works primarily with social heritage. “Heritage is not just the house or the village. Social relations are also patrimony and very important. We have to take care of the ways of creating new networks of relationships, recovering the relationship paths that existed in their day,” explains Gabilondo. In this way, they intend to revive the relations that were maintained in the valley: “We work in Alto Deba and Llanada Alavesa, because it is believed that we are separated from the mountain range of Elguea, but that is not the case. Álava and Gipuzkoa have always been united, and our valley has had a close relationship with the citizenship of Álava. That relationship is being lost and we want to recover it.”

In order to keep auzolan alive

Gabilondo has explained that auzolan is a rich heritage because it is one of the pillars of wisdom and serves to promote awareness and creation around nature. The association always works in auzolan, both in the workshop and in other initiatives. “It is a very present thing in the Basque Country and we cannot let it die. Some foreign countries are investing in building a country to keep it alive. In the London district of Brixton, for example, they've put a fortune to do what we do. The City of Berlin is also in it, trying to attract creative people.”

They want above all to convey to young people the importance of auzolan: “We teach them what it is, the history of auzolan, but above all we rely on the experiences to show that we have fun making auzolan.” Programs focused on teamwork, based on art and nature. One of them is the Gazteartean initiative. About 800 young people from Gipuzkoa and Álava have participated in the event. In Gabilondo’s words, the program seeks the balance between “Sharpness” and “Gutasuna”, as “in me you can’t be happy if you don’t participate in the letter.” To cultivate the fog, young people have been drawn with clay, with their eyes closed, and then they've talked about those images. They have worked by groups, through artistic portraits, songs and a short film.

They have also worked with Debagoiena Baccalaureate students, with the Auzolanartean program, and they have relied on the artistic Land-art movement. Works of art have been carried out with elements of nature, such as branches or stones, among others. “It is the young people themselves who choose the projects and where they want to carry them out. We help them to develop it correctly”, said the member of the association. With young foreigners, they have organized Auzolan Internacional. “There have been 40 young people from all over the world: Koreans, Russians, French…” Gabilondo has valued the experience as very positive, as they returned to their countries with knowledge of many things about the Basque Country and the Basque culture.

Time off for retirees

The offer of the Gara ON Association is not intended solely for young people. They're also organizing activities for retirees, because they've seen there's a need. “Society has retired people abandoned. It is a consequence of the egocentrism of adults, because we believe that we are wiser than they are. We don’t listen to them, and we’ve ignored the wisdom of retirees.” Thanks to the Aisiartean programme, 400 retirees and retirees participated in the leisure activities of the association. As they reached the Omur village, the retirees made the journey of the senses. “We were going down a small path. They kept quiet, listened to the sounds surrounding them and helped each other.” They were then offered different workshops, for example, the radio workshop. “Retirees have the need to speak and radio is a way to speak one by one,” says Gabilondo. They also performed exercises to reflect on one's own life. They were drawn in a large role and in each part of the body they represented or wrote elements related to the experiences. “There is war, the reports of the first emigrants... For them it is very therapeutic”.

First steps

“At all times we are inventing different activities, maintaining our three pillars, but the partnership is still at the beginning,” said Amaia Gabilondo. Thanks to the speed they have taken, the workshops are organised in a simple way and want to create an ever richer offer. The objective, however, is not forgotten: Put the caserío Omur and let people approach him. In this way, it is intended to create in the haystack a differentiated space that hosts shows, of 300 square meters, and that will become a laboratory of performing arts. Different orchards are also working to offer visitors food from the farmhouse. The last intention is that the members of the association live in the farmhouse to make a broad offer. In Gabilondo’s words, “our dream is for people coming to Garai ON to find a special place to talk to the audiovisual media, to perform performances, or to offer circus events, for example. We want to offer such a space.”