On Wednesday, August 12, the opening conference of the Media Lab ORT | UN75 was held at the School of Communication and streamed on the school’s YouTube channel. The dean, Eduardo Hipogrosso, and the school’s assistant academic secretary, Sabrina Bianchi, welcomed attendees and invited them to participate in the upcoming events, all of which are free to attend with prior registration.
The event served as a prelude to the start of the workshop, which will consist of eight sessions led by Prof. Daniela Golby. The workshop aims to foster the development of creative and innovative proposals to build sustainable solutions to current challenges, from the global perspective of the United Nations in the context of its 75th anniversary and its slogan “Shaping our future together.”
Mission: to open minds
Mireia Villar first visited Uruguay in 2015, when she came on vacation with her family. “Between Carrasco Airport and the beaches of the East Coast, I asked myself: Why is the United Nations in Uruguay?” Today, Villar serves as the UN Resident Coordinator in our country. In that role, she answered her own question: “For the arduous but beautiful task of opening minds—those of policymakers, businesspeople, educators, students, analysts, researchers, and the general public.”
The fact that we are holding this Medialab in the midst of a global pandemic is a clear sign, says Villar, that changes will be happening at an ever-increasing pace.
The minds of yesterday are of little use for today's problems, let alone tomorrow's. That means that when we think about development, we have to figure out today how to solve tomorrow's problems.
In that sense, the 2030 Agenda serves as a wake-up call: “It is a critique of what has been a development model based on a completely unsustainable use of resources, on practices and narratives that normalize certain phenomena such as inequality, waste, and exclusion,” he said. “In reality, progress is about being able to live well, prosper, and create opportunities.”
Villar highlighted three key aspects of the 2030 Agenda that will be addressed in the workshop:
- It is an agenda for structural reform.
- It gives us the opportunity to start a conversation about a new economy, one that we must all work together to create.
- This is a goal we can only achieve if we find a new way to collaborate—if we manage not only to communicate but also to truly connect through that collaboration.
Building the Future
José Peralta, Communications Advisor for the United Nations in Uruguay, expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to work together “to foster a different way of thinking.”
He said he was confident that the workshop would yield “valuable, practical, and achievable ideas to make Uruguay a better place in the coming years.” On this point, he stated: “I firmly believe that there will be no future other than the one we build ourselves.”
For a communicator, working in the United Nations format requires an innovative mindset: you have to believe in what you do, and you have to do what you believe in.