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A year ago, together with the boys and girls who reside at the Móstoles Children’s Home, we dreamed of making a home inside our own tree house. We imagined what its shape would be like, what we would do inside it and what would happen around it.

Some time later, in a conversation with the teachers at the Pablo Neruda Vocational College, we saw the importance of learning through action, and we assessed the need to turn educational spaces into places where real-life projects could be put into practice. We then thought it would be exciting to involve the Carpentry Department at the UFIL college in the construction of the house imagined by that group of children.

We at the CA2M Museum like to think that we can all take part in the construction of the world around us, so in October we will begin a process of collaboration with both groups to conceive, design and make this powerful image possible.

In recent years, the CA2M Museum has been working together with the educational community at Federico García Lorca CEIP on a number of projects, allowing us to build new relationships between the school and the museum. This school year, we are interested in delving with the students into the imaginaries of the unknown in order to subvert the usual way of classifying the world.

We will work in the natural areas surrounding the school buildings where the unclassifiable lives to create a classroom that allows us to make our way into the wild vegetation, to get to know the little creatures that inhabit it and to imagine other worlds.

Dragon-like creatures; a huge, vaguely fish-like creature with legs and fangs; several deer and horses with elaborate trunk-like noses.

It is fascinating how in certain periods, not knowing the real appearance of certain animals, artists resorted to oral and written accounts to reconstruct or imagine the shapes of those creatures, the results of which were strange beasts that broke free from the boundaries of knowledge. 

One of our goals is to reflect on the ability of projects developed from artistic practices to have long-term impacts. In this sense, we are interested in investigating how art can affect the educational institution and, conversely, how educational institutions, public schools in particular, can transmit this experience to the education department.

Project developed through conversations with the artist Belén Rodríguez.

One of the fundamental missions of the CA2M Museum is to work with young people. Over the years, the participants in our youth programmes have built up a network of relationships and affection not only among themselves, but also informally and intensely with the museum itself.

In this project, we want to rethink the survival of fragile and sensitive programmes like youth projects. To address questions such as what the role of young people can be in the institution's policies, what new concerns and preoccupations should constitute these projects, what transformations are necessary for their survival over time, and what new relationships the institution can establish with its participants.

Where Things Continue is a group formed by young people interested in culture and art and who have been a part of these programmes. The project aims to redefine the relationship with the museum, encouraging self-management by its members and fostering self-directed learning among its participants.

During the months of October through to February, the group will meet regularly, hold working sessions and meetings with artists and creators.

In this first phase, the group will be able to address themes such as the processes of disappearance, immortality, flowering and regeneration.

The aim of the group is to think about collaborative working strategies within the institution and to get involved in the construction of programming aimed at other young people.