The first edition of MACA Play Ink was selected in the CERCLES cultural mediation call, promoted by the Consortium of Museums of the Valencian Community (CMCV). This recognition made it possible to shape a proposal that, from the outset, sought to position young people as protagonists of a creative process linked to contemporary issues and close to their lives.

In this first phase, the project explored the intersection between graphic art, music and sustainability, betting on an interdisciplinary approach that connected directly with the interests and languages of the participants. Through this dialogue between disciplines, young people were invited to reflect on urgent issues such as climate change, consumption habits and the need to imagine new forms of relationship with the planet. Graphics and sound became expressive tools for thinking about the common good, denouncing injustices and giving shape to alternative visions of the future.

The creative process was structured around technical workshops in screen printing, experimental graphics and typography, combined with active listening sessions and collective dynamics of debate and reflection. Music and rhythm served as a motor to generate images charged with energy, while manual work with inks, papers and screen printing screens provided a space for concentration, patience and discovery.

Beyond the visual result, this first edition became a space for encounter and mutual discovery. The participants not only acquired new artistic skills, but also learned to work as a team, to share ideas and to recognize the strength of their voices when expressed collectively. In many cases, it was also the first time they approached a museum as their own space, not as a distant place, but as a laboratory of experiences.

«Breathing MACA» goes beyond a conventional guided tour.

These are visits in which the content and forms of communication are adapted, with the aim of transforming the museum into a space oriented toward promoting social inclusion, driving education and art as mediating agents to strengthen the quality of life for all people.

In all visits we propose participating in art and culture and coming into contact with it, having a voice in the first person and generating meaningful experiences that stimulate dialogue, reflection, imagination, critical thinking, and the possibility of sharing and participating in the project making use of all the senses. An always exciting project.

Breathing MACA is aimed at groups with different abilities, functional diversity or at risk of social exclusion.

It was born as a selected project in the public call 'Lugar Común', from the Consorci de Museus de la Comunitat Valenciana, within its 'Culture on Equal Terms' program. Created and carried out by David Gil and Ester García from 'Daguten. Escuela Gráfica de Barrio', it has been developing since 2019.

Tirando del Hilo has always aimed to be an opportunity to awaken creativity in people with intellectual disabilities from the Terramar Occupational Center of APSA. The sessions aim to create a meeting space in the museum where participants have learned to enjoy art and have experimented with the various expressive possibilities offered by graphic arts.

And so the participants from the Terramar Occupational Center of APSA in Alicante, the "Equipo Seri", were able to design and create, projecting their ideas in each proposed project, and their results have been reflected in various designs such as the t-shirt for the Plataforma Festival and an exhibition in the D Space of MACA during the months of December 2019 and January 2020.

MACA/San Rafael Objective was born in 2019 from MACA's interest in promoting and providing tools for the dissemination of art and artistic production, with the aim of contributing to the transformation of society through culture from collective work. The program was designed for users of the San Rafael Center, San Francisco de Borja Foundation. Due to its multidisciplinary nature, it is expressed through workshops that cover disciplines such as drawing, painting, sculpture, photography..., generating social value in people with intellectual disabilities, and emphasizing their creative work rather than the disability.

In 2020, due to the health situation, it was postponed.

MACA for SABIEX. The Miguel Hernández University of Elche has been developing SABIEX for years, a comprehensive program for people over 55 years old promoting active aging. For this program, MACA organized several seminars in 2018. Under the title Sempere. Unraveling Stories is a unique tour through the MACA, its history and its permanent collections with the idea of sharing knowledge and emotions, exchanging experiences, bringing contemporary art closer...; to reflect on it through artistic activities that provide tools to generate meaningful experiences that stimulate dialogue, reflection, imagination and critical thinking making use of all the senses.

The illustrated poetry collection You and I. Modernity and Memory. Memory and Modernity is one of the projects that emerged within the 3 x 3(1) Visits/Collections/Workshops program at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Alicante, although it soon gained its own dimension. In this case, five young people with Down syndrome from ANDA actively participated. Association of Children and Young People with Disabilities in Alicante. A poetic-artistic journey through five works belonging to the Fundación Caja Mediterráneo Collection, transforming poetry into art and art into poetry through emotion and creativity, with the aim of allowing participants to experience the process of creating a work of art inside and outside the Museum. To achieve this, we had the active collaboration of Pedro Rodríguez, illustrator P. Strange and Javier Calabria, poet and DJ to generate a dialogue in front of the works through creative processes, with the activity directed by Ester G. Guixot, museum educator at MACA and Cristina Barrachina, Social-Labor Integrator at ANDA to exchange knowledge and experiences.

Project Objective. To achieve the participation of young people with functional diversity in the Museum, in order to work, through dialogue in front of artworks, creative processes as a vehicle to enhance their social, emotional and creative abilities.

Materials and Methodology Applied. This project was structured around five works from the Fundación Caja Mediterráneo Collection that allowed for discovering the relationships between poetry and art in an exemplary way.

The practical implementation of the project took place during the months of April and May 2016, in two sessions: Memory and Modernity at ANDA facilities and Modernity and Memory at MACA, both lasting one and a half hours.

In the first session, Memory and Modernity, poetry and art were used with two very specific purposes: on one hand, having participants express through images and words what they felt with a poem by Javier Calabria, linked to each of the selected works, and on the other, using art and poetry as an inclusive dissemination channel. In the second session, Modernity and Memory at the Museum, it was discovered which work the illustrated poetry belonged to and the poetry collection was completed with new creative processes developed by the young people, thus completing the Visual Poetry Collection.

Selected Works:

Miquel Barceló, Il pittore a Bologna, 1983. Mixed media on paper glued to canvas and collage.

Jaume Plensa, The Porter, 2000. Tempered transparent glass, stainless steel and light.

Curro González, The Melancholic One, 2002. Mixed media on canvas

Carmen Calvo, Self-Portrait, 1994. Mixed media/collage of objects on satin mattress.

Juan Muñoz, Staring at the sea III, 1997. Polyester resin, mirror and cardboard.

Results and Conclusions. The illustrated poetry collection You and I. Modernity and Memory. Memory and Modernity has been created based on experiences in which artistic expression has been used as a means to facilitate communication and integration of young people with functional diversity in the Museum. And the result is beautiful. Our intention has been to create an "artist's book" that illustrates poems, a work of art where the most important thing has been the people and their process. This poetry collection addresses both literary and visual writing and has made it possible to raise awareness and create consciousness about the need to give continuity to this artistic project with other groups. It promotes the cultivation of a sensitivity that allows one to grasp the Museum, communicate and express oneself through creative processes. The sharing of the reading of the poems in front of the works was so moving that it ended up giving meaning to the much-mentioned social function of museums.

The experience was part of the festival Poetry is News in Alicante in April 2016.

Extrarradio. Art and Mental Health is an educational project for museums, designed and directed for people with mental illness, with the objective of generating meaningful experiences that lead to the development of skills not only artistic, but also social, emotional and communicative. It has been created and developed by Ester García Guixot, a graduate in Fine Arts and museum educator, allowing to describe and put into practice an intervention methodology, through which it has been possible to develop the research The Museum. Art and creative processes as a means and tools for dialogue for people with mental illness in the university Master's program Education and Museums. Heritage, identity and cultural mediation taught by the University of Murcia during the years 2015 and 2016.

The participants of the project have been 25 patients from four Rehabilitation Units of the Dr. Esquerdo Socio-Assistance Center dependent on the Mental Health Area of the Provincial Council of Alicante

An educational project proposed in three sessions at the centers, conducted by an educator and three artistic-creative workshops. Sessions focused on reflecting on the surrounding reality, art and the Museum. Starting from observation exercises and creative processes, works and documents are generated that will undoubtedly lead participants to broaden their critical vision regarding their world and art

Four groups of 20 students from the Els Reiets juvenile rehabilitation center in Alicante and the Secondary Education Section of IES Figueras Pacheco participated in this experience. Young people aged between 14 and 21 years old.

On this occasion, it is the Museum that travels to the center in order to bring works of art to those who cannot enjoy them in person. Contemporary images connect in an exemplary way with the world of young people and adolescents, being capable of forming their own iconography that establishes connections between their personal situation and artistic creation. Easier to verbalize than with words.

This project arises from a Session / Zero that took place within the 3x3 program at the Els Reiets juvenile rehabilitation center in Alicante (Secondary Education Section of IES Figueras Pacheco).

3 x 3 is conceived as a cultural outreach program, developed together with Extrarradio, which includes elements that are interesting and attractive for groups with functional diversity and/or at risk of social exclusion. The starting point of this project is the MACA's permanent collections as spaces of expression, which provide tools to activate inclusion pathways and routes for social transformation.

We use a working methodology that adapts content and forms of communication to the age, cognitive development, or physical, psychological, sensory, intellectual, or mental characteristics of the participants, promoting personal development and enhancing different capacities.

In all visits, these groups are offered the opportunity to participate in art and culture and come into contact with it, have a voice in the first person, and generate meaningful experiences that stimulate dialogue, reflection, imagination, critical thinking, and the possibility of sharing and participating in the project using all the senses. A project that is always exciting.

With this program of 3 visits to the 3 permanent collections of the museum: the 20th Century Art Collection, the CajaMediterráneo Collection, and the Eusebio Sempere Collection, we propose, starting from the works in these collections, to work to formulate new ones based on experiences and encounters in the museum and in life. We want to start from the concrete, not from abstractions. From the premise of proposing, we initiate individual and collective work that can culminate in an exhibition to show the created work, inviting other audiences to participate in the process carried out and experienced, giving visibility to everything done and valuing the participants as protagonists.

Since October 2012, the MACA launched a program of activities for a group of Alzheimer's patients in collaboration with the Alzheimer's Patient Association of Alicante, sponsored in turn by the Manuel Peláez Foundation and the Provincial Council of Alicante.

First edition: October 2012 – June 2013

-Optical and kinetic art: art in motion. 20th Century Art Collection.

-The representation of women in the 20th Century Art Collection.

-The memory of objects. Self-portrait by Carmen Calvo, Fundación Caja Mediterráneo Collection.

-Eusebio Sempere. The line that dreams, in the Eusebio Sempere Collection.

-Joan Miró. Constellations, based on Miró from the 20th Century Art Collection.

-Inadvertent architecture, Encounters between the DKV Seguros Collection and the Caja Mediterráneo Collection.

-Fernando Sinaga, Ideas K, temporary exhibition.

-By way of reflection, temporary exhibition with works from the Fundación Caja Mediterráneo Collection.

The result of this first edition was reflected in You and I, The Documentary, directed by Alberto Nieto and with the support of the Film Studies Center "Ciudad de la Luz", which was responsible for obtaining all graphic material, recording the visits and collecting testimonies from the two couples featured. All of this with the idea of creating a documentary that today is a reality, thanks to a collaboration agreement between the Film Studies Center Ciudad de la Luz and the Culture Department of the Alicante City Council