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

In this II edition, the visits tour the exhibition of permanent collections, carefully designed for their enjoyment and understanding, as well as to encourage reactions, reflections, conversations, or activities around art and artists, but also around the sensations and emotions they may provoke.

We visit and work around temporary exhibitions: Palazuelo. Caligrafías musicales, Serigrafías de Ibero-Suiza. Colección UPV, De la naturaleza humana. Colección Fundación Caja Mediterráneo, at the MACA, and José Luis Serzo. Blinki Rotred y el juego de los ajos, and Música, teatro y tradición at Cigarreras Cultura Contemporánea

Furthermore, this project documents the evolution and impact that the program has on participants and a subsequent evaluation of its effectiveness.

We started this edition with a wonderful visit to the temporary exhibition "Telefónica's Cubist Collection". In it we discovered that cubism was more than an avant-garde movement, it was the artistic movement that inaugurated modernity.

Through works by Juan Gris and other cubist artists, whose way of seeing reality offers us a range of imaginative possibilities, we discovered and learned another way of looking.

We related the museum's collections to the folklore that emerges from the Christmas season, through a workshop in which the traditions underlying collective memory are rescued. And we began a new year with the work of Carmen Calvo, with Mori el Merma by Joan Miró.

We closed this edition with Eusebio Sempere.

The visits tour the exhibition of permanent collections being carefully designed for their enjoyment and understanding as well as to encourage reactions, reflections, conversations or activities around art and artists, but also around the sensations and emotions they may provoke. Furthermore, this project captures the evolution and impact that the program has on participants.

In this edition a change was incorporated in the development of the sessions. A calendar of visits was established for both the Museum and AFA Alicante, which took place from January 15 to June 13, 2016. We had the participation of different art professionals who helped us see art from another point of view.

We began the fifth edition of Reminiscences. Art and Culture against Alzheimer's at the AFA Alicante facilities. We introduced ourselves and through creative, visual, and emotional dynamics, we learned step by step how to make a travel journal where we will collect the experiences lived during all the sessions of the year.