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.
