The goal of Es Baluard Museum’s Educational Development, Training and Public Programmes Department is to mediate between the museum and different social sectors, and reinforce the development of creative sensitivity and critical judgement in the population.
It is therefore open to different groups and regions, beyond the museum building and geared towards the creation of projects in collaboration, in which different agents intervene, not only in the cultural and educational sphere, but also the social sphere in all of their variants.
Since 2013, it has been reformulating itself in a continuous I+D process centred on two focal points: education and training, which complement one another and also connect to the public programme function. Aware of their need for continuous evaluation and reformulation in step with society, in both one direction and another, work is carried out on the research for new formulas of action which can respond to the diverse needs and interests that exist within the different contemporary audiences and interlocutors. A museum must be fertile ground for entrepreneurism and critical and participative cultural construction.
The educational facet is linked to schools, families, the elderly, the mentally ill, collectives at risk, women’s, gender and transgender groups, groups of immigrants and local and global organisations, both professional and non-professional.
The museum is understood as a community space open to citizens as the bearers of knowledge and realities. Horizontal and dialogue work with the different collectives is strengthened by means of contemporary artistic practices understood as tools for creation of culture, knowledge and shared experiences.
The contents based on which the different programmes are generated may revolve around the museum’s exhibition programme, its permanent collection, the history of the site itself, its heritage environment, the needs of the collectives and communities we collaborate with, among others, and indeed be autonomous programmes in symbiosis with the realities of contemporary creative and discourse practices.
The training part of the department is comprised of two aspects. On the one hand, it attempts to respond to adults who are disconnected from the artistic ambience but who are curious about it; and on the other hand, it tries to initiated specialist platforms and models, constructed from the museum or in a network with other institutions, with the aim of providing necessary instruments for active professionals from the fields of teaching, culture and contemporary creation or social activism.