THE CLASS FLEW BY

At the start of each school year, we embark on a new artist residency project. This year, we will be joined by artist Lidia Toga, who will be working with the school’s two fourth-grade classes.

Every day, when break time ends, the playground at CEIP Federico García Lorca falls completely still. The children return to their classrooms and, for a brief moment, the playground is suspended in silence. That is when they begin to appear, one by one. They have been watching from the roof of the primary school building for some time, still but alert, as though waiting for a signal known only to them. Once the bell falls silent, they make their way down to the ground with purposeful steps, following the same choreography each day.

They approach the bins and carefully pull out biscuit packets, scraps of pastries and milkshake cartons. What the human creatures carefully placed in the bins during break time ends up scattered across the ground and turned into food. The school’s birds (magpies, wagtails, monk parakeets, pigeons, sparrows and starlings) feast while the children do multiplication and dictation exercises in their classrooms. This is how the birds find food in winter: by following the traces we leave behind.

This simple scene—a small, almost unnoticed gesture—is the starting point for the project we will share with Lidia Toga throughout the winter, spring, summer and autumn of 2026. Lidia walks slowly, letting her gaze linger where almost no one else thinks to look. She watches the birds patiently and draws them with the same care: every line is a way of listening to them, of learning how they inhabit the world. We want to take this everyday coexistence between people and birds—so close to us, yet so easily overlooked—as our starting point, and learn to observe it with greater responsibility and care.

The playground is a territory where many forms of life coexist, although the pace of the school day often leaves us little time to stop and notice them. We want to open up this space: to recognise those who inhabit it and help the children understand how our actions affect the cycles and needs of those who fly, walk or hide among the branches.

Lidia Toga (Madrid, 1980) is an artist specialising in illustration, painting and mural art, with a career spanning almost two decades. Since 2018, she has been researching biodiversity and the relationship between rivers and cities, building an extensive archive around the Manzanares and Río de Oro in Melilla. Her work has resulted in exhibitions, publications, works on paper and community projects, including a large-scale mural in Melilla. Since 2010, she has led workshops for children at venues including La Casa Encendida and schools, as well as in her own studio by the river. Her practice centres on interspecies coexistence and rethinking the place of humans within nature. She advocates careful observation and a reciprocal relationship with ecosystems and their inhabitants.