FLOCKING TO THE FAIR: FLIGHTS, SHIMMERS AND SHARED TABLES

What would a verbena (summer fair) shared with the city's birds look like?

What if, for one afternoon, we stopped watching them from below and invited them to celebrate with us?

We invite you to come and find out for yourselves: to share the verbena with our winged neighbours. We will be joined by Lidia Toga, who will help us to discover more about the rich world of urban birdlife. She knows these inhabitants of the skies and rooftops inside out, and will help us to understand their ways of being, moving and gathering.

Perhaps we should begin by looking up. Swifts, forever in motion, trace a rapid, collective dance across the sky that sets the tempo. They may encourage us to move with them, to follow that impulse alongside the groups Bailar el barrio and Baivén, flocking together, occupying space and discovering that movement can also be a way of belonging.

Between flights, we will build our own nests, inspired by the communal weaver bird that visited the preschool and primary workshops alongsid Adriana Reyes y Goya Batalla. Together, we will create collective shelters: shared spaces like the huge nests of monk parakeets, those living structures where there is always someone nearby, company and someone with whom to share things.

And, like magpies, we will be drawn to all things shiny and bright. Small treasures may appear: bits of paper that catch the light, found objects, fragments whose meaning changes when viewed together. The verbena will be that, too: a chance to pause for a moment and see things from a different perspective.

If at any time we need to slow down, we can pause Pompa y las familias, who have been exploring ways of sharpening the senses: listening more slowly, looking more closely, observing that pigeon from the windowsill, following the magpie in flight, noticing how things change when we truly pay attention.

There will, of course, be a shared spread—delightfully chaotic and generously abundant, just as it should be. Crumbs here and there; food passed around, changing hands, appearing and disappearing; eating on two feet while life unfolds around us.

Join us on 13 June at 5.30 pm to flutter, flock and chatter together as we celebrate the end of the school year.

All kinds of birds, families, and creatures of the earth and sky are welcome.

This verbena will be guided as a collective flight by Lidia Toga, an artist specialising in illustration, painting and muralism; Baiven, the collective formed by the dancers, choreographers and cultural mediators Alba Sáenz-López Aumente and Mar Sáenz-López Aumente; with Adriana Reyes, an anthropologist and creator in the field of live arts; Gregoria Batalla Batalla, a teacher at Zaleo nursery school, historian and provocateur in the art of education; and POMPA, a collective project for cultural management, curating and artistic creation led by Mara Sannia and Irene Aguilera Martín, whose practices intertwine to shape a shared territory of listening, play and transformation.