The Consortium of Museums unveils new artistic projects in Alicante education centers
In a collaborative effort, the program titled Symbionts. Design fiction brings together artists and students to explore future Earth through the lens of science and art. Benidorm’s IES Pere Maria Orts i Bosch has been selected to participate in the educational initiative Artistic Resistances, an outreach by the Ministry of Education and the Museum Consortium. The project spans fifteen secondary schools across the Community, with four schools located in Alicante province.
During insolation sessions, cyanotypes emerge on paper as students experiment with the early photographic process while imagining how life might adapt to dramatic environmental shifts. The involvement highlights the creative process as a powerful vehicle for understanding biology and climate futures.
Some of the imagined creatures and ecosystems created by the students surface during these experiments, offering a glimpse into a distant future where life forms adapt to new conditions. The collaboration features the work of plastic artist Laura Salguero and the Pere Maria Orts i Bosch institute, illustrating how art and science can intersect to explore speculative environments.
Aquatic and atmospheric changes are central to the project, with terms such as aqualia and ozonozoic appearing as poetic descriptors of future biomes. Students contemplate timescales ranging from thousands to tens of millions of years to consider evolution, climate variation, and mass extinctions as they shape potential planetary futures. The exercise asks, what if Earth hosts new life strategies 10 000 years from now or 50 million years ahead?
Viewed from above, the effort blends art and biology, guided by a dozen teachers across disciplines who examine what future symbioses might look like and how such relationships could sustain life. According to Matilde Pastor, a professor of plastic arts, new environments and living conditions drive significant changes in species and behavior.
Students take to the streets to imagine a planet-saving future
From winged lizards to aquatic mammals, from gilled humans to non-photosynthetic plants, the project imagines creatures capable of thriving in water and extreme heat. These thought experiments invite students to visualize adaptation strategies that could help civilizations endure harsh climates.
art in the classroom
Working on these projects proves to be a powerful educational catalyst. Art entering the classroom enables students to experience the creative process firsthand, making it feel tangible rather than distant. This approach fosters motivation and curiosity, encouraging creative problem-solving that students can carry into other subjects and futures.
Another imagined symbiote from the Pere Maria Orts cohort hints at worlds that could emerge thousands of years ahead. The collaboration between artist Laura Salguero and the Pere Maria Orts team has been ongoing since October, with field work intensifying since January. The process has progressed through several phases, from drafting future scenarios to detailing the science behind imagined species, their habitats, feeding habits, and reproductive strategies.
Education now assesses the investment needed to complete a dedicated IES in Benidorm over a 12-year span, with the projected cost set at around 14 million. The creative method leverages photo collage and cyanotype printing, a technique that uses iron salts to produce blue-toned images.
The project will culminate in a handbook or treatise on biology, presenting a scientifically grounded catalog of future creatures and their ecosystems. The handbook will describe where each organism and plant resides, how they interact, and how life persists across vast stretches of time. The resulting material promises to become a reference for imagining biodiversity in evolutionary contexts.
Plants and animals that will feature in the upcoming handbook are showcased by the students as part of the artistic process, underscoring the tangible outcomes of this interdisciplinary work.
Three female scientists inspire the effort: American biologist Lynn Margulis, a pioneer in evolutionary biology; Donna Haraway, a leading voice in science and technology studies and ecofeminism; and Anna Atkins, an English botanist who is celebrated as the first woman photographer and a key figure in early cyanotype printing. Their influence helps shape the project’s aim to broaden how people understand the planet and the universe, moving beyond a human-centered perspective. The artists emphasize using speculative fiction as a tool to broaden inquiry and imagination.
The team argues that this approach brings art closer to younger audiences and encourages a shift in how future worlds are conceived, explored through a blend of storytelling and scientific reasoning.