The Community of Madrid is a large urban ecosystem, a territory that serves as a stage for multiple lives. However, from our perspective, we sometimes forget this; although we see it, we do not observe it with enough attention to recognize that the space surrounding us is full of other life stories, distant from those of the people who live in this land.

Each species that inhabits this ecosystem is enclosed in a particular sensory world. Each species receives only a minimal part of the immense context where it coexists with other species. Therefore, there is always the difficulty of recognizing another world on top of our own through the limited perceptions that we, as a species, possess. This research project is born from the profound conviction that feeling we are part of nature is key to moving towards its conservation and increasing collective awareness, enhancing our environmental sensitivity, and positively influencing our lives.

Birds constitute an excellent group for testing experiences due to their capacity to attract citizens. The objective of this project is to bring birds closer to people through a multidisciplinary and citizen participation approach to advance in this direction. The project is built around four lines of research: 1) Genealogies: proposes to investigate the history of the relationships between people and birds through humanities, art, and architecture, and to identify elements from the past that can provide a lesson on how to relate to birds in the present; 2) Atlas of services and local cartographies: proposes to identify the services that cities offer to birds, both in their green areas and in the built matrix, and to highlight the shared daily life to strengthen the identity of neighborhood; 3) Didactics for a new neighborhood: proposes to investigate learning and didactic and artistic mediation between species at different levels of citizenship; 4) Prototyping; from recognized to expanded neighborhoods: proposes to materialize several proposals that encompass the generated knowledge, and range from workshops in schools, urban gardens, exhibitions, a citizen laboratory, and a congress for the exchange of lived experiences.

Research team| Manuel Collado, Idoia Otegui Vicens, Josabel Belliure Ferrer (IP), Antonio Gómez Sal, Gabriel López Poveda, Salvador Rebollo de la Torre (IP), Jorge Ángel Martín Ávila, Francisco Aguilera Benavente (IP), María Jesús Salado García, Rodríguez Víctor Manuel, Montserrat López Mújica, Carmen Valero Garcés, Beatriz Bravo Torija (IP), Clara Megias, Katerina Psegiannaki, Eduardo Roig (IP), Susana Velasco, Atxu Amann, Lucia Gutiérrez, Amelia Melendez Taboas(IP), Alba Soto (co-IP), Lucia Loren, Clara Eslava, Diana Angoso de Guzmán, Sara Quintero, Leyson Orlando Ponce, Edward J Andrews Gerda, Emilio Galiacho, Manuel Antón, Eva Aladro Vico (IP), Paula Requeijo-Rey.

More information: Avecinas de Madrid