WHERE SCIENCE AND ART MEET: THE RESIDENCIA DE ESTUDIANTES AS AN EPS HISTORIC SITES

After being declared EPS Historic Site, the Residencia de Estudiantes is offering a cultural activity aimed at school students and teachers.
The activity of around 1.30h long is focused on the influence of the Residencia de Estudiantes on the scientific culture at the so called Spanish Silver Age.
The buildings of the Residencia serve as starting point. The Instituto Rocasolano (located at the seat of the former Instituto Nacional de Física y Química) is the second location that is visited. The activity concludes with a workshop in which the assistants will engage in a debate about the relationship between arts and sciences with the Residencia as its central axis.
As it has been acknowledged by the European Physical Society with their honourable mention, the important role of the Residencia de Estudiantes in the progress of science is strongly linked to the humanistic atmosphere of the institution.
One of the most notable points for the nomination of the Residencia as EPS Historic Site was its function as meeting point for scientists such as Ramón y Cajal and Blas Cabrera or other important figures in culture such as Federico García Lorca or Salvador Dalí.
For this reason, we would like to claim this cultural wealth by inviting the students to reflect about the importance of acknowledging Science as Culture and Arts as a scientific and technical task. The students will be asked to engage in an interdisciplinary debate in which they will have to argue and defend their position. In order to achieve the proper cooperative work, the students are expected to develop their debate abilities while doing a critical, as well as constructive, exchange of ideas with justified questionings and considering possible alternatives.

 

 

 

Description

The Residencia stands out as a place where Culture as a whole (scientific and humanistic) is understood as basic aspects for a comprehensive training. Besides its different areas, the Residencia wished to transmit this sort of training to its students, together with curiosity and respect for the scientific job with scrupulous rigour. Nowadays, the Residencia still endeavours to bring its visitors closer to all its disciplines and to foster dialogue among them. On this basis, after the guided visit around the institution each group will debate and defend their position about their assigned subject (arts or science). The group is previously divided into two teams (ideally, the assumed roles should be different than the student’s education modalities, that is, science students should be in the arts group and vice versa). The following abilities will be developed:

• Problem solving.
• Adopt and defend a point of view.
• Argue and debate on an idea.
• Analyze and understand different points of view.
• Take part in the production of a short story.
• Developing a creative project.

Details of the activity:
This activity-workshop intends to develop mediation and communication skills on current interdisciplinary issues. The debate is structured as follows:

• Preparation: First of all, some contents from the European Physical Society’s and Revistas Edad de Plata websites will be explained, together with some texts and media content about the actors related with the Física en la Residencia
• Presentation: questions will be formulated, each group having a few minutes to prepare a defense and present their answers to the other team. Possible questions: How would you define the limit between artist and scientist? Is the History of Physical Sciences important? Why?
• Process: the debate will be moderated. Some didactic material will be displayed in the screens of the conference hall of the Residencia for the students to have some support.
• Evaluation: The students will be the ones punctuating the other team’s job. They will evaluate anonymously aptitudes such as attitude, presentation, clarity of their content, argumentation or originality.

The results will be archived and registered in an annual rank. The teams with the best scores registered in each modality (arts and sciences) could be gathered together at the end of the year in order to share and debate their ideas.

 

 

More details and enrollment

• Duration: 1 h. 30 min. aprox.
• Schedule: mornings and evenings (subject to availability/agreement)
• Meeting point: Residencia de Estudiantes · Pinar St, 21-23. 28006 Madrid
• Audience: ESO students, Bachillerato (High School) and teachers.
• Related Subjects: Physics (Science in general), History, Arts History, Spanish History.
• Enrollment and more information: visitas@residencia.csic.es