The Future

The Future - Drawing coins by Setúbal schoolchildren

Temporary exhibition that took place between July 15 and September 10 2016.

Drawing the Future

The Future was the challenge made to key stage 3 and 4 school students to draw a five-euro coin. Guided, motivated and supported by their teachers, the dozens of young people who responded to the challenge imagined the ‘future’ through a number of metaphors, some common to successive generations who have read Jules Verne, or who have, more recently, watched science fiction films: extra-terrestrials living on Earth or other planets, different yet very similar to us. But there were other themes too: keys not fitting into locks, pregnant mothers with children in their arms, expectant children and young people, cities shaken and twisted under technological skies.

These themes (and others) used a variety of plastic art materials, some being touched by the aesthetic of comic strips (especially science fiction), others (or the same ones) by graphic design and advertising motifs. They all show dedication and sometimes undeniable talent revealing possible future vocations.

This is why the work on display produces a dreamlike atmosphere, charged with affection and wishes, both individual and shared by the group. Paraphrasing António Gedeão’s celebrated verse: “dreams guide our lives.” From so many entries, the jury awarded the first prize to an almost childlike composition by a 12-year-old boy who drew and wrote, in an elaborate game which reinforces letters with strokes and strokes with letters. He wiped out the present, explained the past and announced what the future would be: more ecological in all senses of the term, and so happier. Less touched by his teachers’ suggestions or his classmates’ ideas, he used the reverse and obverse of the coin to convey a communicative energy that inspires us to movement. In a flip of the coin, our present becomes the future. This initiative is a moving contribution to what so many young people idealise, using money to draw and dream. It is, I believe, a beautiful introduction to art, economics and life.

Raquel Henriques da Silva | July 2016

Exhibition credits

Exhibition design
Jorge Silva 
Museu do Dinheiro / Banco de Portugal

Cultural Mediation
Museu do Dinheiro / Banco de Portugal

Production
Museu do Dinheiro / Banco de Portugal
Anabela Carreira/INCM
Rita Nicolau/INCM

Video
Steve Stoer

Installation 
Museu do Dinheiro / Banco de Portugal
Fórmula P (Vinil - PVC)

Translation
Banco de Portugal

Technical support | Security
Banco de Portugal

Competition

Coordination
Márcia Pacheco/CMS

Support to schools
António Verdasca/INCM

Jury
André Letria
Maria Celeste Paulino
Raquel Henriques da Silva
Rodrigo Lucena
Rui Vasquez

Development
Setúbal City Council
Portuguese Mint and Official Printing Office
Museu do Dinheiro / Banco de Portugal