"Historias de mi barrio" is a piece of pedagogic research aimed at highlighting the way art can articulate the relationship between the educational context and a neighbourhood at high risk of social exclusion. The starting point for this study was to ask whether this type of research, centred around the arts, was suitable in complex contexts and whether it might eventually lead to pedagogic improvement. The results gathered, and indeed the work carried out by the artists and university lecturers involved, together with pupils 6-12 years old and their instructors in a state school, provide evidence of a positive answer -- and notably of the necessity of knowing about the socio-economic reality of the student cohort when planning learning projects and of the importance of the arts as a crucial element in education.