This article introduces the Ph.D. studies of its authors, who put into question the bridge between utopia and the reality experienced at the Mindelo_International School of Art (Mindelo_Escola Internacional de Arte – M_EIA), legally known as the University Institute of Art, Technology, and Culture [Instituto Universitário de Arte, Tecnologia e Cultura], the first Higher Education space in the areas of arts and design in Cape Verde, constituting a singular, irreverent, project in the struggle for art education practices informed by decolonized policies. Created in 2004, this utopian project sent its anchors out to the practices, promoting the country’s culture and development, by means of a relationship with the Atelier Mar’s local development projects, consolidating a long experience in the art education area. Tensions arise between expectations about the experimental and local nature of the M_EIA and its regulation and (non-)conformity with hegemonic knowledge in art education or development models foreign to the Cape Verdean reality.