This work documents the collaboration between the Physics department of the University of Calabria and some schools of the region in a project devoted to recovering disused instrumentation in school laboratories. The project has been conceived as a workplace experience for the students, i.e. a learning experience in a real work place. In Italy, workplace experiences are mandatory for all students in the last 3 years (16-19 years old) of secondary education. The integration of these informal activities into the formal school context can allow structural and sustained connections between schools and research environments. In the following we describe how this integration has been implemented through a peer-to-peer interaction among school students, teachers and university researchers. The project, which entailed also the participation of the students in exhibits and public events, emphasizes the experimental activities in the physics laboratory as an important moment of aggregation and socialization.