Our team
Barbara
President
For more than 30 years I have been venturing into the fantastic world of education, sociality and culture.
I am passionate about non formal education and theater, not as pedagogical “magic tools” but as acts of courage, as political acts, acts of love. If education is an act of love then it is an act of courage therefore an act of love.
My proposals draw on the extra-ordinary encounters that have formed me: All the people who go around Cerquosino, Theatre of the Oppressed, Theatre Education, Master Yoda, Kung Fu Panda, Living Theatre, Psychodrama, Mountaineering, Aikido and Theatrical Performance as an educational act to transmit knowledge, values and skills.
Training practitioners and designing educational activities are my bread and butter, accompanied by coordinating national and international projects that keep me “cheerful!”
I was born in the mountains, the scent of snow has never left me, its smell and color. White, which gives me the opportunity to use a thousand colors to draw dreams and doodles
Carlotta
Staff
I am a Roman transplanted to Umbria. An adopted daughter of Mount Peglia, I love art in all its forms.
I animate pans with genuine recipes handed down from the ancient knowledge of grandmothers and objects of any kind, with the technique of stop-motion animation. I believe that non-formal education is one of the most effective tools in the field of learning. Learning by doing!
Caroline
Staff
After several years spent abroad, I chose to return to Italy and settle in the Orvieto area, driven by a desire for a simpler lifestyle, more in tune with natural rhythms.
I am currently studying pedagogy at a university in Germany, and over time I have developed extensive experience working with organizations committed to promoting anti-racist policies and supporting diversity. These experiences have allowed me to deepen my understanding of educational tools based on respect, active listening, and participation.
Music, art, and free expression have always been an essential part of my personal and professional journey. I believe they are fundamental languages through which we can honor each individual’s identity and deeper needs.
Antonella
Staff
Lucana doc, in Umbria for about ten years in search of a closer connection with nature. My passions!!! Art, culture and … adventures (including bureaucratic ones)!
After studying Art and Archaeology in magical Rome, I made a stop in Brussels, where I learned that rain, beer and paperwork can coexist just fine!
Today I divide my time between Excel spreadsheets and time travel: on one side the administration of Artemide and on the other a tour guide, telling stories, anecdotes and wonders to the curious of the world.
One foot in art, the other in organization and together with the great Cerquosino family, meeting and confronting humanity.
Giorgio
Staff
Videomaker, musician, with a degree in philosophy. Inside Artemide I bring my experience into the audio-visual field by proposing experiential workshops that use videomaking as a self-aware tool to develop individual and collective creative potential. In addition, I realize the videostories that document all the various stages of the projects that are performed and have both a didactic function and of video memory for the participants.
Ema
Volunteer
I landed on Cerquosino and among its people more than 15 years ago after a training on facilitation and non-violent management of conflicts. It is one on my heart place and also of action and meetings. I’m engaged in Artemide as volounteer. By Cerquosino I continue to meet and stay in touch with the beauty and complexity of the human beings. In life I feel like a bio-researcher, interested in biographies and biodiversity.
Barbra
Volunteer
As a psychopedagogist I carry out in Artemide activities as a volunteer consultant. I support the territorial network, development of new projects, participate in social promotion actions involving the relationship with Public and Private Entities.
I support the discussion of specific cases with the team of professionals working in the activities. The acquaintance between me and the Cerquosino has lasted for almost 30 years. In association spaces, the caring relationship is not simple, nor is it simply doing something: it is a collective act, a transformative intention, it is a “political” being.
Caring is the first step in imagining a more just, humane, and interconnected future. Although caring work is a broad concept, I think GDP would be happy if it knew what I do!!!
Giulia
Volunteer
I support Artemide as a volunteer, sharing my experience in writing projects, networking, and organizational development. With more than 20 years working with NGOs and running projects across Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America, in my free time I’m happy to support initiatives that are close to both my home and my heart.
Giulio
Staff
After about 25 years as a professional musician, I brought instruments and experience to Artemide. At Cerquosino I continue to make music “together” as an activity embedded in non-formal education. Notes and words to explore ourselves and the world, to educate ourselves and evolve, to play with creative expression and feel the freedom to choose how to deliver our message.
Jacopo
Volunteer
Growing up on mount Peglia, I saw Cerquosino and Artemide being born. I participated materially in the transformation of the place and as a guinea pig in the first educational experiences of Artemide. Currently I help in the kitchen and in the maintenance of the outdoor spaces.
Lanfranco
Staff
A professional with more than 20 years of experience in the catering industry. I have worked in the dining room, kitchen, catering service and as a bartender. I have always operated with seriousness, speed and efficiency, adapting easily to dynamic and multicultural contexts, also in close contact with youngsters and very different enviroments. I fulfilled my compulsory education, building my competence in the field, day after day, with passion and practical spirit.
Curiosity and love for cooking led me to move from Sardinia to Lombardy to Umbria, where I have lived for more than 30 years, collecting recipes and flavors of Italian regional cuisines to make them mine.
Mario
Staff
Educator, psychodramatist, and videomaker with my head in the clouds and feet in creative chaos.
Dyslexic, a bit dysgraphic, but full of ideas and passion.
I use games, theatre, and videomaking to create new and engaging ways to educate.
I believe education is a poetic and revolutionary act.
An inconsistent dreamer—until I’m inspired…
Meri
Volunteer
Born and lived in the disadvantaged social situations but with a beautiful supportive family behind (brothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers and mom and dad present and educational :-). transmigrated at birth from the beautiful Tuscany and grew up in the working-class neighborhoods of the 60s/70s in the north in Bologna; then, passed in the Roman suburbs, between universities, social work with disability, kindergartens, Social Centers and Educational Centers.
I have spent the last 25 years in Occupied Palestine and in particular in the Gaza Strip, to carry out the activities of “Exchange and Training” among the new underprivileged and under military occupation generations; but also Africa and Chiapas. The need to cross borders and give everyone the possibility of movement has characterized the international cooperation interventions for which I have been working for about 30 years. The vision of bottom-up cultural diplomacy and widening of gazes for the development of human relations aimed at justice and freedom are at the core of my actions.
Nora
Staff
I am a professional photographer with fifteen years of experience, working between Lombardy and Umbria. I spent many years in the field of advertising photography, developing strong technical skills.
Through my experience with Cerquosino, I discovered non-formal education, which led me to explore new ways of using photography. I began to direct my work toward different contexts, using my skills to foster expression, connection, and personal growth.
I have studied and deepened my knowledge of techniques such as therapeutic photography and the SPEX method (Self-Portrait Experience). I’m passionate about using photography as a tool to explore inner landscapes and build relationships.
For Cerquosino, I lead experiential workshops using photography and video, and I manage the creation of visual content.
Simona
Staff
I had the fortune to encounter non-formal education when I was very young, and it was immediately a passion: a world so large, so light, so profound, so possible, never taken for granted and that, like water, adapts to the form that contains it. Together with Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed, it has become a powerful, inclusive and generative tool for me. Life brought me many years ago to Cerquosino, where my background was further enriched thanks to the Theatre of the Oppressed, theatre education, and nature: even a single petal of a flower is non-formal education, and at the Casa Laboratorio Il Cerquosino we experience this all the time! Here I coordinate and manage Erasmus+ projects, I meet the worlds and together we continue to grow, discover, united.
Malvina
Staff
I found my passion in bamboo bioconstructions while I was finishing my third year of scenography. I love spending summers doing land art with children and cooking in the middle of the woods for thirty people at a time. I consider art as a pure expression of the vast universe that each of us has inside, and Cerquosino has always given me the space to explore and create with freedom.