Re-imagining from the lockdown – a message from Ilaria
The Lockdown in Italy in March gave me the possibility to “pause”. I took the time to imagine new possibilities to connect and work. That is how the workshop online “Stories that reconnect” was born. In the beginning, it was a prototype and an invitation to connect from a distance through telling stories together. After a while, it became a specific workshop about passages in women’s life. Then, it doubled in an online workshop with refugees in Spoleto, mainly from Africa, and Italians (Many thanks to Coop. Il Cerchio and Agnese Talegalli). In Summer, the workshop became a training, part of the ImaginAction Summer School, sharing the experience and the insights with other artists, facilitators and practitioners, collecting feedback and mapping the process.
This Autumn, a new edition of Stories that reconnect about passages in women’s life, will take place on Zoom. If you wish to organise a group of Stories that reconnect, don’t hesitate to contact me.
I am involved in the project financed by the EU Asylum Integration Migration Funds (AIMF): LIFE, a project about socio-economic inclusion of Migrants. With my precious colleagues, I am facilitating a workshop about skills and the writing of a portfolio to enhance the possibilities of job searching. My intention is to let emerge the uniqueness of each person, with talents and gifts, challenges and dreams. This recognition brings to a double entangled process: a personal process of seeing the self through appreciative eyes and a social process of removing labels (the ones about victimisation and the ones related to negative stereotypes).
I had the honour and pleasure to share my experience in AIMF projects in the Summer School Migration and Societies at the Italian Coast: Human Lives, Reception System and Social Work Approach. A profound thanks to Hannah Reich to build bridges between the Academic world and grassroots experiences, traditional knowledge and embodied research.
Image: drawing @Agnese Talegalli