The office is being reorganized, we are moving to a new and beautiful space and, in the meantime, we are working to build the programme for the coming months and, if possible, for what will come after that too. These are weeks filled with meetings, festivals, platforms, opportunities for exchange and new relationships. We have just taken part in NID Platform, the New Italian Dance Platform, which took place in Piedmont from 1 to 4 September, meeting artists, professionals, programmers and organisations from all over the world.
It is within this movement that “A place where I feel well” also finds its place, the project conceived and promoted by the Municipality of Verbania, born from listening to young people and from the desire to create a cultural space capable of welcoming their wishes, their questions and their way of inhabiting the city. The project was initially aimed above all at the 11–15 age group; today, also thanks to the development process supported by the Interreg Italy-Switzerland Programme, it is opening up to a broader perspective, addressed to the younger generations in the 10–20 age group and to a cross-border dimension.
It is precisely here that the work of Fondazione CROSS takes on a particular meaning for us.
CROSS enters the project by bringing what has always been at the heart of its research: art as a place of encounter, the body as a tool for knowledge, and the performing arts as a possibility for connection and transformation.
The Connessioni Creative programme has shown us how important it is to create real opportunities for encounters with adolescents and young people, without starting from ready-made answers, but from their questions. In 2026, for example, an event promoted as part of Connessioni Creative brought Lama Michel Rinpoche and rapper Massimo Pericolo to Teatro Il Maggiore, in front of high-school students and the public, creating a dialogue between spirituality, music, awareness and contemporary language.
This is a direction we want to continue exploring.
Listening to boys and girls. Starting from their needs. Allowing their needs to guide the process. And at the same time sharing a search which, for CROSS, is also a search for peace: peace understood not as an abstract word, but as a daily practice of relationships, as the ability to listen, as the possibility of staying within conflict without necessarily turning it into distance.
In this sense, the performing arts can become a precious tool.
Dance, movement, voice, music and performance allow us to address complex themes — from the environment to relationships, from caring for the territory to living together — through a language that does not rely solely on words. The body becomes a place in which to experience, observe, encounter the other and try out new forms of relationship.
And perhaps this is precisely what interests us most: not simply bringing art to young people, but building with them a space in which art can happen.
“A place where I feel well” can thus become something more than a physical place. It can be a condition, a feeling, a possibility. A place where one can feel welcomed and where one can be part of a community.
This is also why the network being built around the project is so important. The Municipality of Verbania is the lead partner of the Interreg programme, and Fondazione CROSS, Museo del Paesaggio and Associazione Festival delle due Rocche are among the project partners, with the aim of building a cross-border alliance capable of generating cultural and educational opportunities for the younger generations.
It is a network that broadens our perspective: from the neighbourhood to the territory, from the territory to the region, from Piedmont to Switzerland. And it makes it possible to bring together different skills, different languages and different people.
The Museo del Paesaggio is also working in this direction, experimenting with tools designed to make the museum a more accessible and participatory place for young people and families, such as activities dedicated to young people and the family kits created as part of this project.
For CROSS, this opening is important because it allows us to continue carrying out what we feel is our role: a horizontal presence within the territory.
Not a centre that dictates, but a place that connects. Not a definitive answer, but an opportunity for encounters. Not a programme imposed from above, but a small garden to cultivate together.
And gardens, as we know, need time.
One of the first opportunities of this new journey is the presentation of the book by Lama Michel Rinpoche, Ci vuole coraggio per amare. Noi stessi, gli altri e il mondo, held on 17 September at Teatro Il Maggiore in Verbania. An encounter that brought into the heart of the city a reflection on the possibility of loving ourselves, recognising the other and looking at the world without losing hope.
It is a theme that we feel deeply connected to our work.
Because perhaps, especially when working with adolescents, the first form of care is precisely to create a space where someone can feel seen, listened to and recognised.
The programme that lies ahead is still taking shape. And it is beautiful that it is so.
We are meeting stakeholders, artists, institutions, cultural and educational organisations. We are listening. We are looking for partners within and beyond the territory. We are imagining how to bring art, the environment, the body, the landscape and the community into dialogue with one another.
And as we do so, we continue to believe that a place where we feel well can above all be a place where we meet one another.
A place where a girl or a boy can arrive with a question and not necessarily find an answer, but find someone willing to listen to it.
A place where the body can move, creativity can take shape, a word can open a dialogue.
A place where art can become a concrete form of relationship.
Autumn, then, is not only the moment when one season comes to an end.
It is the moment when the seeds of the next one are prepared.
And we, with CROSS, are here: cultivating relationships, opening up possibilities, searching for new languages and continuing, together with the communities we inhabit, this small and persistent work of building peace.
Because perhaps a place where we feel well begins precisely with this: someone who welcomes us, someone who listens to us, someone with whom we can try to imagine the future.
Antonella Cirigliano, senior lecturer and director, has been engaged for over twenty years in theatrical research and performing arts, with a training that began at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and was further developed with Enrique Vargas. Founder and Artistic Leader of Fondazione CROSS, she teaches Performing Techniques for the Visual Arts at NABA and directs festivals dedicated to the interaction between expressive practices. A former student of spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and practitioner at the Healing Meditation Center in Albagnano (VB), her research weaves together performing arts, sensorial pathways, and spiritual practices oriented toward inner growth.
A journey into the aura of key practices and figures of spirituality and performance art between body, gesture and vision.
