Carmen and the Other Extraordinary Girls: co-creating with women from Northern and Southern Italy

Organisations 

Compagnia teatrale Albero

Based in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata, L’Albero is an artistic collective directed by Alessandra Maltempo and Vania Cauzillo. The company produces performances,  socio-cultural and educational projects, working with schools, prisons and daycare centres as well as the private and public sector. www.lalbero.org


Pot in Pot

Pot in Pot focuses on the development of innovative methodologies in education and learning, edutainment content production and cultural design. www.potinpot.it


Fondazione Alta Mane Italia

Fondazione Alta Mane Italia supports projects aimed at improving living and health conditions, with a focus on children and young people. www.altamaneitalia.org


Project

The community opera Carmen and the Other Extraordinary Girls, based on Bizet's Carmen, was co-created with groups of young women based in both Northern and Southern Italy.


Participants

Over 30 people from four different target groups: women living with disabilities, migrant women, women at risk living under police protection and women under the age of 40 based in Basilicata.

Key persons

  • Chiara Osella, Singer

  • Consuelo Agnesi, Deaf artist, Opera narrator

  • Pinuccia Gelosa, Music Teacher

  • Marianna Dinuzzi, Costume Designer

  • Andrea Ciommiento, Librettist

  • Rita Orlando, Set Designer

  • Alessandra Maltempo, Singer / Actress

  • Gino Marangi, Actor

Project outcomes

  • Provided a safe, inclusive space for participants to share personal stories and to explore themes related to diversity, sexuality and the female body.

  • Improved participants to improve their self-confidence, ability to participate in cultural activities and awareness of their own skills.

  • Online activities fostered inclusivity of participants living with physical disabilities.

  • The project was shortlisted for the FEDORA Education Prize 2021.

Approach

Carmen… was developed as part of Community Opera Women, a two-year co-creation opera project aimed at girls from Southern Italy, where there is one of the lowest participation rates in Europe of women in social and economical life, girls with disabilities from Northern Italy and migrants, many of which live under police protection. 
The project aimed to help participants improve their self-confidence through storytelling by providing space for imagination and artistic expression and the chance to work with professional artists. By bringing together communities from Northern and Southern Italy, Carmen sought to foster social cohesion and inclusion while giving visibility to marginalised communities.

Because of the pandemic context, several activities had to take place online. In order to foster relationship building and team cohesion, the following remote activities were implemented:

  • Smart Stories”, over Zoom, in which co-creators introduced themselves to each other by showing photos on their mobile phone screens. The exercise was wordless, fostering the inclusion of those who struggled in Italian language. 

  • Personal emails from the lead artists in the production to the co-creators. 

  • “Mystery friend calls”, in which co-creators exchanged phone numbers and set times for them to call and get to know each other and share childhood musical influences alongside photos. 

  • Two thematic meetings, one with gender activist Isabella Borelli on sex, opera and the female body and another exploring Carmen through sign language.

  • Facebook and WhatsApp groups.

In order to ensure accessibility, one-on-one help was offered to participants with fewer digital skills.

Results

Feedback collected from participants through focus sessions and questionnaires found that they felt greater self-confidence, improved “awareness of [their] abilities” and increased ability to participate in cultural activities. Additionally, the online aspect of the project improved accessibility for co-creators living with physical disabilities. The digital approach was considered by the project team as an opportunity for upskilling, as an initial challenge had been the lack of a professional community manager. 

Carmen and the Other Extraordinary Women was shortlisted for the 2021 FEDORA Education Prize, which seeks to reward projects that involve new and wider audiences while fostering social integration. 

Lessons learned:

  • Use digital tools to reinforce connections between artistic teams and co-creators. Platforms such as Facebook and Whatsapp groups can help nurture and maintain relationships beyond workshops and project activities. Vania Cauzillo, Artistic Director of L’Albero, recommends investing in the services of a professional community manager with the skills to regularly engage participants in a meaningful manner.

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