Cooperativa Sociale Immaginaria A R.L. Onlus

Founded in 2012, Cooperativa Sociale Immaginaria is a non-for-profit social enterprise based in Sant’Angelo a Cupolo, a rural town in the province of Benevento, in the South of Italy.
Our team includes cultural workers, professional artists and performers, project designers, educators, facilitators, communication and PR workers, supported in the co-creation and management of our activities by local young and adult volunteers.
Art is the key vector of our action – either considered as a playground for free expression and experimentation, as a tool for catalysing a culture-based community development, or finally as a source of inspiration for our non-formal educational methodologies. We believe in its ability to empower especially the most vulnerable and voiceless groups in our community, such as children and teenagers, elders, disabled, migrants and refugees.
Innovation in the field of cultural action is the pillar of our mission. Our vision in this regard is twofold: in one direction, we provide cultural and socio-educational animation to our local community, with the aim to promote attitudes of open-mindedness and active citizenship by exploring alternative ways of socializing and participating; in the other, we work internationally, (e.g. within the Erasmus+ framework), providing training contents for capacity-building in community leadership and exchanging best practices with organizations, youth workers, cultural animators and social educators - “professional dreamers” from all over Europe.
These two trajectories further converge in the design and implementation of new culture-based opportunities for local development in non-urban contexts. In this field, a relevant milestone was the foundation in 2017 of Scuola Civica Alma d’Arte, a community cultural centre born out of a project of regeneration of an abandoned school in the hamlet of Motta (approx. 300 inhabitants) in the municipality of Sant’Angelo a Cupolo, that in five years became a hub for hosting community events, art workshops, national and international artists’ residencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to answer the challenges posed to Immaginaria as a CCI, and more broadly to our community, Alma d’Arte underwent a process of transition towards becoming a commons, opening itself to a governance focused on the assembly that gathered local citizens and representatives of organizations interested in boosting participation and developing collective actions – a path that allowed the space to remain open and active even during the strictest periods of lockdown.
More recently, Immaginaria has been involved in the Isle of Procida, a small 10000-inhabitants island in the Bay of Naples, in the process of co-creation of the legacy of “Procida Italian Capital of Culture 2022”, supporting the local administration, associations and groups of artists and creatives in the design of sustainable cultural practices involving the most vulnerable community groups. The first outcomes of this collaborative process were the implementation, during 2023, of 7 international projects (funded by the Erasmus + EU programme) gathering in Procida nearly 200 artists, cultural practitioners and youth workers from Europe and beyond; the creation of the Procida Community Orchestra, that brought together international performers, groups of local musicians (choirs, marching bands, music academies) and vulnerable community groups (refugees, disabled), staging 2 concerts in May and November 2023; and the ongoing process of regeneration of the D’Avalos Palace, one of the monumental landmarks of the island, funded by a grant provided by Fondazione Cassa Depositi e Prestiti within the framework of the “Ecosistemi Culturali” programme towards the creation of a participatory museum of the island.