We are a cultural transformation agency

Together with communities, organisations and institutions we generate new forms of cultural impact.
We develop projects, build strategies and lead debates to transform what exists.

We develop projects for culture.

We do this by means of training programmes and strategic mentoring, by working alongside with communities, cultural organisations, institutions and public bodies. We carry out our missions by supporting all those subjects that, through projects, help people, networks and territories to grow, while facing increasingly ambitious cultural, social and political challenges.

We foster research and debate on social and cultural innovation with Almanacco, cheFare magazine that publishes original articles by more than 500 authors every day. We partner in the production of editorial paths and, together with leading publishing houses, we release books aimed at reading and acting on the contemporary.

We plan and curate festivals, events and meetings on collaborative culture – live and online – together with networks and organisations in the territories across Italy. We issue a newsletter, where we collect articles and insights, as well as calls and opportunities related to the worlds of collaborative culture we cross.

We were born in 2012 with cheFare Prize. During its 3 editions the prize awarded 350,000€ to 5 collaborative culture projects selected from more than 1,800 proposals received from all over Italy. A pathway pursued for 3 years with leading industry experts, high-profile cultural juries and cultural communities mobilised through the online voting of more than 180,000 people.

We are an ETS cultural association founded by Tiziano Bonini, Francesco Franceschi, Giacomo Giossi, Marco Liberatore, Bertram Niessen, Valeria Verdolini and Federica Vittori.

cheFare has realised more than 80 projects in different areas: communities and cultural organisations, strategic mentoring, training, research, communication, publishing.

Strategic mentoring

Over the last decade, the worlds of culture and social work have been radically transformed: to deal with this complexity, cheFare developed paths of strategic mentoring.

Strategic mentoring creates cultural, organisational, economic and territorial trajectories for cultural and social organisations: reconstruct the past of organisations, photograph the present and provide navigation tools to become and remain solid over the years.

Each strategic mentoring is based on the features of the target organisation. Its history. Its values. The knowledge and the skills it express.

Communities and cultural organisations

We aim to connect different actors who usually have trouble communicating: civil society, communities, informal groups, cultural scenes, the third sector, public administration and institutions.

We aim to facilitate the design, production and management of cultural and social practices that activate the collective intelligence and energy of territories.

We do this through co-design pathways of various kinds, that goes from projects with and for local communities, projects to help empower residents and organisations to take a voice and to projects of public and participatory art that help cultural and social institutions to interact with residents and the energies of territories.

Training
Make culture requires studying and experimenting. That is why we design training courses and workshops to discover cultural planning. Our courses are designed for cultural organisations, workers, those passionate about new ways of doing culture, public administration and policymakers.

Research
Research has been one of the founding traits of cheFare since its earliest beginnings: we think knowledge is a key element in the transformation of the world.

This idea leads us to produce qualitative and quantitative research, independently or in collaboration with other organisations, on emerging cultural and social phenomena; to build communication projects of research conducted by universities and institutions on topics such the relationship between data and culture and between society and territories; and to create editorial paths that divulgate and valorize the activities of departments, doctoral schools and research groups.

Communication
We design and implement communications projects and campaigns. Doing so, we always begin from a deep listening of needs and a precise individuation of objectives, paying constant attention to the balance between the digital and the offline.

Publishing
We produce contents dedicated to community and territories. We create storytelling, photographic and narrative reportage. We publish books and magazines that explore key aspects of the cultural debate. We map places and stories. We deal with archival heritages’ values.

Events
cheFare sets up, promotes and participates in events investigating the contemporary cultural, political and social panorama. Conferences, presentations, workshops, meetings and initiatives carried out with organisations in the cultural ecosystem in Italy and abroad, aimed at exploring the fields of cultural transformation.

We are a cultural transformation agency

Together with communities, organisations and institutions we generate new forms of cultural impact. We develop projects, build strategies and lead debates to transform what exists.

Together with communities, organisations and institutions we generate new forms of cultural impact.
We develop projects, build strategies and lead debates to transform what exists.