Simona Cavalieri
Designer & Atelierista
Simona is a versatile designer and facilitator, naturally creative with a talent for using play and improvisation to inspire learning and collaboration.
Simona designs contexts and experiences that nurture the creative processes of both children and adults, using play as a tool for research, exploration, and learning. She blends her expertise in spatial design and pedagogy with a passion for food and digital technologies as her favorite design materials. Having worked with schools, associations, and institutions, Simona is now focused on creating digital spaces and products that offer meaningful and relevant experiences to users.
Project
Improvisation’s Ingredients
An unusual workshop’s cookbook
Improvisation's ingredients is a collection of moments and stories that took place in a series of co-design workshops with children and food.
I brought into my design practice the concept of improvisation both as a strategy and an attitude to trigger while co-creating with children:
Both improvisation and co-design are acts of co-creation between participants /
Both are based on rules and have limits and frames /
Both are about communication and dialogue /
Both are about observing and listening to the other participants /
Both are about taking control and losing it /
Both are about being spontaneous, being present and being proactive /
Both are about claiming ones space and respecting others /
Both are about being together.
Both are based on rules and have limits and frames /
Both are about communication and dialogue /
Both are about observing and listening to the other participants /
Both are about taking control and losing it /
Both are about being spontaneous, being present and being proactive /
Both are about claiming ones space and respecting others /
Both are about being together.
By setting up, designing and taking part in cooking workshops with children, by collecting pictures, thoughts and reflecting on them, I showed and highlighted the inner potential of every workshop ingredient: improvisation, materials, tools, spatial settings and last but not least people and interactions.
Project
Scintillae, Play and Learning in The Digital Age
An experimental research project promoted by Fondazione Reggio Children – Centro Loris Malaguzzi and The LEGO Foundation.
The project created and offered children and adults contexts in which the expressive potential of play is in dialogue with digital tools so as to generate ideas, connections and new knowledge.
Together with my team, I carried out the research and development of new playful and creative activities, I organized the atelier and the set-up of the space, I designed the educational and expressive content, and I drafted documentation (pictures and videos).
As a result of the project the article: Moving between the boundaries of physical and digital contexts has been published in the Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society - Special Issue on “Children and the Digital
Project
The Atelier
A space that gives voice to the “hundred languages of the child": a hundred ways of approaching reality, a hundred ways of thinking about it, of marveling at it, of investigating it.
The Atelier is an environment that promotes knowledge and creativity, suggests questions and gives rise to suggestions. The Atelierista, a teacher with an artistic background, supports children's learning based on research, practice and subjectivity by using the tools and languages of art.
Over the years I worked as an atelierista both in research projects and in schools!
In the atelier children, but also teenagers and adults, raise and investigate questions and visualize concepts through different tools and materials. They try out, tinker, imagine, produce ideas and make them visible with all the languages they have at their disposal. They work alone and in groups, they confront each other with their peers and with the adults who coordinate the work.
The pictures refer to children’s investigations, explorations and research.
Get in touch with Simona on Linkedin
