Cassero LGBTI+ CenterGender Bender Festival

Bologna, Italy / Project Leader

Il Cassero is the LGBTI+ Center of Bologna, one of the most important institutions for the Italian LGBTI+ movement and history. Founded in 1982, it works to improve the quality of life of the LGBTI+ community: raising awareness on the need of social and political rights and tackling discrimination on national and international level.

Gender Bender is the international multidisciplinary festival produced by Il Cassero. Since 2003, it introduces the Italian public to the contemporary imaginary related to gender identity, sexual orientation and body representation through performing and visual arts, cinema, literature and music.

Find who was locally involved through Performing Gender dance practices, co-creation and co-production.

Community of Bologna

Staff on the project

Artistic Director

Daniele Del Pozzo creates and develops projects in the fields of contemporary cultures and social innovation. Artistic founder and director of two projects developed in Cassero LGBTI+ Centre: Gender Bender Festival and Teatro Arcobaleno, an educational project on gender differences. From 2013 to 2015 for Performing Gender and from 2017 to 2019 for Performing Gender - Dance makes differences he has been project director, as artistic director of project leader partner. He is partner of DNAppunti coreografici, an Italian network that support research and production of young choreographers (realised in partnership with Romaeuropa festival, Triennale Milano, Compagnia Virgilio Sieni Firenze, Arboreto Teatro Dimora di Mondaino, CSC di Bassano del Grappa).

Project Manager

Andrea Berna studied History of Art at the DAMS in Bologna and got a specialization in Innovation and Organization of Culture and the Arts at the local School of Economics. Since 2016 he has been working as human resources and internal communication manager at Cassero LGBTI+ Center. Starting from 2011, he is also EU project planner for Gender Bender Festival for which he has become organization manager in 2015. In 2013-2015 and 2017-2019 he has been project coordinator for the previous editions of Performing Gender.

Audience Developer

Mauro is committed, since the academic years, to different forms of cultural, social and artistic activism. He is particularly interested in taking care of relationships among people and attentive to the social contexts he works in. This attitude led him to work as artistic curator for Gender Bender festival, since 2019, as organization coordinator for Teatro Arcobaleno (Rainbow Theater), and now as audience developer in Bologna for Performing Gender – Dancing In Your Shoes. He has been one of the first organizers in Italy of the Living Library, a tool that seeks to challenge prejudice and discrimination, which he fostered in Italy, through Europe and in the New York State area.