Alessandra Gariboldi

Alessandra Gariboldi (Milan, 1974) is President of the Fitzcarraldo Foundation (Turin, Italy), where she is also responsible for Transnational Projects. She holds a degree in Cultural Heritage Conservation from the University of Parma. Since 2001 she has collaborated with the Cultural Observatory of Piedmont. She specialises in the design and management of research projects on cultural production and participation and on audience development processes, as well as in the evaluation of projects and policies supporting culture.

She has been the scientific director in Italy of the European Commission-funded projects focused on audience development ADESTE-Audience DEveloper Skills and Training in Europe (2013-2016), CONNECT (2016-2019), and Adeste+ (2018-2022), as well as the editor of the study commissioned by the European Commission How to place audiences at the centre of cultural organisations (2016). She is the author of the capacity building plan on Audience Development for the European Capital of Culture Rijeka2020, and has been a consultant for other ECoCs such as Matera2019 and Elefsina2023.

She is an adjunct professor at the CRPC (Course for Cultural Project Managers, Turin), scientific director of the Course in Advanced Studies in Audience Development (Conservatory of Italian Switzerland, Lugano), and regularly gives lectures on topics of participation and impact assessment in university master's courses and continuing education courses for staff of cultural institutions. She has also worked as a researcher and consultant in multi-year programmes supporting and accompanying more than 300 cultural companies (Funder35, Culturability, IC-Cultural Innovation, Sinapsis), and in projects evaluating the social impact of accessibility and social inclusion programmes of various Italian museums.

He has collaborated on several publications, including I pubblici dei musei (Franco Angeli, 2008);Il museo in ascolto (Rubbettino, 2012);Mapping of practices in the EU Member States on Participatory governance of cultural heritage (EENC for the OMC Group, 2015);Audience Development: mettere i pubblici al centro delle organizzazioni culturali (Franco Angeli,2019), Spazi del possibile: I nuovi luoghi della cultura e le opportunità della rigenerazione (Franco Angeli, 2021).