In a World That Has Forgotten How to Play

There’s something I want to tell you about Giocosamente Festival - something that doesn’t fit neatly into an event listing or a programme schedule.

Giocosamente is not a weekend of fun that evaporates by Monday morning. It’s something rarer - and harder to name. A space where something genuinely different becomes possible. Where you get to meet yourself again, through play, through the awkward, joyful, surprising mirror of other human beings who also said yes to this.

Some of the people you’ll meet there, you’ll see once a year. Some you’ll never see again. And yet they stay with you. Not because you exchanged business cards or followed each other online - but because something real passed between you. Human kindness, in its least-defended form. That’s rarer than we admit.

Why Giocosamente exists

I didn’t set out to run a festival. I looked around and saw a gap - not just in the events calendar, but in the culture. Adults who wanted to play seriously, who felt stifled by the relentless seriousness of modern life, who sensed that lightness wasn’t a luxury but a necessity, and had nowhere to go that truly met them there.

Most play experiences for adults are either mildly fun, vaguely risky, or quietly disappointing. I wanted something different. Something that held depth and joy at the same time.

On fear - and what play actually does

We’re living through a sustained campaign of fear. It’s not new, but it’s intensified. Turn on the news and your body braces before your mind has even processed the content. We absorb it, we carry it, and we forget that it was ever put there by someone else.

Play breaks this cycle. Not by ignoring reality, but by resetting the nervous system. When we play - really play, with our whole body, with other people, without agenda - something releases. We become more useful, more generous, more human. Not less responsible. More.

And now, with AI threatening to outsource our creativity before we’ve even decided we want that, this feels more urgent than ever. We need adults who know how to play. Not performatively. Not ironically. Actually.

What we do at Giocosamente

We work with the body. We move. We activate what I call the Vibrant Body, because the body knows things the mind keeps forgetting. We dive into the Joyful Mind - not toxic positivity, but a genuine shift in perspective, a lightness that lets difficult things land without crushing us. And we tend to the Loving Heart - our connections with each other, with vulnerability, with the kind of friendship that only forms when everyone agrees to stop pretending.

We share games. We share techniques. We network - but the playful kind, where you leave feeling more alive than when you arrived.

Something I learned from street performance

I come from a background of street performance. The performer entertains; the crowd watches. I got bored of that model.

What I care about is something different: inviting you out of your shell. Creating the conditions where you become bolder - not because I pushed you, but because play does that. When you’re in a space where playfulness is taken seriously, something shifts. You become more courageous. More grateful. More yourself.

Giocosamente is co-created. Every person who comes brings something. The festival is, in some sense, never the same twice.

Gratitute

This festival wouldn’t exist without the people who help build it.

A deep thank you to Lilia, Stefano, David, Michele, and Aurora - the team that makes Giocosamente real. And to Pianeta Verde, which receives us all with its particular kind of generosity - a natural backdrop that does its own quiet work on everyone who arrives.

If you haven’t yet watched the short documentary about the festival (16 mins, get your popcorn), made by Sara Pozzoli, please do. It shows you something that words like mine can’t quite reach.

👉 [Watch and share the documentary here]

If something in this letter spoke to you, I’d love for you to consider joining us.

👉 [Find out more and register — Giocosamente Festival 2026]