The Everywhere Atelier Manifesto

I have long been fascinated by the idea that a meaningful creative process can happen everywhere, with any material.

There’s no need to have a dedicated room with art materials. It could be just a bench in a garden, a special trolley in hospital corridors, an easel in a field, a notebook and a pencil on a train seat, a bicycle and a camera…

But then I wonder, if an atelier experience can happen everywhere, then is any place itself an atelier? And if any material can be used, then do we no longer need to choose and organize? What is the minimum necessary for it to take place?

From this reflection, here a kind of manifesto, a core of minimal conditions that can generate infinite variations – still evolving.

What do you think of it, how does it resonate with you? Would you add or change something?

If, as I believe, it is a universal potential of every human being, we have something extraordinary at our fingertips: the ability to create an oasis beyond aesthetic geographical, social and cultural boundaries, where we can just stay for the joy of creating, looking for connections with the world and ourselves.

In the last pages of her book “The Good Enough Studio”, Nona Orbach writes:

The essence of the studio concept and activities is mirrored by our own hands. Being present with the work, with another person, and acknowledging as well that wherever you are, everything in the world is also a metaphor for so much more. A bench at the park, a kimono, a dog walking next to you wigging its tail. Maybe it is a meadow, or a place in the mind.

What if all the scattered, so different ateliers became aware of their common roots and connected to know each other and create a network? Shall we try? Join the manifesto and share your Everywhere Atelier to start mapping!

In the meantime, in June 2024, the first international study group dedicated to Everywhere Atelier will take place in Reggio Emilia and its surroundings: six itinerant days that I am carefully preparing together with the pedagogista Laura Malavasi. During this week, 20 people from different parts of the world will meet atelieristas, artists, materials, objects, places and even animals, to build relationships through hands-on making.

I’ll try to document it accurately on the Instagram profile @robertapuccilab, hoping it’s the first of many.

And now I just have to wish you to enjoy your explorations, wherever you are!

The Creative Potential of Waste

What makes a material become waste? In relation to what?

Reflecting on this question, I realized that a material is considered “waste” always in relation to a certain context, objective, or meaning from which it is excluded. For example, while cooking a recipe you may produce a certain waste food that can still be a useful ingredient for a different recipe, food for animals or raw material for other processes.

Industrial waste is produced in relation to a specific manufacturing process, for making a certain product, and so on. Thus, we could say that the concept of waste is always relative, not absolute, and changes with the perspective from which we consider it.

For example, paper strips – which are a a typical waste of printing works – become a valuable material in my creative workshops.

From the point of view of a creative process, what is commonly considered waste – so not perceived within a predefined framework of meaning – can contribute with a very important quality: the unexpected, the unforeseen that surprises us and opens up possibilities otherwise unimaginable.

Here is an example from my experience. My assistant Esther was born from a folded strip of paper that was “discarded,” left in a corner of my table along with other pieces of paper as scraps from some of my paper explorations. After a while, I accidentally touched it, making it swing, and I started playing with it, fascinated by that movement caused by chance. It seems the stripe was alive… a shape began to define itself in my mind, and I tried to make it visible by scissors: there she was, hello Esther!

I would have never be able to create Esther starting from an intentional process: that random unexpected event was really the core, bringing a fresh perspective on something unfinished and apparently meaningless.
So where does the idea (like the idea of Esther) come from? Does it originate in our thoughts, or was it already present in the material? Is it inside or outside of us? I believe it is just in between: it comes out from the encounter, from the relationship between us and the material – that specific material, with its unique characteristics, observed with openness and curiosity.
What happens if we try recover some scraps from the paper bin with this approach?

Anything can become a new beginning. Unforeseen and indefinable shapes activate the imagination.

For seeing the creative potential of a material (especially if considered “waste”), it is important to decontextualize and placing it in a space that can value it, with a bit of emptiness around for observing its characteristics from different perspectives.

The setting, the arrangement of things, the combinations, the quantity, the space organization are all interconnected elements that influence our perception and interactions.

The care for space and materials is often a recurring quality in such places like reuse and recycling centers, where materials are displayed as precious items.

Something beautiful can’t become waste.

At this point, the risk is of not throwing anything away as garbage anymore… and not to needing to buy so much! Everything can continue to transform, with new functions and new meanings. The concept of waste exists only in our mind, and in fact, in nature, it is not found.

The paper insect friend of mine, which one day jumped out of the paper bin, always reminds me of this: becoming aware of the relativity and the potential of waste material is a revolutionary act.

The Grammar of Snow

By Roberta Pucci with the contribution of Suzanne Axelsson

Art works by Ceca Georgieva and Lucia Pec

Macrophotographs by Alexey Kljatov

Cover image: Lucia Pec


How choosing materials for creative explorations and where look for them? In a shop, at home or in the whole environment around you? I think the art studio – the atelier, or the art classroom – is a metaphor of a meaningful, creative encounter with the world and not necessarily a room.
It is a potential approach to all matter. For example, what about snow?

Snow exploration in the forest by Suzanne Axelsson

The very first approach I always suggest with any material is possibly fresh and new as it was the first time you see it: not already know what it is, but trying to have an encounter through the senses, the body, the movement, devoid of goals and thinking. We ARE matter, after all: no needed to always understand or create something. Can we just truly live a respectful encounter? Like a curious but discreet and gentle guest, observing and “listening” to the other side, instead of only take and use.

Snow, what or who are you?


How does it sound? How does your skin perceive it? How many ways you can handle it and with how many tools, in addition to your hands? How many kind of snow does exist – kind of consistencies, textures, whites?
I was so surprised and amazed when Suzanne told me there are about 50 Swedish words for define the snow, some used by most people all over Sweden, some used in certain areas only or just for work, in order to recognize when there is a risk for avalanche.

  • Drivsnö – drifting snow
  • Djupsnö – when it is very deep
  • Fimmern eller fimmeln – very fine/small snowflakes at very low temperature, like glitter in the air
  • Firn – small, grainy snow
  • Fjunsnö – very light fluffy snow
  • Flaksnö – there is a layer of ice on top like a lid
  • Flister – fine grained snow that you barely notice but somehow gets stuck in your face
  • Knarrsnö – makes a squeaky sound when you walk on it
  • Nysnö -new snow
  • Slask – slush (melting)
  • Snöhagel – mix of hail and snow
  • – snow piles that are left as its all melting
  • Upplega – snow that collects on the branches of trees
  • Yrsnö – snow blowing in all directions at once
  • Kramsnö – the kind you can make snowballs with (it means hug-snow or squeeze-snow)
Art work by Lucia Pec

Snow hides, plays hide and seek, but can also be terrifying in a storm and make getting lost. It can be both soft and hard, silent and noisy. It makes us wonder and wonder again… often connected to some special childhood memories. Can you recall one? I have some too… my personal experience is from the distance of very thick clothes, hat, scarf and gloves, like a little astronaut. So it was something irresistibly attractive but in the meantime difficult to reach and play with.
Maybe this first encounters are connected to my contemplative approach I developed later. What is yours? Can you recognize and support different ways of experiencing?


One of my first encounter with snow – 4 years old

Everything becomes softer, silent and blunt, or hard and creacky if frozen. Snow as a white, uncontaminated sheet of paper over the whole landscape, where signs, paths and maps of prints may appear.

Many authors were inspired by this magic, for example Aoi Huber-Kono with “Winter” or Bruno Munari with his famous “Cappuccetto bianco”, the white version of Little red Riding Hood, where the reader has got to imagine what is happening in the white pages.
The personality of white can express itself to its fullest potential through the snow. How many shades of white can we “see” and name? Are we sure it is only white and there are no other color shades?

Picture from the book “Winter” by Aoi Huber-Kono

Snow is part of the wider environment, of course, and we should keep this connection in mind. There are endless possible ways, as we can see throughout the pictures of the post.

Art works by Ceca Georgieva

How can we create a dialogue between the snow and the natural elements of the environment? How many ways can the snow encounters a tree, considering its specific shape, size, “personality” and place where it stands?
With snowballs, for example: and everytime the composition is different, related to that tree, group of tree or bush…


Art works by Ceca Georgieva

…or using some natural materials of the environment for making a composition over the snow, that serves as a welcoming support.

Art works by Lucia Pec

Snow can also become a material for drawing, by adding it on a surface…

Art works by Lucia Pec (on the left) and Suzanne Axelsson (on the right)

…or removing it. How many kind of tools, signs and prints can we explore?

Art works by Lucia Pec (on the left) and Suzanne Axelsson (on the right)

It is also a material to be modelled, for creating sculptures. Yes, snowmen of course, but why not a chair, a rhinoceros, the hand of the frozen giant, which emerges from the earth, or just a shape inspired by the material and the context itself?


Art works by Lucia Pec

Each transformation affects all the environment: it is like a dialogue though matter, shapes and colors; through nature and the creator.


Art work by Lucia Pec

Who leads, who follows? Where does the inspiration come from? Here below we can see different kind of examples: a pattern probably inspired by the snowflake structure but mainly processed by the artist (on the left) and a dialogue between a stone, snow and lades of grass that seems coming out from the shapes of the stone and the grass, from that specific encounter highlighted by the snow , through the artist as a link between them.

Art works by Lucia Pec

Now let’s shift from the whole landscape to a single snowflake. It is a so fascinating mistery, a world within a world. Each one is unique, there are not two identical snowflakes in the world. How is it possible and how does a snowflake form?

Macrophotos by Alexey Kljatov

As Ian Stewart explains in his beautiful book “What Shape is a Snowflake?”, it is a tiny ice crystal that develops its first nucleus according to its molecular, inner rules. But then, while it is travelling from up to earth, through the atmosphere, it encounters specific conditions (of pressure, umidity, temperature, wind) so that every journey will be a little different and will provoke a different final shape.

Macrophotos by Alexey Kljatov

What interesting questions, wondering and learnings within these micro-universes… how preserving this wonder in a educational context? How can we support children to develop their own investigation, without giving ready answers?

As educators and parents, these are important questions to keep in mind.

If you are interested to continue the exploration of the grammar of snow, I invite you to visit the amazing work of the land artists Ceca Georgieva and Lucia Pec, of the educator, teacher trainer and author Suzanne Axelsson and the photographer Alexey Kljatov – that I deeply thank for letting me share their inspiring works.

But above all, if you are lucky enough to live in a snowy place, I suggest you to just welcome the snow as a friendly guest and to enjoy your encounter, without knowing where it will take you.

Art works by Lucia Pec

Natural Diary

Welcome dear nature’s lover. I would like to share a simple tool for connecting with nature, the “natural diary”. There’s nothing easier than explaining how to do it as there are no rules, everyone can do it in their own way.

You just need a notebook, some writing or drawing tools and going outside in a piece of nature.

Please choose carefully your stationery: pencils, pens, markers, chalks, highlighters, pastels, water colors… And what paper? White, colored, striped, checkered… Each material will differently effect your process and produce a different expressive nuance. But no worry, you can start just with a common notebook and a pencil, then eventually change the tools from time to time.

What is in the pages of the natural diary? Words, drawings, tiny things, leaves, petals, spots, signs. The shape of a cloud. The refrain of a song. The trajectory of an insect. A collection of shadows. A memory. Any free association of images or words born in this short time, free from daily commitments.

It could mean tuning into the upward thrust of the blades of grass. No matter the outcome but the gesture, the connection.

Try to take some time for your diary periodically. You don’t need to follow the order of the pages, meaning that you can go back and forth as you want, or leave a blank page, like when the color passes through the other side of the sheet and leaves a mark that you don’t like: maybe, after some time, you will transform it.

The writing of the natural diary occurs in a special “suspended” time, when your eyes and mind are open, receptive, but not looking for anything specific. Things will come, maybe just a word or a small sign, leaning back on the page. It is a way to legitimize and allow yourself to not be productive or functional, at least for a while.

It is a kind of small gesture of silent contemplation and reconciliation with nature, and maybe even with yourself.

Human beings feel isolated in the cosmos, since they are no longer embedded in nature and have lost their emotional unconscious “identity” with natural phenomena. These, in turn, have gradually lost their symbolic meanings. Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry divinity, rivers are no longer the house of the spirits, nor trees the vital principle of man (…). No voice reaches people from stones, plants or animals any more, nor does the human beings turn to them sure of being heard. The contact with nature is lost, thus the profound emotional energy that this symbolic contact released has failed.

Carl G. Jung, “Man and His Symbols”