The art collective I Mille Volti brings together about ten people, ranging from 27 to 56 years old—disabled and non-disabled alike, a genuinely mixed social group like the rest of us—united in a creative writing workshop devoted to poetry and prose.
The group began in Milan in 1994, during a casual gathering at ASHA, an organization supporting people with disabilities that emerged in the 1980s but eventually closed its doors. Its founders were parents who shared the same challenge: a child with a disability. That is where we met Angelo Fasani, founder of the association "Orizzonti oltre l'handicap," which has since been renamed VIS (Volontari per la Inclusione Sociale). His vision centers on treating disabled people as equals. I Mille Volti has become the association's most active arm.
At that time, I was teaching literature at a middle school and had been writing poetry since age fourteen. My son Enrico, spastic and unable to speak, had inherited that same passion from me.
So, together with other friends from the neighborhood, we organized ourselves. What began as a social gathering became, with my guidance, a genuine cultural force. We started working side by side on open-ended themes I proposed, producing short poems charged with raw feeling—fueled by an urgent need to be heard, to say: "I'm here too!"
Our unusual method—working through assigned and free-choice themes—eventually led, at Fasani's suggestion, to public readings: in municipal libraries, community centers, parish halls, and cultural clubs.
Clarissa lives in my own neighborhood, and from the moment we met, our paths crossed often: at the parish, at Sunday youth gatherings, at the ASHA center, in the Fede e Luce group at the Church of Santa Maria Madre della Chiesa in the Gratosoglio district. She was in her twenties then—withdrawn, with a limited vocabulary both spoken and written. The workshop became essential for her. She learned to express herself through short, simple verses that helped her revisit painful moments and overcome her chronic self-doubt. The joy on her face when she produced her first poems! Year by year, her growth became more visible and assured. I followed her progress individually each week on her day off from work. Clarissa's real gifts are order and determined willpower—strengths rooted in her practical, hands-on intelligence rather than abstract thinking.
Painting and music are woven into the workshop's fabric. We collaborate regularly with painting groups for disabled and non-disabled participants. Music, always present at our readings, comes from volunteer friends. We have also integrated ourselves into various cultural and social groups across the city. Through this creative and constructive work, members of I Mille Volti have shown steady growth in their psychological and physical well-being, their expressive and stylistic capacity, and their desire to communicate.
The families in our group are diverse. Over the years, I have watched their faith in life deepen and their resolve strengthen as they navigate serious challenges—finding stable work, securing a place in programs, searching for communication aids, attending carefully to health. For each of them, I have kept a watchful eye, and I have felt from both sides a wonderful surge in communication. It brings real satisfaction when we gather for public readings and discover that others appreciate us and connect with what we share. VIS has partnered with ANFFAS in recent years to produce and distribute the newsletter "Oltre la notizia."
The stone cast into the water has traced ever-widening circles for more than twenty years now.
Maria Teresa Mosconi Straulino, 2015
Over the past fifteen years, I Mille Volti has published five anthologies of writings—collections of poems and short stories born from the workshop. These publications have earned the group numerous recognitions: Cogliere un fiore e consegnarlo alla luce (2002), Verde Pianura (2005), PassIncontrO (2008), Dal silenzio una voce (2010)—reviewed in issue 115 of Ombre e Luci.
Most recently, Un soffio di luce (2012) contains dozens of poems and several stories, including a poetic dialogue between Maria Teresa Mosconi and her son Enrico, who passed away a few years later. Autobiographical in nature, yet also connected to the group's writing activities, is TitaMatita (2014), in which Mosconi tells her own story with focus on her childhood. For information about obtaining these publications, contact mt.mosconi@libero.it.