2026 AIN Global Conference - Rimini, Italy
Program and Session Details 

Welcome to the official 2026 AIN Global Conference Program! We are thrilled to unveil the complete lineup of sessions awaiting you in Rimini.

This page is your comprehensive guide to our inspiring keynotes, interactive Workshops, dynamic AIN Talks, and deep-dive Learning Journeys. Explore the session descriptions to start planning your experience, or browse our alphabetical directory to meet the incredible facilitators joining us from around the world.

Use the quick links below to view the daily schedule or jump directly to a specific section of the program:

Full Daily Schedule | Keynotes & Entertainment | Learning Journeys | AIN Talks | Workshops | Our Presenters

Conference Schedule

Wednesday, Oct 21 | Thursday, Oct 22 | Friday, Oct 23 | Saturday, Oct 24 | Sunday, Oct 25

Wednesday, October 21st - Rimini, Italy

Thursday, October 22nd - Rimini, Italy

Friday, October 23rd - Rimini, Italy

Saturday, October 24th - Rimini, Italy

Sunday, October 25th - Rimini, Italy

Keynotes and Entertainment

At the heart of our conference are stories, laughter, and shared moments of human connection. We are thrilled to welcome our extraordinary keynote speakers, Lucia Berdini and Daniele Cassioli, who will inspire us to explore play, resilience, and the art of being human.

Adding to the magic, featured performer Fabio Mangolini brings the rich tradition of Commedia dell'Arte to life, while our conference band, Dog Day, will keep the energy high with dynamic live music. Explore their bios and session previews below to meet the voices leading our mainstage moments!

Keynote Speaker: Lucia Berdini

About Lucia Berdini: Play Coach, trainer, speaker, and facilitator, she transforms people, groups, and organizations through the serious power of play.

Founder of Playfactory, World Laughter Ambassador, Gibberish & Nonsense Coach, and TEDx Speaker, she works with companies, schools, and communities to awaken joy, creativity, and cooperation.

A hunter of cognitive biases and systems thinking enthusiast, she guides individuals and organizations in discovering play not just as an activity, but as a lens for life and a gentle act of subversion. Her TEDx talk "Playing is serious business" has brought her message to audiences worldwide. 

Keynote: The Art of Nonsense: Where Everyone Ends Up in the Same Place

Step outside the frame of meaning, and something strange happens: everyone ends up standing in the same place. This keynote uses nonsense, the game we all played before we could talk, to explore what's left of us when sense stops mattering, and why that might be the truest art of being human.

Keynote Speaker: Daniele Cassioli

About Daniele Cassioli: Blind since birth, 28-time world water ski champion, and holder of over 100 gold medals, he turned an extraordinary athletic career into a platform for human development.

A certified life coach and professional trainer, he works with organizations like EY, Barilla, Vodafone, Bosch, and Allianz, helping teams transform obstacles into opportunities.

In 2019, he founded Real Eyes Sport, a nonprofit introducing children with visual impairments to physical activity. Author of two books on resilience and emotional intelligence, he brings a rare blend of elite performance, disability experience, and coaching expertise to every stage. 

Keynote: Seeing Beyond the Obvious: The Art of Listening, Trusting and Improvising

Daniele Cassioli embodies "The Art of Being Human" because his message is forged not in theory, but in profound lived experience and radical resilience. Blind since birth, he achieved world-class athletic mastery by navigating the world through trust, heightened perception, and sheer determination, qualities that strike at the core of the human condition.

As a speaker, he bridges the gap between elite performance and everyday vulnerability, translating his journey through darkness into actionable wisdom on emotional intelligence, purpose, and adaptability. Whether empowering corporate teams to see beyond perceived limits or giving visually impaired children their first taste of movement and confidence, Daniele reminds audiences that our greatest obstacles are often the very catalyst for our deepest growth, connection, and empathy.

Featured Performer: Fabio Mangolini

About Fabio Mangolini: Fabio Mangolini (Rome, 1964) has dedicated his entire life to theatre as an actor, director, pedagogue, author, translator and, finally, as a manager. He graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bologna, and in 1987 he graduated from the Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris Marcel Marceau. In 1985, he joined as a young Harlequin in the international company Les Scalzacani directed by Carlo Boso, in Paris.

In 1991, he left the company and continued to take the Commedia dell’Arte around the world. Between 1992 and 1994, he was a scholarship holder of the Japan Foundation and the International Theatre Institute and studied Kyōgen and Nō in Tōkyō. As an actor, he has worked with numerous directors, including Carlo Boso, Nomura Kosuke, François Cervantes, Roxanne Rizvi, Remi Barbier, Didier Doumergue, Francesco Brandi, Tim Supple, Giles Smith, performing in tours in Italy, Europe and the world. He has directed shows in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and the United States.

He has taught in prestigious Academies of Dramatic Art in Europe (among others, RESAD in Madrid, GITIS and MKAT in Moscow), in Universities in the USA and South America, in Japan. From 2004 to 2009, he taught Interpretation and Direction at the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático (RESAD) in Madrid. He has taught in Europe, Asia, America, Africa. He was President of the Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Ferrara, President of the Associazione Scuola dell’Opera Italiana di Bologna and Board Member of the Fondazione ATER-Formazione.

Featured Performance: The Lazzo of the Fly - Lecture/Performance on the Commedia dell'Arte

An actor, alone on stage, tells and shows the secrets of the Commedia dell’Arte through his masks. A journey that starts in Padua in 1545 and arrives up to the present day amidst comedy and precious information on a theatrical form that, as we will see, still belongs to us today.

An actor alone on stage is transformed from lecturer to acrobat, from narrator of a marvellous story to incarnation of the narrating the history, the popular origins of the Commedia dell'Arte and its development in Italian and European courts. To learn more about this session and Commedia dell'Arte, click here.

Featured Band: Dog Day

Live music and the raw, uninhibited energy of rock 'n' roll captures the essence of the human experience by stripping away pretense and bringing us fully into the present moment. While the daytime sessions engage our minds, music speaks directly to the soul, inviting vulnerability, joy, and spontaneous expression. Getting people out of their seats and onto the dance floor transforms a room of individuals into a shared, synchronized community. It celebrates our innate need for rhythm, release, and authentic connection, proving that the true "Art of Being Human" isn't just found in what we think or achieve, but in how freely we feel, move, and celebrate together.

About Dog Day: The Dog Day are a rock band with a direct and vibrant sound, born out of a passion for authentic sounds and stage energy. Their live performances feature a solid and engaging set list that blends rhythmic drive, catchy melodies, and the pure spirit of international rock from the 1970s-onward. 

Learning Journeys

AIN Learning Journeys are workshops held before our main conference. They cover in-depth topics led by experienced facilitators and often connect directly to the conference city or region. Over the years, Learning Journeys have become increasingly significant, with more than half of conference attendees booking them. 

And new for 2026, we are offering late-night Learning Journey experiences in Rimini! Amazing learning opportunities from top professional facilitators are taking place after 6 pm. What a great way to kick off the conference and meet other attendees! Learning Journeys are pre-conference sessions and require separate registration to attend. This year, we have 12 Learning Journey sessions.

Click here to view our Learning Journey schedule and register for the sessions! 

AIN Talks

AIN Talks are engaging, concise presentations that dive straight into compelling topics, frameworks, and stories within our field. Designed to deliver powerful insights and fresh perspectives in a focused format, these talks offer a fantastic way to absorb new ideas and see how applied improvisation is evolving across different industries.

Below is the complete lineup of AIN Talks for our 2026 conference, currently organized in alphabetical order by session title. Please check back, as exact dates and presentation times will be announced soon. This year, we have nine AIN talks.

• Check Your Assumptions at the Door: What Applied Improv Owes Every Room - Presented by Thia Replogle
• Four Rooms, One “Yes, And” - Presented by Yechun (Andy) Qiu 
• Improv at Sea: Keeping Humans Afloat in Engineered Systems - Presented by Etienne Visora 
• Improvisation as a training tool (and content) for big multinationals training programs - Presented by Paolo Mazzaglia 
• Improvising Intelligence: What AI Reveals About Human Creation - Presented by Yul D. Pimo
• NeuroImprov: Applied Improv and Neuroplasticity in Action - Presented by Michelle Clarke
• Once upon a time – a story of science, fiction, climate change and improv games for future beauticians - Presented by Monica Murano
• The Cost of Being ‘Correct’: How Communication Becomes Performance of Identity - Presented by Xuan Zhao 
• The Usefulness of the Useless - Presented by Eduardo Jáuregui Narvaez

AIN Talk Descriptions 

Title: Check Your Assumptions at the Door: What Applied Improv Owes Every Room 
Presented by: Thia Replogle
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Standard applied improv exercises carry hidden assumptions about who is in the room — and those assumptions have real consequences when we work with vulnerable populations.This talk draws on direct experience bringing the benefits of improvisation to dementia caregivers, seniors in assisted living, people experiencing homelessness, and transgender people to examine where those assumptions live: in language, in pacing, in the emotional weight of an invitation. It offers a two-level framework for practitioners — auditing assumptions during planning, and responding with genuine presence when something real breaks through an activity. It also shares honestly what that second level looks like in practice, and how to be ready for it.

Title: Four Rooms, One “Yes, And” 
Presented by: Yechun (Andy) Qiu
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Change management usually hands everyone the same script: move forward, on cue, together. But people facing the same change are never in the same place — one is content, one is quietly denying it, one is lost in confusion, one is already experimenting. This talk offers a different move. Drawing on Claes Janssen's Four Rooms of Change and applied improvisation, I argue that the most human act in any change is not pushing people forward, but letting them stay in the room they are in — and that "Yes, And" is exactly the tool that turns that permission into movement. I'll show one real moment from a workshop I've delivered eight times, where a single Yes-And reframe turned a line of resistance into alignment. One sentence, one room crossed. That is being human, off-book — made visible and learnable.

Title: Improv at Sea: Keeping Humans Afloat in Engineered Systems
Presented by Etienne Visora
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Eight‑month contracts, rotating ports, limited internet, and strict hierarchies: cruise‑ship crews live inside one of the most optimized “machines” on earth, yet they are some of the most isolated workers I’ve met. Over several contracts, I started offering tiny, informal improv labs to crew members, from housekeeping to engine room, as a way to play, connect, and remember they were more than their roles. In this 8‑minute talk, I share what happened when people who rarely meet across departments began co‑creating scenes and songs together with no script, no stage, and almost no resources. You’ll leave with simple, portable improv practices for building “floating tribes” of care and creativity in your own edge environments: from shift workers to remote teams to anyone holding things together far from home. We can Be.

Title: Improvisation as a training tool (and content) for big multinationals training programs
Presented by Paolo Mazzaglia 
Date and Time: TBD
Description: How switched from using improv just as warm up or team building to use it as a real hard training tool. A case from a very famous supercar company and a case from a very well known coffee company.

Title: Improvising Intelligence: What AI Reveals About Human Creation
Presented by Yul D. Pimo
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Artificial intelligence is often discussed in terms of automation: what it can write, summarize, predict or replace. I would like to ask a different question: what does AI fail to see when it imitates intelligence? The Turing-test tradition focuses on whether a machine can produce convincing dialogue. Improvisation shifts the question: intelligence is not only producing the right answer, but being present in a situation with others. It involves timing, trust, hesitation, error, silence, exposure, embodied attention and collective meaning-making. Drawing on my background in quantum computing, theoretical physics and theatre improvisation, this talk proposes “improvising intelligence” as a way to rethink human creation in the age of AI. What matters is not defending human superiority, but understanding the forms of intelligence that appear only in relation, uncertainty and shared action.

Title: NeuroImprov: Applied Improv and Neuroplasticity in Action
Presented by Michelle Clarke
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Applied improvisation may be one of the most human forms of neuroplasticity in action.
In this playful and thought-provoking 10-minute talk I will explore what may be happening in the brain when humans improvise together. Through stories, audience participation, and accessible neuroscience language, the talk examines how improv invites people to practice neuroplasticity - adaptability, responsiveness, listening, collaboration, creativity, emotional flexibility, and navigating uncertainty in real time.
Rather than approaching neuroscience from a highly academic perspective, this session translates emerging neuroplasticity concepts into practical, experiential understanding that improv practitioners can immediately relate to and recognize in their own work.
At a time when artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how humans work and communicate, this talk asks an important question: what uniquely human capacities are we rehearsing when we improvise together? 

Title: Once upon a time – a story of science, fiction, climate change and improv games for future beauticians
Presented by Monica Murano
Date and Time: TBD
Description: In a professional school to prevent dropout, in Bologna, after a lesson on climate change, a class of future beauticians was challenged: can you write a sci-fi story using what you just learned? The answer was immediate and unanimous: ‘NO!’ They said. ‘I can’t write!’ ‘I don’t know science!’ ‘I don’t know fiction!’ ‘I'm not even good at Italian!’
Then, improv games changed everything…In this 10hrs workshop, students went above and beyond their believed limits to explore who they are, what they’re capable of and what they feel about the world we live in, from ‘No, but…’ to ‘Yes, and…’.

Title: The Cost of Being ‘Correct’: How Communication Becomes Performance of Identity
Presented by Xuan Zhao
Date and Time: TBD
Description: This talk asks a simple but unsettling question: what if we are not actually communicating as ourselves?
In everyday life, we are trained to be “correct” in how we speak: clear, appropriately, professionally, and socially acceptable. Over time, this pressure does not just shape what we say, but quietly shapes who we are allowed to be in interaction.
Drawing on applied improvisation and real interactional moments, this session explores how communication often becomes a performance of identity rather than a direct encounter between people. It reveals how quickly we slip into roles:employee, expert, polite stranger, and how rarely we notice it happening.
Through short stories from improvisational practice, we will look at what changes when those roles briefly break. The talk invites you to experience communication not as correctness, but as something more fragile, surprising, and alive underneath it.

Title: The Usefulness of the Useless
Presented by Eduardo Jáuregui Narvaez
Date and Time: TBD
Description: In 2013, the Italian literary historian Nuccio Ordine published an essay which became an unlikely worldwide bestseller: L’utilità del inutile. This extraordinary “manifesto” brought together many of the most passionate arguments made throughout history in defence of pursuing activities for their own sake. Philosophers, poets, artists, scientists and all kinds of rebels and misfits were quoted as they railed against the tyranny of profit, fame and power, and extolled the virtue of following our curiosity, intuition or whim freely, wherever it might lead. This proposal to free ourselves of “utility”, the very basis of our economic system, can be traced back not only to concepts such as the “humanities” or the “liberal arts”, but to a primal instinct which our civilisation scorns and inhibits at every step: the human drive to play. In this talk I argue that the time has come for a playful renaissance.

Workshops

Our 90-minute workshops are where theory meets practice. These interactive sessions are your opportunity to connect with peers, try out new exercises, and explore applied improvisation methodologies in a supportive, hands-on environment. To help you start browsing and planning your experience, we have listed the full lineup of Workshops below in alphabetical order by title. We are putting the finishing touches on our daily agenda, so exact dates and presentation times will be updated here soon! This year, we have 35 workshops.

• Allegro. The rhythm that inhabits our human bodies. - Facilitated by Efraim Centeno Hernáez
• Black Rainbow Project - Facilitated by Nandini Rao
• Danish Hygge meets Californian Casual: the power of presence, trust and deep listening - Facilitated by Per Rasmussen and Carrie Caudle
• Debriefing the Debrief: The Art and Science of Debriefing - Facilitated by Faith Amon
• Deep Small Talk: Make meaningful connections in minutes - Facilitated by Stephen Lee
• Designing the Human Edge: From Human Qualities to Learning Dramaturgy - Facilitated by Vanda Gabrielova
• Designing What Comes Next: Applied Improvisation for a Changing World - Facilitated by Paul Z Jackson
• Exercises That Are Lighting Our Fires - Facilitated by Patrick Short
• Exploring Applied Improvisation Through a Creative Thinking Lens: Discovering the Thinking Skills Behind the Practice - Facilitated by Vivian Geffen
• Feeling Failure: Using Improv to Help Students Address Anxiety Avoidance - Facilitated by Brooke Oehme 
• From Code-Switching to Cognitive Flow: A Workshop on Identity, Power, and the Human Edge - Facilitated by Daniel Lattimore and Oneya Okuwobi
• From mindfulness to playfulness - Facilitated by Eduardo Jáuregui Narvaez
• From Performance to Care: Yes, And in a Finite World - Facilitated by Helene Farret Cassegrain
• From Risk Jump to Risk Ramp - Facilitated by Jan Keck
• Get Them To Care! Harnessing Inspiration to Enhance Applied Improvisation Outcomes - Facilitated by Jacqui Blue
• Gibberish for Well-Being: When Known Words Are Not Enough - Facilitated by Povilas Plūkas
• Improv Training as a Crucial Tool in Entrepreneurship Education - Facilitated by Johanna Smith
• Improv, Creativity and Liminal Space - Facilitated by BessEiermann, PhD, R-DMT
• Improvisation as an Act of Rebellion: Carrying forward the Commedia Dell’arte Tradition - Facilitated by Yael Schy
• Improvisation for Language Learning: Using Play to Build Vocabulary That Sticks - Facilitated by Mike Manchester
• It’s Not a People Problem: Designing Human Participation - Facilitated by Jessica Breitenfeld
• Listening at All Levels: Yes, And-ing Otto Scharmer - Facilitated by Ilene Bergelson
• Our Iceberg is Melting - The Four Rooms of Change - Facilitated by Yechun (Andy) Qiu
• PLAY!ing with Organizational Development – Human-Centered Change in Large Systems - Facilitated by Roberto Hirche and Raymond van Driel
• Playful Presence - the Meisner way. - Facilitated by Annemarie Steen
• Precision in Presence: Status, Second Circle, and the Art of Conscious Influence - Facilitated by Edward (Ted) DesMaisons
• Solution Play: Inviting Play into the Therapy Room - Facilitated by Pamela King
• The future is fun: building confidence and resilience for the current age and the one to come - Facilitated by Alex Lamb
• The power of using applied improv in the fields of clinical / professional supervision, coaching and reflective practice - Facilitated by Christian F. Freisleben
• THE STORIES WE CARRY: Applied Improv & Devised Theatre for Exploring Integration, Diversity and Human Connection - Facilitated by Mercedes De Jesus M
• The Unchained Elephant: a Dance Between the Known and the Unknown - Facilitated by Alessia Berti
• Vocal Intelligence: How our voices make (and keep) us human. - Facilitated by Carl DuPont
• Voice in Action: Embodied communication for facilitators - Facilitated by Renate Mikucevska
• What Are We Actually Cultivating? - An Applied Improv Inquiry into Human Spaces - Facilitated by Fabian Brüggemann
• When the Map Runs Out. Six Imaginative Practices for Creating the Next Path - Facilitated by Paul Syme

Workshop Descriptions 

Title: Allegro. The rhythm that inhabits our human bodies.
Facilitated by Efraim Centeno Hernáez 
Date and Time: TBD
Description: One of the most direct ways we, as human beings, bring our artistic soul to life is through the rhythms that emerge from our bodies.In this workshop, you will unlock your physical intuition, sharpen your ensemble listening, and master the art of the body’s natural timing. Come experiment with rhythm and discover with others the invisible beat beneath every scene  and find out how rhythm can impact professional situations. This workshop offers a journey of shared creation, where we will build scenes from rhythmic patterns that emerge through the interaction of our bodies. We will refine our ability to perceive rhythm within scenes and discover how rhythm shapes collaboration, communication, and professional interaction.Let’s explore our allegro (and other tempos) together.

Facilitated by Mercedes De Jesus M 
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Explore applied improvisation and devised theatre as tools for bridging language and cultural divides. Rooted in immigrant experiences, this workshop invites participants to bring their own stories, languages, memories, and cultural references into a shared creative space. Through active listening, improvisation, physical expression, and collaborative storytelling, we will explore how stories can be understood, transformed, and connected—even when words or languages differ. Together, we will create scenes and narratives from our diverse experiences, discovering the common ground that emerges when we listen, play, and create together. A hands-on exploration of communication, diversity, integration, and human connection beyond words.

Title: Black Rainbow Project
Facilitated by Nandini Rao 
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Applied Improvisation for Inclusion: Beyond Vision & Abilities
Everything around us is designed for one kind of body, one kind of ability — and if you've ever struggled to open a door handle as a left-handed person, you already know what exclusion feels like in the small, everyday moments. This workshop moves empathy from a concept into a bodily experience. Through improvisation games and activities with physical restrictions — signing your name with your non-dominant hand, picking things off the floor with your feet, navigating space without sight — participants discover inclusion from the inside out. The workshop culminates in the Black Rainbow Project: actors rehearse blindfolded, perform blindfolded, for an audience that is also blindfolded. Born from a collaboration with a blind school in Bangalore twelve years ago and documented by BBC & PRI's The World, this is inclusion as lived, felt practice.

Title: Danish Hygge meets Californian Casual: the power of presence, trust and deep listening
Facilitated by Per Rasmussen and Carrie Caudle
Date and Time: TBD
Description: In a world obsessed with optimization, building genuine human connection has become a true superpower. As Applied Improvisers, we hold the tools to build relationships, yet doing so across diverse cultural dynamics remains a challenge. What happens when we look at connection through two distinct cultural lenses? This workshop explores the intersection of the closed, deeply secure architecture of Danish Hygge (high psychological safety but hard to enter) and the radically welcoming but often superficial Californian Casual (low barrier to entry but tricky to deepen). Through intentional, hands-on improv exercises, we will decode the micro-skills that bridge these styles: radical presence, curiosity, courageous vulnerability, and deep listening. You will leave with an adaptable framework to help groups build trust quickly, embrace imperfection, and confidently claim their "Human Edge".

Title: Debriefing the Debrief: The Art and Science of Debriefing
Facilitated by Faith Amon
Date and Time: TBD
Description: We want to encourage participants to vary their approach to debriefing. What if we tried to debrief a game in a different way? Or for a different audience? Can we uncover new possibilities by rethinking our approach to the debrief? Drawing on relevant research, as well as our shared expertise and experience, we'll experiment with expanding the traditional debrief, exploring new pathways, uncovering different outcomes, and having some fun along the way. What if the debrief itself became a fun, interactive exercise. Let’s stretch those debrief muscles!

Title: Deep Small Talk: Make meaningful connections in minutes
Facilitated by Stephen Lee
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Hate small talk? Try “Deep Small Talk”! This is a simple yet powerful activity that can fit into any agenda to spice up your team bonding. With a few potent questions, you can open up any group to being more connected, more vulnerable and ultimately more human…in a matter of minutes. “Deep Small Talk” has been field-tested across a wide variety of workshops with extremely diverse audiences, including moviemakers in London, corporate communicators in Geneva, undergraduate researchers from MIT and beginner improvisers in Nigeria. Despite the vast differences across these groups, the one thing that unites them all is a shared craving for human-to-human connection. In this workshop, we’ll experience how a “Deep Small Talk” session works and take some time to start designing your own prompts. If you want people to connect more meaningfully in your sessions, this workshop is for you!

Title: Designing the Human Edge: From Human Qualities to Learning Dramaturgy
Facilitated by Vanda Gabrielova
Date and Time: TBD
Description: We often work with deeply human qualities: courage, vulnerability, presence, trust, listening, adaptability, and the ability to respond to the unexpected. But how do we design for these qualities without reducing them to vague values? In this workshop, we will explore how to translate human qualities into a clear learning intention, observable behavior, activity choices, reflection questions, and a basic dramaturgical flow. A well-designed workshop is not a fixed script. It is a canovaccio: a learning scenario that gives facilitators enough structure to stay present, responsive, and fully human with the group.Participants will move from intention to dramaturgy and experience a practical L&D design workflow that brings more clarity, confidence, and lightness into designing applied improvisation programs.

Title: Designing What Comes Next: Applied Improvisation for a Changing World
Facilitated by Paul Z Jackson
Date and Time: TBD
Description: This workshop is for practitioners who want to update their Applied Improvisation for the conditions they are now facing. Many of our familiar formats and concepts were developed for earlier contexts. Today we face low trust, burnout, fragmentation, sceptical clients, polarisation, and the growing presence of Artificial Intelligence. This will be a practical, participative workshop re-examining what still works, what needs adapting, and what new responses we can offer. Through pair work, small-group design and whole-group reflection, participants will generate more relevant, humane and effective Applied Improvisation for their current contexts.

Title: Exercises That Are Lighting Our Fires
Facilitated by Patrick Short
Date and Time: TBD
Description: For advanced facilitators, let's gather and share exercises, frames, reflection techniques and sales approaches that are lighting our creative fires right now. Come with your favorite(s) to share; expect to take new favorites away. 

Title: Exploring Applied Improvisation Through a Creative Thinking Lens: Discovering the Thinking Skills Behind the Practice
Facilitated by Vivian Geffen
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Applied improvisation is widely recognized as a creative practice, yet we rarely stop to examine what actually makes it creative. This interactive workshop invites participants to explore applied improvisation through a Creative Thinking Lens, connecting familiar activities with the thinking capacities and affective conditions they cultivate. Participants begin with a brief divergent thinking challenge under ordinary workshop conditions. After experiencing several applied improvisation activities, they revisit a similar challenge and reflect on what changed. Using their own experience as evidence, the group explores how the affective experience of an activity influences participation, idea generation, collaboration, and creative thinking. Together we examine thinking capacities including fluency, flexibility, making connections, and elaboration, giving facilitators a richer vocabulary for understanding, explaining, and debriefing the value of applied improvisation.

Title: Feeling Failure: Using Improv to Help Students Address Anxiety Avoidance
Facilitated by Brooke Oehme 
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Failure is part of learning. Every teacher has, at one point or another, reiterated this idea to their students, hoping to create a safe space where students can learn by trying, failing, getting feedback, and trying again. But what happens when the fear of failure is so incapacitating that students cannot move past it? This workshop will go through some strategies to help participants physically face and survive their encounters with failure. Help turn anxiety from a vague spectre that feeds failure into a physical being we can embrace and use to create success.

Title: From Code-Switching to Cognitive Flow: A Workshop on Identity, Power, and the Human Edge
Facilitated by Daniel Lattimore and Oneya Okuwobi
Date and Time: TBD
Description: In the pursuit of the "Human Edge," many individuals—particularly those from marginalized backgrounds—are forced into a state of hyper-vigilance known as code-switching. While often viewed as a social survival skill, the neuropsychological reality is far more taxing: it is a "Bandwidth Tax" that prioritizes situational masking over innovative flow. To be truly agile, one must first have the chance to be authentic.This workshop serves as an opportunity to move from the sociological costs of "Racial Commodification" (as defined by Dr. Oneya Okuwobi) to the psychological power of Unscripted Sufficiency. Drawing on Dr. Daniel Lattimore’s research, we will explore how Applied Improvisation functions as a cognitive intervention to reclaim executive function. Participants will engage in identity-conscious play, using Affiliative Humor to dismantle the "Optimization Trap" and restore psychological safety. By practicing cognitive flow, we shift the focus from "how do I fit in?" to "how can I contribute from a place of being enough?" Attendees will leave with a measurable framework for reducing cognitive load and fostering environments where equity and peak performance coexist through the power of unscripted presence.

Title: From mindfulness to playfulness
Facilitated by Eduardo Jáuregui Narvaez
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Humanity seems to have lost its way: anxiety, depression, addiction, conflict and other symptoms of our systemic malaise are everywhere to be seen. Fortunately, there is a scientifically-grounded antidote to this zombie pandemic: mindfulness. It calms the mental chit-chat, allows us to manage our emotions and impulses, brings us back to the present moment and allows us to perceive things as they are, making peace with ourselves and the world. The problem is that most people look upon this antidote as they would a jab with a long-needled syringe. Isn’t there an easier way? Something a little less BORING than focusing on your breath for hours on end? Now there is: playfulness. This workshop brings together the insights of artists and mystics, the practices of Jon Kabat-Zinn and Viola Spolin, the Tibetan bowl and the clown horn. After all, is there anyone more “awakened” or “liberated” than a 5-year old?

Title: From Performance to Care: Yes, And in a Finite World
Facilitated by Helene Farret Cassegrain
Date and Time: TBD
Description: For years, “Yes, And” has often been interpreted as an invitation to adapt faster, perform better, and keep up with an increasingly accelerated world. This workshop offers a different paradigm. Rather than pushing ourselves beyond our limits, we will explore Yes, And as an embodied practice of radical acceptance, self-awareness, and collective care. How do we face reality as it is — our emotions, boundaries, fears, energy, and the finite resources of our organizations and our planet — and build with it rather than against it? Through applied improvisation, mindfulness, emotional awareness, nonviolent communication, music, movement, pair work, and whole-group embodied activities, participants will experience how “Yes” becomes unconditional welcome, and “And” becomes aligned action. This session is designed as a deeply human, practical, and restorative learning experience for facilitators and practitioners navigating burnout, uncertainty, and change.

Title: From Risk Jump to Risk Ramp
Facilitated by Jan Keck
Date and Time: TBD
Description: In applied improvisation, we talk a lot about risk. We invite people to step into uncertainty, to speak before they’re ready, to try something without knowing how it will land. But what if the problem isn’t that people are unwilling to take risks? What if we’re simply asking for too much, too soon? In this workshop, you’ll experience what it feels like to move through a carefully designed risk ramp: a progressive sequence that lowers the cost of participation, builds psychological safety gradually, and brings even the most skeptical or quiet participants along without diluting the work. You’ll run a few short sequences, analyze the design behind them, and leave with a practical framework you can apply immediately in corporate, educational, and community settings. Based on the Campfire Method from Jan’s new book, The Campfire Method.

Title: Get Them To Care! Harnessing Inspiration to Enhance Applied Improvisation Outcomes
Facilitated by Jacqui Blue
Date and Time: TBD
Description: How do we teach high-stakes skills like empathy, bad-news delivery, and emotional recovery without causing burnout? The answer lies in first tapping into your participants' humanity, empathy, and getting them personally invested; then play! This interactive session explores how applied improv helps to build psychological resilience across diverse groups, from at-risk youth to medical professionals and university faculty, but also explores how those that lead and facilitate improv groups might best approach getting enthusiasctic engagement. Participants will discover how to use low-stakes theater games, mindfulness, and music to create the psychological safety needed in their groups to tackle high-stakes, real-world challenges through applied improv. Through real stories—including how students bounce back from adversity and how professional actors help to train doctors in empathy—you will hear success stories, play interactive games, and learn actionable strategies to encourage curiosity, secure group buy-in, and spark deep engagement. "Yes, and...." your way to fostering mental health well-being and resiliency in your own organization by connecting with others through applied improvisation.

Title: Gibberish for Well-Being: When Known Words Are Not Enough
Facilitated by Povilas Plūkas
Date and Time: TBD
Description: We tend to filter what we truly feel, especially at work. We rationalize, translate emotions into process language, and hide what's really going on. Over time, that has its price: increased risk of burnout, inauthentic connections, losing touch with reality. Gibberish — a made-up language of sounds—gives us a way to express emotions without having to explain them. No right way. No wrong way. Just feeling, body and  sound.In this session, we use improv exercises to practice expressing different emotional states. We'll play with giving and receiving emotional signals, and notice how they land in the body. On meta-level reflection, we'll discuss how to use gibberish as a tool for training emotional self-regulation. It's playful. It's a little weird and messy. And it might be exactly what your human nature needs.

Title: Improv Training as a Crucial Tool in Entrepreneurship Education
Facilitated by Johanna Smith
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Join Professor Johanna Smith for an overview of how she created the first improv curriculum required for all of the Entrepreneurship majors at the Randall W. Lewis School of Entrepreneurship at California State University San Bernardino. She will share best practices and advocacy arguments for establishing crucial training in this growing field.

Title: Improv, Creativity and Liminal Space
Facilitated by BessEiermann, PhD, R-DMT
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Liminal spaces are the thresholds between what was and what is not yet—a place of uncertainty, possibility, and emergence. Whether we are navigating personal transitions, an improv scene, organizational change, or the creative process itself, the challenge is often not finding answers but learning how to remain present in the unknown.This experiential workshop explores how applied improvisation and expressive arts can help us enter and inhabit liminal space with greater curiosity, resilience, and imagination. Through group movement, reflection, and improvisational activities, participants will experience practical ways to engage uncertainty as a creative resource rather than a problem to be solved.Together, we will explore how spontaneity, play, and artistic expression can foster trust in the unfolding process and support the emergence of new perspectives, insights, and possibilities. No artistic experience is necessary—only a willingness to step into the threshold and see what wants to emerge.

Title: Improvisation as an Act of Rebellion: Carrying forward the Commedia Dell’arte Tradition
Facilitated by Yael Schy
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Improvisational theater has a long history of fighting for social change. This interactive workshop will examine the 16th century Italian tradition of Commedia dell’Arte as a form of social rebellion, and how we as modern applied improvisers can use those techniques to address social issues with groups and organizations. We’ll take a look at how this tradition has continued throughout history, such as in Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed created in 1970’s Brazil, all the way up to the current day teaching of David Razowsky in his recent book, A Subversive’s Guide to Improvisation: Moving Beyond “Yes, And.” We will play with using improvisation as an act of rebellion by discovering how to adapt existing improv games as well as creating new ones! And we’ll explore our role as applied improvisers in using improv to initiate social change. Let’s BE the change we want to see in the world!

Title: Improvisation for Language Learning: Using Play to Build Vocabulary That Sticks
Facilitated by Mike Manchester
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Language learning is not only about memorizing concepts — it is about learning how to listen, react, and communicate spontaneously. This interactive workshop introduces an improv-based approach to language teaching that helps learners become more responsive to unpredictable input while strengthening vocabulary retention. Through improv exercises, participants will explore how play supports active listening, quick thinking, emotional connection, and meaningful communication. The workshop will include a mix of English and selected Italian words and phrases, allowing participants to directly experience how unfamiliar language can become memorable through context, repetition, and playful interaction. While English will be the main working language, the Italian elements will serve as a live demonstration of how improvisation can reduce pressure, increase engagement, and support vocabulary recall. Participants will leave with adaptable classroom activities that improve fluency, responsiveness, and long-term language retention.

Title: It’s Not a People Problem: Designing Human Participation
Facilitated by Jessica Breitenfeld
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Most group dynamics are not caused by “difficult people,” but by rooms that unintentionally amplify some voices and silence others. Learn how to intentionally design participation so that quieter voices are heard, dominant voices are balanced, and groups experience more human, inclusive interaction. Explore how simple shifts in agreements, timing, and interaction design can radically change group dynamics so things actually change after your session is over. The 90-minute workshop works with status, privilege and voice in large group experimentation. Examples of whole-group experience of redesigned decision-making and speaking systems. The focus is on making meetings- and the teams- more human, more balanced, and more participatory.

Title: Listening at All Levels: Yes, And-ing Otto Scharmer
Facilitated by Ilene Bergelson
Date and Time: TBD
Description: While listening is not exclusively a human ability, it is often in the act of listening to each other that we can find a deeper connection to our own humanity. Using Otto Scharmer's 4 Levels of Listening with story and conversation as our backdrop, we will embark on a playful, soulful romp through the world of how we listen. From downloading to discovering, we'll explore the intention, value, and wisdom of each level — not just intellectually, but in our bodies (yes, listening to ourselves too!), in the moment — with each other. As we bear witness to what this means for our own connections, we may find that how we listen is an inseparable, invaluable part of how we live.

Title: Our Iceberg is Melting - The Four Rooms of Change
Facilitated by Yechun (Andy) Qiu
Date and Time: TBD
Description: This is the workshop I have delivered eight times in public and in-house corporate settings, built on the fable “Our Iceberg Is Melting” and Claes Janssen’s Four Rooms of Change (Contentment, Denial, Confusion, Renewal). Participants first build a shared, lightweight language for the inner states of change, then physically locate themselves — which room am I in, on a real change I am living right now? The heart of the session is a Forum Theatre sequence: a volunteer shares a genuine change dilemma; others listen through assigned lenses; the scene is staged; the group then offers alternatives and re-stages it. Participants leave with a self-inquiry tool for each room and a felt sense of how “Yes, And” moves a person from one room to the next without being pushed.

Title: PLAY!ing with Organizational Development – Human-Centered Change in Large Systems
Facilitated by Roberto Hirche and Raymond van Driel
Date and Time: TBD
Description: How can Applied Improvisation create meaningful impact in large organizational systems? Based on practical experiences from leadership and culture development work with AXA Switzerland, this interactive workshop explores how the PLAY! model can support organizational development, psychological safety, adaptability and human-centered transformation. Participants will experience practical exercises and reflection formats that connect improvisation principles with real-world organizational challenges. The workshop will address framing conditions for successful implementation, working with leadership groups, creating safe learning environments and designing meaningful contracting processes with clients. Participants will leave with concrete methods, facilitation ideas and transferable frameworks for integrating Applied Improvisation into leadership, learning and organizational change contexts.

Title: Playful Presence - the Meisner way.
Facilitated by Annemarie Steen
Date and Time: TBD
Description: What can we learn about the art of being human from great actors who are able to behave truthfully under imaginary circumstances? Sanford Meisner was a legendary teacher for actors and his method is studied worldwide. The cornerstone of his work is the repetition exercise. This exercise teaches you to connect, listen with all of your senses and respond in the moment. Also it makes you aware of your conditioned patterns and invites you to let them go and to allow for spontaneous impulses. It allows you to drop into playful presence and let life and creative impulses move (through) you. In this workshop you will play with and experience this powerful exercise, resulting in more presence, better listening and more spontaneity. The art of being human starts with Presence.

Title: Precision in Presence: Status, Second Circle, and the Art of Conscious Influence
Facilitated by Edward (Ted) DesMaisons
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Status and presence are two of the most powerful concepts in applied improvisation — and two of the most commonly conflated. When we blur the line between Johnstone's status work and Rodenburg's Second Circle, our teaching gets sloppy, our status play can start to feel like manipulation, and we struggle to understand why genuine connection doesn't always translate into influence.  This workshop offers a rigorous and playful exploration of both frameworks — where they overlap, where they diverge, and what becomes possible when you can navigate them with precision. We'll introduce Rodenburg's Three Circles of Energy model, then move into embodied exercises, vivid scenarios, and a conceptual map you can take away and use. You'll leave with sharper tools for your own practice and a richer vocabulary for the subtle dynamics of power, presence, and human connection.  Some familiarity with Johnstone's status work recommended. 

Title: Solution Play: Inviting Play into the Therapy Room
Facilitated by Pamela King
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Solution Play shifts the therapy spotlight directly onto client strengths, exceptions to their struggles, and their preferred futures. This 60-minute session explores how combining Solution Focused Brief Therapy with therapeutic improvisation, clowning, and play creates an experiential sandbox for immediate, playful change. Attendees will discover how unscripted, strengths-based play helps clients of all ages bypass the overthinking mind and get into the moment and into the body. You will jump into the experiential sandbox with large and small group activities and paired exercises. Participants will leave equipped with actionable, playful tools that foster well-being, ease anxiety, and honor the beautifully unscripted nature of the human experience.

Title: The future is fun: building confidence and resilience for the current age and the one to come
Facilitated by Alex Lamb
Date and Time: TBD
Description: If being terribly sensible and productive were the answer to the world’s problems, things would be great right now. They aren’t. The world desperately needs a fresh vision for how to grow everything from communities to businesses and entire movements. That vision has to have room in it for failure, flexibility, and hope. I believe it all starts with applied improvisation. Leveraging research from game theory, complex systems, and play psychology, this session proposes a toolkit for group confidence and engagement for the 21st Century that’s founded in fun and shared laughter. The focus is on small games that can broaden improv’s audience, reach challenging customer groups, and establish trust relationships between participants. Along the way, I’ll back up my recommendations with science and share recent experiences at Apple on topics ranging from leadership development to helping people manage the rise of AI.

Title: The power of using applied improv in the fields of clinical / professional supervision, coaching and reflective practice
Facilitated by Christian F. Freisleben
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Creative, associative, and body-oriented methods have a long tradition also in coaching and supervision. They enable and support the co creation of options for action in challenging situations and issues. "Everything that can be perceived can be changed and used" is a saying based on the work of Augusto Boal and is very true for Applied Improv in these fields.Another effect is the evolvement of working together in diverse teams with manyfold target groups and with the constant challenge to come up with innovative ways of thinking and acting. “Understanding each other” is supported by making deep dives in empathizing. In the workshop framework conditions of using Applied Improv in coaching and (clinical / professional) supervision will be an important issue. Based on that we will collaborate on ways of adapting several creative methods for different settings and topics in coaching and supervision.

Title: The Unchained Elephant: a Dance Between the Known and the Unknown
Facilitated by Alessia Berti
Date and Time: TBD
Description: In this highly interactive session, we will “innovate like elephants” by stepping into a playful world of movement, metaphor, music, and discovery. Participants will explore how we balance the demands of the known world with the pull of the unknown, how we support one another while reaching beyond our current limits, and how some of the “chains” that stop us may be more imagined than real. Through solo, partner, and group exercises, we will reflect on how our body can help us sense emerging possibilities, move through uncertainty, and create the courage to bring something new into the world.

Title: Vocal Intelligence: How our voices make (and keep) us human.
Facilitated by Carl DuPont
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Has your voice ever failed you when you needed it most? This workshop will investigate how voice production and perception influence professional success across multiple contexts, from executive leadership to public presentation. By combining methodologies from voice science, neuroscience, embodied learning approaches, performance studies, and organizational behavior, this workshop will present and provide space to explore a comprehensive understanding of how voice use shapes professional interactions and outcomes.

Title: Voice in Action: Embodied communication for facilitators
Facilitated by Renate Mikucevska
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Many of us rely on our voice to help us lead workshops and communicate with others. But when was the last time you spent checking in with your voice and reconnecting with it? In this session we will explore our unique voices and how our voices carry the messages of our work as trainers and facilitators. This session will warm up your voice, and you will be invited to get curious about how it lives in your body and how it further shapes your presence as a facilitator or a trainer. We might also come up with an improvised song! 

Title: What Are We Actually Cultivating? - An Applied Improv Inquiry into Human Spaces
Facilitated by Fabian Brüggemann
Date and Time: TBD
Description: In a world that increasingly values prediction, efficiency and control, Applied improv invites us into a different practice: not producing better outcomes, but cultivating the conditions in which trust, creativity and meaningful human connection can emerge. After fifteen years of facilitating Applied improv, I have been living with a question—a question that was deepened by Alan Briskin's work on life-affirming fields: What are we actually cultivating when we practice Applied improv? This workshop invites participants into a shared inquiry. Rather than introducing new exercises, we will revisit familiar Applied improv practices through a new lens, exploring what they may already be cultivating. Participants will leave with a fresh perspective on facilitation, a greater awareness of how they already cultivate the quality of the space between people—and how they can do so more intentionally—and an inquiry they can continue exploring in their own work and life. 

Title: When the Map Runs Out. Six Imaginative Practices for Creating the Next Path
Facilitated by Paul Syme
Date and Time: TBD
Description: Most of us help people navigate uncertainty. A plan changes. A group gets stuck. A conversation goes sideways. The map we brought into the room no longer matches the terrain in front of us. Through grounded theoretical doctoral research with innovative educational leaders, I discovered that people who consistently create positive change do so by drawing on imaginative capabilities (developed over a life of play without adult supervision) that help them notice what is happening, work with what is available, and create new possibilities with others. In this highly interactive workshop, participants will experience six imaginative practices that closely parallel the work of applied improvisation. Through paired reflection, small-group creation challenges, and whole-group collaborative play, we will explore how people gain perspective, build community, and create together when certainty disappears. This is not a workshop about leadership theory. It is a workshop about serious play in practice. 

Our amazing Presenters!

The magic of our conference lies in the incredible global community of practitioners who bring it to life! In the directory below, you can put a face to a name and get to know the talented facilitators leading this year's program. Browse through their photos and biographies, and discover exactly which Workshops, AIN Talks, and Learning Journeys they will be guiding in Rimini.

Faith Amon | Riccardo Ballerini | Ilene Bergelson | Alessia Berti | Bobbi Block | Jacqui Blue | Jessica Breitenfeld | Fabian Brüggemann | Carrie Caudle | Efraim Centeno Hernáez | Michelle Clarke | Mercedes De Jesus M | Edward (Ted) DesMaisons | Carl DuPont | Bess Eiermann, PhD, R-DMT | Helene Farret Cassegrain | Robin Fox | Christian F. Freisleben | Vanda Gabrielova | Vivian Geffen | Ronald Harvey | Roberto Hirche | Paul Z Jackson | Eduardo Jáuregui Narvaez | Jan Keck | Pamela King | Alex Lamb | Daniel Lattimore | Stephen Lee | Mike Manchester | Paolo Mazzaglia | Renate Mikucevska | Monica Murano | Brooke Oehme | Oneya Okuwobi | Mike Perz | Yul D. Pimo | Povilas Plūkas | Yechun (Andy) Qiu | Nandini Rao | Per Rasmussen | Thia Replogle | Simo Routarinne | Yael Schy | Patrick Short | Johanna Smith | Annemarie Steen | Paul Syme | Raymond van Driel | Etienne Visora | Ralf Wetzel | Lucy Young | Xuan Zhao 

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(Last Updated: Friday, September 25th, 2026)