ALI 2027
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ALI 2027 – AUTHORITY, LEADERSHIP, AND INNOVATION
27th International Group Relations Conference in Italy
March 4–7, 2027
Istituto Emiliani Fognano, Brisighella (Ravenna – Italy)
Taking up a role from wich to think: being and becoming a Leader, a Follower, a Citizen, in today’s world
Dear potential participant,
We live in a time when the coordinates of collective life seem to have shifted. Populism, algorithms, leaders who display power without shame: phenomena of the same family. Conflict has not disappeared: it has turned into something harder to name and to think. Intermediate bodies, like political parties, trade unions, churches, professional associations, even therapeutic institutions, have progressively lost the capacity to act as a third between the individual and the mass. It is a time of direct affective aggregations, without symbolic mediation, where the bond does not pass through discourse but through immediate emotional identification. At the same time we find ourselves interacting with a surprising tool, Artificial Intelligence: it allows us to think, to debate, even to be contradicted, while removing the risk of the relationship. No real exposure, no other who can truly surprise or hurt us. And this is perhaps the most precise sign of our time: we seek interlocutors without risk, belongings without bonds, thought without body.
In this field, each of us oscillates between temptations: dissolving into belongings that relieve us of the anguish of choice, or withdrawing into an isolation that sees everything and can do nothing. Between these exits there is a more difficult alternative: taking up a role from which to think. Finding a place from which one’s voice can count, in groups, in organisations, in society. “Who am I in my role and what can I do?” has become urgent for anyone living and working in a collective system, not only for those who deal with groups professionally. It belongs to the manager leading a team in a changing organisation, to the clinician working in a system under pressure, to the citizen trying to understand the world they live in.
Taking up a role from which to think is not a definitive acquisition. It is a daily, fragile practice that requires favourable conditions: space, time, interlocutors willing to do the same. We have learned that a Group Relations Conference can provide for those conditions. A place where the role is not taken for granted but experienced, tested, observed from within, in the tension between what we truly are with our history and our belongings, and what we may become. A temporary, real system, in which the function of the third (the boundary, the role, the task) is deliberately rebuilt and held, so that it can be studied live. Not to offer answers, but to inhabit questions together. And what may be learned has a precise destination: returning to one’s organisations, one’s roles, one’s life as leader, follower, citizen, feeling a little more the author of one’s own choices.
We invite you to come and work with us in Brisighella.
Francesco Noseda, Director of the Conference
Martijn van der Spek, Associate Director of the Conference
A Group Relations Conference is a residential laboratory for learning from experience. For four days, participants and staff build together a temporary institutional system and observe it functioning live: how groups form, how authority and power circulate, how leadership and dependency, cooperation and conflict emerge.
Learning does not happen through lectures or theories, but through direct experience and reflection upon it. Each participant becomes both observer and object of observation, discovering their own way of being in the systems they belong to, and how this can change.
The official languages of the Conference are English and Italian.
The Conference is a multilingual environment: participants and staff actively collaborate to make communication accessible to all, respecting the richness that linguistic diversity brings to the collective work.
Director of the Conference: Francesco Noseda
Associate Director of the Conference: Martijn van der Spek
Training Group Director: Giovanni Foresti
Training Group Associate Director: Anna Frank
For more information: ali@ilnodogroup.it
Federica Belosi
Agnè Mazvilaité
Attendace is limited
THE PRIMARY TASK
THE PRIMARY TASK OF ALI 2027 is to explore, in the here-and-now experience of the Conference, the exercise of authority in different roles and relations (such as leaders, followers and citizens) and how each of us can take up a role from which to think and act in the systems we belong to.
WHO IS THIS CONFERENCE FOR?
ALI 2027 is addressed to anyone who holds a role in a collective system: managers, professionals, educators, clinicians, public officials, members of third-sector organisations. And to every citizen who wants to better understand their own way of being in the world with others.
In every group, organisation or institution, a rational dimension and an emotional, unconscious dimension coexist. When the latter goes unrecognised, it tends to obstruct the common task, generating ineffectiveness, unresolved conflicts or fragmentation.
The Conference offers a rare space: to observe these processes from within, in real time, and to reflect on one’s own way of exercising and receiving authority, of leading and following, of belonging and differentiating.
It can prove particularly valuable for those going through, or anticipating, moments of change, crisis, transition or reorganisation. The participation of two or more people from the same organisation significantly amplifies its value.
METHODOLOGY STRUCTURE
The methodology draws on the tradition of the Group Relations Conferences of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London, developed over more than seventy years throughout the world.
The Conference is structured as a sequence of experiential events: small and large study group sessions, social dreaming, an organisational event involving the whole Conference system, and review and application sessions. Each event has a specific task and offers a different perspective on the processes that govern collective life.
The staff does not teach: it observes and gives back. Participants do not merely attend: they are inside the system, and the system is the working material. Their experiences and actions become the primary data for learning.
SCHEDULE
ALI 2027 begins on Thursday 4 March 2027 at 11.00 am and ends on Sunday 7 March 2027 at 5.00 pm.
The Conference is residential.
Participation in the whole programme is an integral part of the experience.
The structure includes following events: Opening and closing plenary sessions, Small study groups, Large study groups, Social dreaming, Organisational event, Review and application sessions. For more detailed descriptions of these events please see brochure.
STAFF
Director of the Conference: Francesco Noseda
Associate Director of the Conference: Martijn van der Spek
Training Group Director: Giovanni Foresti
Training Group Associate Director: Anna Frank
Administrator: Federica Belosi
Administrator: Agne Mazvilaite
Consultants selected from:
Milda Autukaite
Manuela Caslini
Claudio Cassardo
Saleem Khliefi
Laura Ravaioli
Marco Valerio
REGISTRATION AND FEES
The participation fee includes the whole residential programme of the Conference, single-room accommodation and full board. Places are limited.
Participants register in one of the following groups:
Group A: for those who have never attended a Group Relations Conference
Group B: for those who have attended at least one GRC
Group T: for those who have attended at least two GRCs. Group T has a specific programme within the Conference.
FEES (VAT included):
Early bird (by 10.01.2027):
Members and Partners, Group A/B – € 1,050
Members and Partners, Group T – € 1,300
Others, Group A/B – € 1,150
Others, Group T – € 1,400
Full fee (from 11.01.2027):
Members and Partners, Group A/B – € 1,250
Members and Partners, Group T – € 1,450
Others, Group A/B – € 1,350
Others, Group T – € 1,550
Registration is completed upon receipt of the signed registration form and payment of the € 300 deposit.
The balance is due by 12 February 2027.
Registration will close on 22 February 2027.
Two scholarships for participants under 35 years old are available, awarded in the name of the Tavistock Institute.
For the simultaneous registration of three or more members of the same organisation, the fees reserved for members of partner associations apply.
For information: ali@ilnodogroup.it
Cancellation policy:
By 12 February 2027: loss of the € 300 deposit.
From 13 to 28 February 2027: 50% of the total fee is retained.
After that date and in case of no-show: no refund.
If unable to attend, participants may transfer their place to another participant, by notifying the administrators.
FOR INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION
Administrators:
Federica Belosi (+39 349 7813278)
Agne Mazvilaite (+370 656 55766)
ali@ilnodogroup.it
HOW TO REACH THE SITE
Istituto Emiliani | Brisighella (RA) | Emilia-Romagna, Italy We will be guests of the Istituto Emiliani, founded in the sixteenth century as a Dominican monastery and reborn two hundred years ago as an educational institute for girls from all over Europe, trained in literature, philosophy, art and theatre. Today it is a guest house dedicated to group work. The interior spaces are wide, sober and essential. The kitchen offers simple, genuine food. All around, vast vegetable gardens, vineyards and gardens with centuries-old trees open onto the Valle dei Gessi, in which Brisighella is set.
By car: A14 motorway, Faenza exit, then follow signs for Brisighella and the hamlet of Fognano. Address: Via Emiliani 54.
By train: trains leave Bologna for Faenza every hour.
By plane: the nearest airport is Bologna, connected by fast trains and buses to Bologna Central Station. Milan, Venice and Forlì airports are also within reach.
The administrators are available to provide information about collective or individual transfers from Faenza station.
PARTNERS
Tavistock
OFEK
Group Relations Lithuania
Utrecht University School of Governance
IPA
SIPRe
IAGP
Spazio Iris: Provider and technical support
