Research, education and civil activism as businesses

We have decided to make a business out of it because it is quite an achievement to put academic, didactic, artistic and communicative professional skills at stake in the name of the complex multilevel society that every human being today is part of. Our only profit is the cultural and political growth of an intercultural society united within the framework of multilevel democratic institutions. Our mission is to really contribute to its development, transforming it from the hope of an ethical value to a widespread need and interest leading to induce subsequent behaviors. Our bet is to take part in the construction of a world open to changes, oriented towards responsibility and the enhancement of diversity.

Our guiding values

• active and responsible multilevel citizenship inspired by creativity and science;
• priority to the process of European political unification as a (f)actor of community-building and cosmopolitan development;
• cooperative attitude;
• pluralism and methodological versatility in every area of action.

The decision to establish CesUE and accredit it as the Spin-Off of the Scuola Sant'Anna in Pisa is a result of a successful series of ECE European Civic Education initiatives, led by Roberto Castaldi and Francesco Pigozzo, realized in the framework of this well-known Italian centre of excellence dedicated to teaching and researching in the fields of social and applied sciences, has experienced innovative European communication and training tools within some of the most cutting-edge projects at the continental level: short descriptions of projects are available on the School's website. Right from these initiatives, the School has created the current research group in European Studies at the DIRPOLIS Institute, which keeps collaborating with CesUE in many fields and projects.

A key role in the success of the "Learning EU at School" projects initially promoted at the Scuola Sant'Anna has been played by the inclusion and enhancement of artistic products and creative and managerial skills of a small cultural association devoted to the design and implementation of communicative products with high aesthetic and at the same time civic values, called Gli Spaesati (Les Dépaysés). In that context, Francesco Pigozzo and Daniela Martinelli created two original theatrical works that play today an essential part of the European Awarenss Days format but continue also to live as autonomous works: Europe: What a Passion! and How Is the World?, which translates the ideal of European unity into prose theater language, drawing inspiration from a text of the Ventotene exile of one of Europe's fathers, Altiero Spinelli. The work embodies a ruthless blend between the theater of the absurd and political theater, engaging the two protagonists in a deadly interpretive tour de force and spectators in an engaging adventure on the edge between nonsense and meaning, slavery and freedom, hallucination and action.

CesUE takes its name from a previous non-profit association, Cesue Centro Studi, documentazione e formazione sull'Unione Europea, from which it also inherits the human capital accumulated in fifteen years of project, training, scientific and consulting experience.

Cesue was founded in 1995 in Florence by a group of academics, professionals and experts on European integration with the aim to spread information, foster debates, research and training on issues related to the European integration process. The non-profit association is still active.