The Asociación Lo Spazio is an artistic research centre created by Moreno Bernardi at the encouragement of Elsa Peretti, who personally appointed him as the project’s artistic director. The project aims to create an innovative new cultural hub for the city of Barcelona, a multidisciplinary laboratory, and a permanent venue for creative synergies and diversity in the performing arts, dance, theatre, and experimental artistic research.

Born in 2019 with the aim of transforming the namesake event space situated on the ground floor at 171 Balmes, the Lo Spazio project was born out of the technical, cultural, and communicative philosophy of Moreno Bernardi. Bernardi, a choreographer and dancer, is known for his unique dance technique and compositions that combine his knowledge of dance, biomechanics, and music theory. A freelance artist since 1992, he has developed more than 60 pieces of dance, theatre, and dramaturgy. His artistic, research, and teaching experience has allowed him to spread what is now known as Moreno Bernardi’s original technique, which is an object of study in universities around the world.

Lo Spazio offers those who participate in the program a free residence, which allows them to grow both professionally and personally. All the people who participate in Lo Spazio have been selected by Moreno Bernardi, who considers potential residents’ capacity for cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, capacity to synthesise creative teachings, and capacity for analysis and teamwork. In addition, Bernardi considers the residents’ personal interest in researching different artistic disciplines, the style of their compositions, their understanding of the relationship between the arts and scientific knowledge, as well as the desire to grow personally and professionally in regard to their art. At Lo Spazio, the traditional relationship between the expert and the apprentice has been restored, with the aim of offering the students a more practical and real vision of the working world, in order to prepare them for their professional careers.

In 2022 the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation – Delegació a Catalunya granted further support to Lo Spazio with a two-year program support that will last until January 2025. Lo Spazio seeks to define new work methodologies for the contemporary performing and audiovisual arts. It does this, by encouraging young artists with special artistic qualities and professional experiences that will go on to shape their future professional artistic careers. Lo Spazio will develop laboratories and projects with open events like meetings, interviews, debates, demonstrations, exhibitions, and presentations about the ideas investigated and the processes generated in the program. Lo Spazio will not be limited by borders and will collaborate with entities both public and private, local and international, across languages and cultures. It will combine all this with the theoretical and practical study of different artistic disciplines including dance, literature, music, and theatre among others, with the aim of spreading artistic research. In 2021, a research project was begun to create a methodology for the archive of Lo Spazio, which spanned a variety of projects in various publication formats including books, digital texts, videos, articles, and others. In addition to this project, the Asociación Lo Spazio aims to discover new methodologies for the artistic creation processes. The research done has allowed the public presentation of eight stage pieces over the years. All the work that takes place in Lo Spazio is carried out with the idea that culture is the breeding ground of creativity. In this sense, a city with a strong cultural ecology that works in synergy with its creative talent and provides a wealth of creative opportunities is a place where communities thrive and are allowed to reach their potential. It is this construction of creative ecosystems, as well as the implementation of urban regeneration and revitalization programs, that ensures that there is an adequate and balanced provision of creative spaces within the city.