Mohammed Abdallah
Projects Manager
organization and team
Spore Initiative is a foundation registered in Germany since 2020. The foundation directly and exclusively pursues non-profit purposes related to the arts and culture. It is active predominantly in programming and co-productions both in Berlin and abroad, and its philanthropic work is based on collaborative processes. Spore’s institutional anchor is in Berlin-Neukölln, in a building conceived by AFF Architekten. Spore is founded and funded by Hans Schöpflin, a philanthropist and entrepreneur.
He laid the foundations for his philanthropic activities focused on contributing to the building of a more just and sustainable world with the establishment of the Panta Rhea Foundation in the United States in 1998, making his first mark as a risk-taking and innovative funder by supporting a successful campaign that fought the privatization of an aquifer in the Mojave Desert. In 2001 he founded the Schöpflin Stiftung in Germany, committed to raising critical awareness and the strengthening of a vibrant democracy and diverse society.
The annual funding of Spore Initiative stems solely from the entrepreneurial activities of the Initiatives founder Hans Schöpflin (born in 1941), which he began in the mid-1970s in the USA.
Having grown up in post-war Germany, Hans Schöpflin did not experience the period of National Socialism in Germany himself. In order to gain insight into the activities of the family business, particularly during the Second World War, he and his siblings decided in spring 2023 to commission an independent scientific research into the company's history, with a particular focus on the period of Nazi rule. The research is being conducted by the Frankfurt-based Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte (Society for Corporate History). Initial results are expected to be made available by mid-2024. The completed report will subsequently be published in its entirety.
Hans Schöpflin founded Spore together with Osvaldo Sanchez. The Advisory Board of Spore comprises Hans Schöpflin and, his daughter, Dr. Lisl Schöpflin, a historian and philanthropist. She leads the Panta Rhea Foundation as President and Co-Chair and serves as board member of the Schöpflin Stiftung, Solidaire Network in the USA, and Casa Gallina in Mexico. Her research and writing focus on Indigenous history, cultural translation, and social memory particularly in the Andes during the colonial period. The Advisory Board of Spore advises, supports and monitors the Executive Board as it pursues the Foundation’s stated mission. We are actively working to expand board membership to include community multipliers, cultural practitioners, and other relevant actors.
Spore’s Executive Board consists of Hans Schöpflin and Antonia Alampi, the initiative’s founding director.
Spore's team comes from different disciplines and locations and holds varied knowledges and mother-tongues. Below, you can read about each member.
Berlin, August 2023
Mohammed shapeshifts between the many needs the role of a projects manager entails. He oversees the executive unfolding of projects in various sites and creates and maintains structures and processes for workflows. For the past fifteen years, he has managed, advised, and upheld not-for-profit institutional cultural structures in the Arabic speaking world and in Europe. He also writes.
Antonia Alampi
Director
With an experience in working for cultural organizations and community spaces engaged in movements for social and environmental justice in different localities, Antonia is the artistic and executive director of the initative, and worked closely with Spore's founders in co-developing its unfolding path. She is in charge of the overall artistic trajectories of the initiative, its operations and its team. In programmatic conversation with the advisory board, she maintains the coherency of Spore's work with the institution's founding premises. Among other positions and experiences, she has been co-director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, a decolonial art space for radical conviviliatiy and against racist and epismetic violence, curator at Beirut in Cairo, a cultural organization engaging with politics, economy, education, ecology and the arts during a key moment of transition in Egypt, and co-initiator of platforms such as Future Climates and Toxic Commons. She occasionally teaches, writes essays, edits books and talks in public. She was born in Southern Italy, studied art history in Rome and lived in many cities and countries since then. She is the mother of a girl.
João Eduardo Albertini
Pedagogue and Educator
João develops and facilitates Spore's cultural programs contributing his extensive pedagogical experience to the many levels of the organization. Particularly in Berlin, he creates playful and accessible entry points for participants and activates the exchange between many different people and groups. João qualified as a primary school teacher and actor in his home country of Brazil. Since 1998 he has been working in Berlin at the intersection of social work, art and education. Among other things, he has been pedagogical director and theater pedagogue at the Labyrinth Kindermuseum Berlin and educational consultant for extracurricular and political youth education at the Jugendbildungsstätte Kaubstraße. Key methods of his work are the "Theater of the Oppressed" and diversity-conscious pedagogy.
Felicitas Borgstede
Administrative Assistant
Felicitas assists Spore’s administrator in all her tasks and supports the management and maintenance of the office. She handles many day-to-day responsibilities of care and contributes to creating a smooth working atmosphere. She holds a degree in graphic design and has previously worked as an art director, designer, and account manager mainly for advertising agencies.
Marco Clausen
Community Facilitator – Ecological Practices
With a long experience rooted in ecological practices, Marco works as a facilitator with Spore’s collaborators in the Global South. In Berlin, he develops learning activities, and hybrid formats particularly in close connection to Spore´s garden and in dialogue with its collaborators. He previously cofounded the Prinzessinnengarten and the Nachbarschaftsakademie in Berlin-Kreuzberg, where he organized programs on topics such as urban-rural relations, food sovereignty, and social-ecological justice. Marco grew up in a family of farmers, gastronomes, and millers in the countryside, and studied history.
Doris Kleemeyer
Administrator
As the caretaker of Spore’s finances and administration, Doris transforms information into spreadsheets and paperwork into smooth workflows. She holds a diploma in cultural pedagogy, and previously provided administrative support for SMart eG, a cooperative of freelancers, and an association of counselling centers for victims of right-wing violence. She sees administrative infrastructures as enablers of programs and understands how important it is they stay aligned with everything else happening.
Simon Krosigk
Producer
Simon is the link between curation, design and executive craftsmanship, together with whom he produces the exhibitions and transforms the imagined into reality. In doing so, he prefers to work with the material itself, but often simply ensures that everything finds the right place and that those involved along the way have all the information necessary. Before joining Spore, Simon worked on various exhibition productions in Berlin and realized various projects as a freelancer or volunteer. These include, the collaborative construction of a collective housing project, diverse activities in the craft sphere, but also in Berlin’s literature scene. He has a special connection to Mexico, where he returns again and again for friends, studies and human rights work.
Mariela Nagle
Facilitator and Curator
Mariela facilitates and coordinates community programs, particularly when related to educational tools that are multi-generational. She also cares for Spore´s library, in both acquisitions and programs. As a curator of alternative educational and publishing projects that focus on inclusion and intercultural understanding, Mariela has worked with books and other narrative formats to connect people from different backgrounds to build up new relationships. She founded the bookstore Mundo Azul in Berlin, which is specialized on international children’s literature, mostly from small publishing houses from all over the world.
Serkan Sabanuc
Caretaker
Serkan is a caretaker of the house of Spore in Berlin. His tasks include the maintenance of its premises and the technical care for its various uses. He supports in creating a welcoming atmosphere for all users of the building, such as guests, visitors, participants, and team members. Serkan´s parents were born in Turkey, and he has lived in Berlin-Neukölln his whole life. Here, he treasures his friends and local community and works as a youth trainer for Martial Arts. He is also a certified Plant Mechanic for HVAC and Sanitary Engineering.
Lotta Schäfer
Programs Management and Learning
Lotta works on both operational management and programs of activations in Berlin. She also engages in conversations entangled with programs in Berlin and elsewhere, and facilitates and curates programs particularly with multi-generational audiences. Before coming to Spore, she was the head of the international residency program at ZK/U–Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin and produced a variety of cultural and educational programs at Beirut, an art initiative and exhibition space in Cairo.
Tanzim Wahab
Facilitator and Curator
At Spore Tanzim co-develops programs, visual displays and narratives and facilitates situations that encourage relationships and generate inter-cultural dialogues. His curatorial interests revolve around the sensory entanglement of exhibition spaces in the making of different experiences, and art education. He also writes and edits art journals and anthologies on South Asian art and lens-based media. Tanzim curated five editions of Chobi Mela, an international festival of photography in Dhaka.
Magdalena Wiener
Facilitator and Program Coordinator
At Spore Magdalena coordinates projects and programs, assists on program facilitations and developments in Berlin and elsewhere. Before joining Spore, she worked for several years as curator and project manager, most recently at the Goethe-Institut Mexiko, and at the Research Center for Material Culture Leiden in the Netherlands. Her practice is informed by working together with artists, communities and institutions from different cultures and contexts, understanding it foremost as possibility for building relationships, and creating spaces for encounter, conversation, and collective learning.
Aline Winchester
Community Facilitator - Communications
To nurture relationships, facilitate unlikely encounters and circulate knowledges, Aline moves somewhere between words, visuals, music, and food in order to engage with the many practitioners at Spore. Before joining the team, Aline worked as a project coordinator for FABRIC at the Schöpflin Stiftung, where she anchored the participatory bottom-up urban planning process within the neighborhood, as well as codeveloped tools and learning experiences. As a cultural worker she has supported initiatives and associations in conceptualizing, communicating, and fundraising.