Mohammed Abdallah
Deputy Director
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 W. Schöpflin (born in 1941), a philanthropist and entrepreneur. The annual funding of Spore Initiative stems solely from his entrepreneurial activities which he began in the mid-1970s in the USA.
Hans W. 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 W. 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:
Mohammed leads, oversees and manages the coordination of all programs and projects in Berlin and in the Global South. He oversees the executive unfolding of projects in various sites and creates and maintains structures and processes for workflows. Additionally, Mohammed performs financial oversight and is responsible for the budgeting, tracking, and reporting on the finances of all projects. 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.
Antonia Alampi
Artistic & Executive Director
Antonia Alampi is the founding artistic director of Spore Initiative. Her professional practice as a cultural organizer, curator, and director, has been defined by working collaboratively with artists and professionals from different fields and backgrounds, and within rather small-scale, socially sensitive, politically engaged, and structurally vulnerable organizations. She has been the artistic co-director of SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2016–20); in the curatorial team of sonsbeek20➜24; curator of Extra-City Kunsthal, Antwerp (2017–19); and curator of Beirut, Cairo (2012–15), among other things that go further back in time. Within and outside of institutions, she has curated or been involved in many types of cultural and artistic projects, researches, movements, publications, and actions pursuing social, political, and environmental justice. She occasionally teaches, writes essays, edits books and talks in public. She is the mother of two girls who very much influenced her professional life.
João Eduardo Albertini
Pedagogue & Educator
João develops and implements learning programs with a particular focus on multi-generational education and pedagogy. He 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.
Mariangela Beccoi
Host
At Spore, Mariangela is part of the hosting team, active in welcoming and facilitating the communication of the program to visitors, fostering exchanges, and harvesting feedbacks. In the library, she supports the process of making the collection more accessible. As designer and researcher, she explores the intersection of environmental justice and the politics of the Right to Breathe. In Berlin, she has worked as a curatorial assistant and is currently a PhD candidate in Artistic Research at HfK Bremen.
Felicitas Borgstede
Accounting & Office Management
Felicitas is responsible for the accounting of Spore. She is also responsible for the office management and maintenance of the office and she handles many day-to-day responsibilities of care. She is an artist and holds a degree in graphic design and she is a certified accountant. Previously she worked as creative director, designer, and account manager for advertising, PR, design and production agencies.
Marco Clausen
Community Facilitator - Ecological Practices
As part of the Spore team, Marco develops and implements learning programs using community-based collective knowledges and everyday practices to engage in agroecology, seed and food sovereignty, and the protection and defense of water, forests, soil, and the web of life. This includes learning activities, in the Spore garden. 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.
Cátia Patricia de Almeida Santos
Host
Is a performer in the field of physical theater and circus, also facilitates socio-educational projects as artistic pedagogue. In Spore welcomes visitors with a smile, showing them around the house and clarifying any doubts and curiosities.
Esra Gültekin
Event Coordinator and Team Lead of Hosts
Esra works as an event coordinator at Spore, overseeing all practical aspects of events from approval to execution. She ensures seamless organization, smooth operations, and meaningful experiences for participants and organizers. With a bachelor's degree in Aquaculture Engineering and a master's degree in Cultural Studies and European Studies, Esra is also a dedicated photojournalist. Her project Praise of Walking has been recognized with awards in photojournalism. Her work amplifies marginalized voices and explores themes of migration, identity, memory, and social justice.
Doris Kleemeyer
Head of Administration
Doris is responsible for finances and human resources. 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 works on keeping them aligned with everything else happening.
Sarah Zilan Kößler
Events Coordinator - Hosted Events
Sarah Zilan Kößler coordinates hosted external events at Spore, and assists with community outreach. An Amed-born youth psychotherapist, refugees counsellor, and children’s book author, Zilan works as a bridge builder between Europe and the democratic women’s self-administration structures in North and East Syria (Rojava). Her mission is to help the next generation grow up resilient and courageous in a world characterized by uncertainty.
Simon Krosigk
Head of Production
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.
Mikhail Lylov
Gardner
At Spore, Mikhail Lylov supports the garden’s ecology by engaging with both plant and human communities. For him, gardening is about sharing knowledge, techniques, and time, while experimenting with sustainable farming traditions. Experimenting with techniques borrowed from various traditions of sustainable farming and collaborating with partners in the Global South, he creates a space where nature and history intertwine, enhanced by a seed library.
Mikhail is also an artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose work draws on traditional farming, agroecologies, and regenerative agriculture. His projects in Japan explored the satoyama landscape and the relationship between mountain river ecologies and community knowledge, while in Sicily he focused on farmers’ autonomy, inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka.
His approach reflects ch’ixinakax utxiva—a diverse arrangement of species and techniques that bridge wild/domesticated, spontaneous/planned, and past/future. The garden becomes a political space, acknowledging contradictions and historical struggles while fostering coexistence.
Mikhail’s projects have been supported by institutions like Palais De Tokyo, Akademie der Künste, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Kyoto-based Research Institute for Humanity and Nature.
Mariela Nagle
Community Facilitator & Curator
Mariela facilitates and coordinates community programs, and publications 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.
Lotta Schäfer
Community Facilitator & Curator
Lotta co-develops, facilitates, and curates in close collaboration with partners in Berlin and abroad, new commissions, cultural tools, and multidisciplinary exhibitions that are all closely entangled with public and educational programs of Spore. Before coming to Spore, Lotta 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.
Kathrin Scharf
Host
At Spore Kathrin is part of the hosting team, takes care of visitors and hopes to enable guests to take inspiration home and happily come back. She works with intuitive systemic constellations. The garden is her learning space in understand how plants play an important role in healing processes. Kathrin strives to live in connection with the earth.
Gurmeet Singh
Communications Manager
Gurmeet drives the strategic direction and execution of Spore's communications efforts, shaping the narrative around the institution’s exhibitions, programs, and outreach initiatives. With over a decade of experience in digital companies and non-profits, he believes that communities have the power to collectively define their own realities, using communications to amplify their voices. A writer with essays and fiction published in various outlets, Gurmeet also teaches at the Berlin Writers' Workshop and organizes events through Writers of Colour, Berlin, to strengthen POC solidarity.
Francesca Schweiger
Assistant Curator
Francesca Schweiger supports the realisation of Spore's comprehensive exhibitions program in Berlin. She oversees a variety of both administrative and curatorial tasks ranging from planning and correspondence to exhibition research and organisation. One could argue it was the stovetops of spiced dal simmering next to thick käsepätzle (yes, they were in fact served on the same plate) in her childhood that ignited her early affection for intergenerational storytelling. For the past eight years, she has fed her hunger for knowledge by working as a freelance journalist and producer in documentary film and news. In her work she is most passionate about elevating underrepresented histories by raising awareness around topics of cultural imperialism, environmental, political and social justice, as well as decolonial memory and community building.
Mar Soulier
Caretaker
Mar (they/them) is responsible for maintaining Spore's physical spaces and ensuring its technical functions run smoothly. Working closely with the Operations team, they ensure the building meets the needs of its diverse users, including both guests and Spore team members. With a background in international media cooperation and project management at DW Akademie, Mar shifted career paths to become a handyworker. For the past few years, they have worked with the company Driller Queens, honing their skills in hands-on construction and technical work. Mar enjoys experimenting with various materials and thrives in interdisciplinary, collaborative environments. They are particularly passionate about contributing to and engaging with the local community in Neukölln. Additionally, Mar is deeply involved in Berlin’s queer community, both politically and culturally. They are part of an all-trans film collective, where they focus on set design and artistic direction. Outside of work, Mar has a love for music and practices different forms of dance.
Marvin Systermans
Communication and Graphic Design
Marvin is working on Spore's website and social media channels and is an in-house graphic and communication designer, supporting the team in visual matters. He also works as a photographer and artist on freelance projects exploring the human relationship with our environment. Marvin has been working with the Spore Initiative on a freelance basis since 2022 and has been a permanent member of the team since 2024.
Tanzim Wahab
Community Facilitator & Curator
At Spore, Tanzim initiates and implements new collaborative and multi-disciplinay commissions and exhibitions. He 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
Community Facilitator & Curator
At Spore, Magdalena co-develops, facilitates, and curates in close collaboration with partners abroad and in Berlin, new commissions, cultural tools, and multidisciplinary exhibitions that are all closely entangled with the public and educational programs of Spore. 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 and empathy, for conversation, and collective learning.
Marina Witt
Host
Marina Witt is a Brazilian interdisciplinary artist who works with clay and textiles. At Spore, she is mainly active in the library, where she hosts the Picture Book Workshop. Together with the children, she explores stories through shared reading and creative craft activities inspired by the books. She values the moments of exchange, imagination, and play that unfold in this space.
Tom Young
Operations Manager
Tom manages the operations at Spore, with over 25 years of experience in the cultural sector. He’s been involved in DIY music and art communities across multiple continents since his youth. In recent years, he’s focused on empowering diverse groups to co-create collective futures, founding musical education projects, co-directing Give Something Back To Berlin, and managing Our Food Network, Ōtepoti in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Tom’s expertise includes communication, project design, safer space management, and team leadership, with a preference for flattened hierarchies. He approaches work from an anarcho-syndicalist/socialist perspective, emphasizing collaboration and the value of each individual’s life experience.
A songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist, Tom has released 20 albums and toured in 30 countries. He’s also the father of a 4-year-old punk who loves trains and Duplo.