Living inside a field

Campo Itaca had a history before the first field note. There had already been preparation, visits, workshops, conversations with the Club and an intention to take the research seriously. What Antonio did not bring to Naples was a finished method.

He and Giovanna entered Club Itaca as facilitators of a real project inside a mental-health field with its own people, relationships and rhythms. Over the following months Antonio stayed close enough for the project to become part of his daily life. Workshops and planning sat beside conversations, meetings, waiting, practical problems, institutional exchanges and long periods in Naples.

The diary grew inside that proximity. Its early questions were plain: what happened, what moved me, what did I not understand, what did I do? Some entries kept observation separate from interpretation. Others left a question open rather than forcing it toward a conclusion.

One sentence from the raw material became a discipline:

Do not generalise. Describe.

As the months passed, research and action began changing each other. Antonio facilitated, observed, made decisions and then returned to what those decisions had done in the field. A workshop could become research material. A plan that failed could reveal more than a plan that ran smoothly.

On 26 March 2026, for example, Antonio arrived with a monthly in-person call prepared. The situation did not support it: people were dispersed and other needs were present. The call was dropped. Later information about participation changed the logic of future appointments.

Nothing spectacular happened. That is why the scene matters. A format that had looked sensible in advance lost its authority when it met the field.

The long conversation with Ganga was already woven through this work. Antonio brought back observations, uncertainty, decisions, relationships and details from the day. Ganga helped question, connect and transform that material. Those transformations influenced what Antonio noticed and did next, and the next round of field experience returned to the conversation again.

Eventually the research had to ask about that loop too. Not only what was happening at Club Itaca, but how knowledge was being produced when part of the reflection and formalisation was happening with AI.

The closeness that made this possible also complicated the work. Research, helping, friendship, professional responsibility and daily life could blur. Staying near a field can create understanding; it can also make the boundaries of the role harder to see.

Campo Itaca is therefore not the story of a method successfully applied. It is the place where a way of researching and facilitating gradually became visible because Antonio was trying to act without ceasing to observe what the action was doing.