YOU NAILED YOUR BUSINESS

Clients come back. Nobody argues about your competence. The business, by any outside measure, works.

FULFILLING OTHERS' NEEDS

Every brief you have answered brilliantly belonged to somebody else: a client, a partner, a company. Nobody ever asked you yours.

Something in you never went quiet

You assumed it would, with enough work and enough success. It has kept asking, at intervals, for years, with nothing to show for itself.

Is the Circle right for you?

For people who have already built a serious practice, a studio, an agency, a business. Typically founders and owners working across service business, design, architecture, interiors, branding and communication.

People who have won, and for whom that has stopped being enough.

Serve the client. Be impeccable. Do not disappoint. Stay inside the bigger picture, at least for now. Those terms were probably true when you accepted them, which is exactly why they held.

Apply if you are

Repositioning your work and need a direction you can defend

Sitting on something of your own that keeps getting postponed

Ready for peer-level scrutiny

At the beginning and looking for clients

Looking for a technique, a framework or a certificate

Looking for therapy, or help with something you are going through

WHAT'S THE CIRCLE

You built your business by answering other people's briefs.
The Circle is where you finally work on your own.

A month of attention on the one question that is yours.

Before we start

Late January

Your Circle Diagnostic, prepared from your application and shared before the first session.

4 sessions online

Mondays through February

Explore vision, inner and outer worlds, mythobiography, weak signals and your personal utopia.

2 days in Rome

4–5 March

Turn your vision into a tangible proposal through practical work, dialogue and encounters with visionaries.

You leave with a clear intention, a tangible proposal and a plan to bring it into the world.

The Return

Early April

A 90-minute group session, one month later, to ask one question: what did you actually put into the world?

Rome is a city where inner visions have become eternal.

Rome is a city where inner visions have become eternal. Emperors, popes, artists and thinkers have turned personal beliefs and ambitions into a shared world, shaping how we see, inhabit and imagine it.

Here, ancient and contemporary life, the sacred and the political, the monumental and the intimate coexist. Every new vision enters a conversation with those that came before it.

We bring the Circle to Rome to join this conversation: to meet people who have made their personal vision their life’s work, and to give our own visions the time, attention and challenge they need to take form.

HOW TO JOIN

A short form, around fifteen minutes, on where you are in your work and what you want to bring into focus. Nothing is due at this stage.

Application

We read each application ourselves and consider whether this room is right for the stage you are at and for what you are trying to do.

Review

Twenty minutes with Marco Bassan, a conversation rather than an interview, with questions running in both directions.

Conversation

If there is a fit on both sides, you receive a formal invitation to join the cohort. If there is not, we say so and tell you why.

Confirmation

The place is held once the fee is settled, within ten days of the invitation.

Your place

mEET YOUR GUIDE

Marco Bassan

Marco Bassan is a contemporary art curator, educator and founder of the School of Vision. His work connects art, business and education, while his writing explores geopolitics, art and consciousness. With a background in management engineering and doctoral research on art and business, he brings cultural depth and practical thinking to the Circle.

Over the past decade, he has worked with hundreds of visionaries. These encounters led him to codify how visionary thinking works, and how people in business can apply it to develop their own vision and turn it into action.

School of Vision

The School of Vision is Spazio Taverna’s research centre, dedicated to studying and teaching visionary thinking. Across research and education, it investigates how imagination becomes a practical tool for understanding change and shaping what comes next.

Its work includes mapping the visions shaping contemporary Rome, exploring how artists’ readings of the present can help us anticipate the future, and delivering visionary thinking workshops for companies and universities.

Authorship cannot be replaced.

What remains scarce is a position that could only have come from you.

Guarantee

Withdrawal

Leave after the first full session and you are refunded, less the value of that session.

The Artifact Guarantee

GuaranteeDo the work and come to Rome. If you leave without a concrete version of what you are building, we keep working one to one until you have one. Up to two sessions of sixty minutes.

Voices from previous editions

Anna

Eleni

Jason

Joana

Giulia

The one that is yours has been asking for years.

APPLY

You have been the best at what you do for a long time, and you have done it by answering questions that belonged to other people.

Apply for the February cohort

Seven minutes. No payment at application.

FAQ

School of Vision is a programme for senior creative professionals, run by Spazio Taverna in Rome and founded by Marco Bassan. It works with studio owners, agency principals, architects and designers who have built real competence answering other people's briefs and want to put that competence behind a direction of their own. It has been running since 2025. The current programme is The Circle.
A thirty-day programme for fifteen people who run a studio, an agency or a practice of their own. Four online sessions in February, two days in Rome on 4 and 5 March, and a ninety-minute return session a month later. You work on one thing throughout, and you leave with it built.
Marco Bassan is the founder of School of Vision and the director of Spazio Taverna, a curatorial practice in Rome. He trained as a management engineer and has spent fifteen years working with artists, whose entire occupation is having a voice of their own and who therefore lose it in ways that are visible and, after long enough, recognisable. The method behind The Circle comes from that work, applied to people who run businesses.
People who have been running something and are good at it. Typically 35 to 60, founders and owners across design, architecture, interiors, branding, communication and service businesses. The problem this addresses is what comes next, at a point when the work is going well.
People at the beginning who are looking for clients. People who want a technique, a framework or a certificate. People looking for therapy or help with something they are going through: that help matters, and this is a different room. If it comes up during the programme, we will say so and point you elsewhere.
It is a programme with a group, a method and a defined outcome. It is not therapy and not psychological support.
English.
Three to four hours a week through February, including the work between sessions. Then two full days in Rome. Then ninety minutes a month later.
Yes. The two days are what the month before them is for. If you cannot be there on 4 and 5 March, apply for the October cohort instead.
People who run something. Designers, architects, agency owners, people who have just come out of a long career and are starting their own thing. We select for a room that is level.
Yes. We invoice the company. In most countries this is a deductible business expense; check with your accountant.
We do not book it, and we send recommendations for places within reach of where we work.
No. One cohort, one price, and everyone in the room paid the same. That is deliberate, and both previous editions taught us why.
Yes, up to ten days before the start, subject to our approval, since the room is selected. Any costs arising from the transfer are yours.
A short form, a few questions at a time, about fifteen minutes. Then twenty minutes with Marco, which is a conversation rather than an interview. Then an answer within three working days, yes or no, with the reason.

No payment at application.
Something already built, a tension that is specific rather than general, something that could become an output, and a willingness to be contradicted.
1 February. The cohort after this one meets in October.
We also develop tailored formats for organisations. Get in touch if that is relevant.
If you need further information, feel free to contact us directly.