The mission of the Albuquerque Italian Culture and Language Group is to preserve, celebrate and advance the culture, language and heritage of Albuquerque’s Italian community by providing a welcoming and supportive environment for Italians and lovers of Italy to network and share, speak the language, and form friendships. Meetings are based on several different aspects of the Italian heritage: literature, language, food, traveling, and more. 

The monthly and free meetings of the Albuquerque Italian Culture and Language Group began in January 2022 as a revival of the group’s meetings that stopped during and after the Covid-19 Pandemic. With the generous hospitality of Scalo Restaurant’s owners, the group met at the upstairs banquet room. The leader is Donatella Davanzo, a native Italian speaker from Trieste (Italy).

She has been the group's coordinator since then thanks to her passion for Italian culture and language and to her expertise in so many areas. She lives in Albuquerque where she awarded a Ph.D. in American Studies (University of New Mexico) after completion of her academic studies in Philosophy, Cultural Anthropology, and Communication in Italy. As a published academic author and photo-ethnographic photographer, she exhibited her photographic work both in the US and Europe in addition to teaching an academic course of Visual Anthropology. Now is working on an extensive photo-documentary project called “Route 66 Connected” that explores the contemporary Route 66 in New Mexico to preserve the historic corridor’s heritage and its communities on the sight of the route’s centennial in 2026.

The monthly group’s meetings at Scalo Restaurant consisted of a period of general conversation among members (in Italian as much as possible), followed by informative presentations. Davanzo chose different subjects to involve the audience in several aspects of Italian culture to expand the knowledge about Italian traditions in different regions. In her slideshows, she introduced annual celebrations, public events, literary works and authors, and cooking and recipes from different regions. Some meetings also included famous songs, which the audience enjoyed singing, also learning the Italian lyrics. 

In March 2023, Davanzo moved the monthly meetings of the Albuquerque Italian Culture and Language Group to the Domingo Baca Multigenerational Center, a more convenient location for participants to get to and a space particularly oriented to a cultural-friendly environment. After some first meetings in the open space during the summer, the group started to meet using the rooms that the facility makes available for community gatherings. 

As Davanzo explains in her monthly announcements that she sends through the group’s mailing list and the Albuquerque Italian Culture and Language Group’s website, the gatherings’ name is “Potluck Italiano,” to highlight the meanings of "connection" and "sharing.” In her own words: “I wish to encourage conversations and circulations of news, travels information, food recipes, arts, books and articles, games, poetry, and every other idea that the participants find enjoyable and instructive to improve knowledge of the Italian culture and language. In 2022, the Group started with a small number of members and in this last year of activities I am glad to see how the group is growing, also involving families. 'Potluck Italiano' raises hope for the future of these cultural initiatives that aim to bring Italy to New Mexico!