The seminar "Solid Innovation, Sustainability and the Local Economy - Venice Capital of Sustainable Craftsmanship" by Homo Faber Economy, the project for the city of Venice promoted by Ca' Foscari University in partnership with Fondazione di Venezia and Upskill 4.0, focused on the role that the Venetian craft enterprise can and should employ to ensure its continuity, or rather, its evolution into the future. The meeting, which was held last June 25 in San Giobbe, was an opportunity to reflect on the initial conclusions the project arrived at and to make a concrete argument about the goals to which the twelve Venetian entrepreneurial realities can commit themselves in the coming months.
The meeting was attended by the Veneto Region with Santo Romano, Director of the Economic Policies, Human Capital and Community Programming Area Veneto Region, Simone Venturini, Councillor for Social Cohesion, Tourism and Economic Development of the Municipality of Venice, Giovanni Dell'Olivo, Director General of Fondazione di Venezia, and Stefano Micelli, President of Upskill 4.0. In addition to them, the meeting was attended by Giulia Pordd, ESG and Impact Manager, Paolo Manfredi, columnist for "Il Gambero Rosso" and former restaurateur, Marika Moscatelli architect and expert in urban regeneration and social innovation, and Lorenzo Cinotti and Laura Scarpa, managing director and editorial director of Venezia da Vivere, respectively.
A first conclusion to which the debate in recent months has led is that Venetian craft firms should work in synergy with other firms and institutions in the area, giving a collaborative reading of the public-private sector that also includes technological operators. The high craftsmanship that is good for the city is that which is able to cross research, translating it into the products and services it makes and the selection of its suppliers, paying above all great attention to sustainability, not only understood in environmental terms, but also in social and relational terms that can generate value in the neighboring territory, and allow the worker to enjoy the space of the city.
It is clear that in order to address pressing challenges such as the economic diversification of Venice's historic center and declining employment, the burden of responsibility obviously cannot be placed solely on small-scale operators. What is needed is a collaborative vision, a connective intelligence that, starting with careful analysis, brings together forces that can produce virtuous change, that crosscuts of local policies of enhancing and supporting networks and ecosystems of which these enterprises can become an active part, empowered by initiatives of "capacity building" of skills, resources, and structures.
It is precisely in this direction that the Veneto Region 's I.C.O.N.A grant , designed to accentuate Venetian craftsmanship and savoir-faire not so much in terms of heritage protection, but in terms of enhancing heritage through economic growth and revitalization of the city , fits .
Revitalization can take place through two key levers: the involvement of young people, who need to reacquaint themselves with this type of activity from a cultural and economic perspective; and innovation, which, thanks in part to technology, can combine existing resources and place them in a context to initiate new dynamics.
Over the past three months, the Homo Faber Economy project has shed light on the many initiatives dotted across the Venetian landscape and the many pathways that already have a sustainability figure that deserves to be told and enhanced. Twelve of these realities have been involved in a real path of growth and change with more than 30 training hours, including seminars, focus groups and webinars with a dozen experts and professionals in sustainability and innovation, as well as company visits to relevant production contexts such as the most recent one at Bonotto spa.
During the last meeting, Paolo Manfredi for the food sector and Giulia Pordd for the fashion sector presented the results of the research and discussions engendered during the seminars and webinars of the past months. What emerges are concrete cases that help to focus on a more complex strategy, no longer composed of individual initiatives, but in search of an ecosystem in which the consumer does not buy a service, but enters a world in which he or she wants to be a protagonist and active player in a new idea of sustainability.
The meeting was closed by Marika Moscatelli Research fellow of the Bauhaus of the Seas Sails project with a talk on the theory of change, a tool for evaluating and communicating projects with social and territorial impact objectives, and by Lorenzo Cinotti and Laura Scarpa, who in Venice for years, have been carrying out many events that tell the story of all that makes living in Venice unique.
Project "Homo Faber Economy" - Code 2120-0001-727-2023 - CUP H77G23000350002 - PR Veneto ESF+ 2021-2027 - DGR. 727/2023 VENICE I.C.O.N.A.