Fuorisalone: at the Bravery Bar 2025, design as a tool for inclusion

Florence, May 13, 2025

From 7 to 12 April, in the context of Isola Design Festival 2025, the Basic Village Milano in Zona Farini hosted the event BE AWARE: rethinking paralympic design, with which the Institutes of the AD Education group explored the link between design and crossing limits together with athletes Simone Barlaam, Martina Caironi, Gregory Leperdi, Fatiha Quaratino, Andrea De Beni, Mattia Cattapan, Riccardo Cotilli, Andrea Lanfri, and Bebe Vio.

Design has established itself as a driver of inclusion and social innovation during BE AWARE, an event promoted by IAAD., Accademia Italiana and SAE Institute on the occasion of the Milano Design Week. The three schools, part of the international network AD Education, which brings together 21 design institutes with over 42 thousand students, have proposed a new design approach reinterpreting disability no longer as an insurmountable limit, as an opportunity to break down barriers and generate solutions. The initiative aimed to develop a design vision capable of transforming limits into concrete opportunities for daily change.

Hosted, until 12 April, by Basic Village Milano (Zona Farini) within the established BRAVERY BAR format, the event was enriched with motivational speech, workshops between young designers and companies - Italian Paralympic Committee, Mondo Group, Genny Mobility, Pininfarina, Toyota Material Handling, Decathlon, Sorgenia - led by a select group of teachers and experts to develop innovative design proposals. 

The motivational speakers were Gregory Leperdi, European ice hockey gold; Fatiha Quaratino, young promise of the Paralympic swimming; Andrea De Beni, basketball player and co-founder of the association Bionic People; Mattia Cattapan, first athlete with disabilities in Italy to compete against athletes without disabilities in the category of Kart Cross and founder of the association Crossabili; Riccardo Cotilli, Paralympic athlete of the Italian National Athletics; Andrea Lanfri, Paralympic athlete and mountaineer, the first multi-amputee to climb Mount Everest with the aim of climbing all 7 highest peaks in the world; Martina Caironi, Paralympic gold in light athletics; Simone Barlaam, Paralympic gold in swimming; and finally Bebe Vio, Paralympic, world and European champion of individual fioretto. 

For the occasion, the exhibition OUT OF BOUNDS - Beyond the Game Lines and Predetermined Limits was also organized. The protagonists are works dedicated to sport by Truly Design, a crew of artists from Turin born in 2003 from their shared passions: graffiti, illustration and graphic design. 

The program of workshops, talks, installations and performances was narrated by the team of TikTok Academy, the six-monthly online course signed by Accademia Italiana. A group of students, led by the content creator and teacher Lisa-Marie Proteau, narrated the event through the authentic and creative look of Gen Z. The produced content was then shared on the official TikTok channel of Accademia Italiana.

With this initiative, IAAD., Accademia Italiana and SAE Institute confirm their commitment to promote talent and innovation, creating a bridge between education and contemporaneity. Through a training approach that combines theory and practice, the schools of the AD Education circuit accompany the growth of a new generation of designers capable of facing and reinterpreting the challenges of the present as that of social inclusivity.