The 12th edition of the international contest Posterheroes: Beautifully Diverse – redefining disability has opened. The contest invites graphic designers, illustrators, both professional and non-professional, to express their thoughts through a poster-manifesto of size 70×100 cm. The initiative is promoted by the Plug Cultural Association, the Favini paper mill, the ITCILO International Training Center and Fondazione Time2.

The constant growth of inequality, makes urgent to strengthen cooperation and educate in solidarity and empathy to recognize the value and dignity of every individual, regardless of ability or characteristics. Through collective action, it is necessary to promote a narrative of disability that is neither positive nor negative, but simply an expression of the diversity that characterizes humankind.

As every year, Posterheroes aims to fuel the international debate on issues of social concern, stimulating the creative community to reflect on them; in particular, with this new edition Posterheroes questions the concept of normality and intends to promote the beauty of diversity.

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Contest Opening: 05/13/2023

Deadline: 8/27/2023

The partnership between Plug, Favini and The ITCILO International Training Center, consolidated over the course of the editions, is enriched this year by the collaboration of the Fondazione Time2, strengthening the social value of the contest and further amplifying its communicative potential.

An international jury, composed of leading figures in the fields of design, illustration and social communication, will select the 40 winning posters, which will be the subject of exhibitions, events and publications curated by the Plug association. Two special mentions will also be awarded with related cash prizes: the Favini prize, worth €2500, and the Fondazione Time2 prize, worth €1500. As every year, 12 posters will be selected for the creation of the 2024 Calendar designed by the Plug Cultural Association and produced by the Favini company.

An additional novelty of the 2023 edition is an experimental section of the call, outside the official competition, intended to accommodate works generated on the theme using generative systems based on Artificial Intelligence.

Over the past ten years Posterheroes has received more than 15,000 posters from around the world and involved more than 100 international experts in the field of illustration, the arts, and visual communication who, as members of the jury, selected the winning posters.

For more information on the contest brief and rules, visit website.

“In a historical moment like the present,” says Silvia Barbero, president of Plug Association, “knowing how to welcome diversity is crucial for not only personal but community growth. It is certainly not easy to be able to understand diversity (of opinions, situations, abilities,…) but it is an indispensable effort to live democracy and equality.”

“By supporting this socio-cultural illustration contest, we feel we are contributing to a deep reflection on relevant issues by illustrators, graphic designers and artists, both professionals and students, and creative enthusiasts,” explains Eugenio Eger, CEO Favini. “Through their eyes and art, thanks to Posterheroes, a representation of disability will be composed that will help viewers raise awareness on the issue.”

“This is an important opportunity. The new languages and contexts will help overcome a moralistic attitude toward disabilities for which it is ‘good’ to care.

We will thus be able to help finally access a perspective of full recognition of citizenship rights on a basis of equality with everyone and everyone,” says Samuele Pigoni, secretary general of Fondazione Time2.

Earthrise – Design for a Living Planet is the annual festival that Circolo del Design dedicates to the relationship between design and environmental sustainability, helping to outline possible responses and scenarios, and fuelling collective and shared dialogues.

A great part of what surrounds us comes from trees: the first edition of the festival focuses on the relationship between forests and society, gathering visions, proposals and researches of design, science and culture.

Earthrise is a project by Circolo del Design to join the cultural change necessary to develop a new ecologic consciousness.
The 2023 edition is curated by Giorgio Vacchiano (lecturer and science popularizer) and Elisabetta Donati de Conti (design curator and planner).

Having examined the Iranian and Syrian questions in the  first two editions of Voci, we turn to a mostly underrated social issue: the prison and its world. To tell us about this “parallel universe”, together with prejudice surrounding it, we talked to Carmine Falanga, President of Idee in Fuga, social cooperative born inside the prison of Alessandria (Piedmont), working in the field of prison economy.

The Voci column

Voci is about stories, people and words without frontiers. In our infodemic age with its extreme background noise, this is an initiative designed to focus attention on key social issues, giving a voice to people with first-hand experience. Voci is powered by Amapola.

On April 24, 2023, exactly 10 years after the Rana Plaza tragedy, the Responsible Fashion Movement (MMR) was born.

The first action of this network, made up of brands, producers, companies, cooperatives and professionals who work daily in the fashion industry, is the launch of the Manifesto for Responsible Fashion in Italy which aims to create a fashion industry that is always more responsible, accessible and recognized.

This is only the first step: it is important to reiterate in every way the urgent need for a change in the fashion industry on the planet and on people.

The union of intentions comes to life from the awareness of the negative impact that the fashion industry has both on an environmental and social level, with the aim of creating a system that looks at the fashion sector with a critical and proactive perspective.

With the dissemination of this Manifesto, the participatory movement wants to be the spokesperson for a project that has three main aims:

• For companies: promote transparency and good practices, helping companies understand how to reduce their environmental impact, introducing virtuous practices for a positive social impact, through concrete guidelines that can be applied to their company, as well as by setting a good example ;
• For institutions: promote a sense of responsibility, uniting the voices of producers and consumers to acquire greater strength and therefore be able to propose new regulations to support the path towards sustainability;
• For people: promoting awareness, critical thinking and conscious consumption, as well as making it easier to identify virtuous and responsible companies.

The founding values on which the Manifesto is based with the aim of making the fashion industry responsible are four: pursuit of quality, creation of social value, respect for the environment and ethics and social responsibility.

Elena Ferrero – CEO of Atelier Riforma, one of the signatories of the Manifesto – says:

“If we want to see a positive change, we must be that change. The Movimento Moda Responsabile is the result of this strong will, the will to see one day a fashion industry that bases its economic growth not on the exploitation of people and the environment, but on their protection”.

The Manifesto, the list of participants and the graphic contents to share the project are available here

To find out more, you can follow the Instagram page

The social startup Atelier Riforma, part of the Torino Social Impact ecosystem, was awarded the “Premio Impresa Ambiente” in the “Young Entrepreneur” category.
This is the highest Italian award for companies that, in carrying out their business, have made an innovative contribution in terms of environmental sustainability and social responsibility.
The award ceremony – promoted by the Venice Rovigo Chamber of Commerce, in collaboration with Unioncamere and under the patronage of the Ministry of Ecological Transition – took place at the end of April in Venice, in the beautiful Palazzo Franchetti.

The CEO of the startup Elena Ferrero said:

“Receiving the highest Italian award for companies that contribute to environmental protection and social responsibility is something we would never have imagined a few years ago, when, with great insecurity, Sara Secondo and I tried to look into this very complicated world that is entrepreneurship.

We are very grateful because – in this low-meritocratic world – the efforts made almost never correspond to the results obtained… and we often discuss it bitterly with our peers.
Considering the current context, young “social” entrepreneurs who start from scratch, without funds or backings, but with a dream in their heart, make a real “venture”, not so much in the sense of a “company”, but precisely in the sense of “heroic deed”.

We know many young people like that… and they are the ones who give us hope for the future. This award goes to all of them!

Atelier Riforma is an innovative social startup with the mission of reducing the negative environmental and social impact of the fashion industry through the circular economy. The two founders (Elena Ferrero and Sara Secondo) started in 2019 with a social project dedicated to refashioning of discarded clothes and in recent years have given a technological breakthrough to the startup, with Re4Circular project.

The function of Re4Circular is to maximize the residual value of each end-of-life garment as a resource, postponing as much as possible the moment when it will turn into a waste. How? Facilitating the players in the fashion industry  to use these clothes as a resource,  implementing circular practices such as reuse, sartorial upcycling or the recycling of textile fibers.

Re4Circular is a digital platform aimed at matching the B2B supply and demand for used or leftover clothing efficiently and transparently.

They have created an automatic cataloging and digitization technology for clothes that they supply to used clothing collection/selection entities, as well as to fashion brands that want to manage their deadstock or take-back services in a sustainable way. Through this tool they can record and transmit all the information about their garments to the circular companies/professionals that can give a second life to these clothes (the process is made easier and faster for them thanks to an Artificial Intelligence algorithm, trained to automatically recognize this information just from a photograph of the garment and its label).

Linked to this tech there is a digital marketplace, which allows them to sell the clothes thus cataloged directly to circular fashion companies/professionals, so that each garment can be valorized as a resource and directed towards the circular process most suited to its characteristics and conditions. But it is not the usual offline and non-trasparent trade of used clothes, it is a wholesale transparent and precision commerce.

Re4Circular is a digital marketplace on which every circular business can use several search filters to find the most suitable clothes for their business: e.g. used garments in perfect condition for second-hand shops, clothes with specific colours, fabrics and patterns for upcyclers, 100% single fiber clothes divided by colors for recycling companies, and so on. Once the search has been carried out, the user will see which entities have the material they are looking for and can view the images of all the clothes available item by item, with information on their characteristics. In this way, they can easily select and purchase online the material they need.

Re4Circular is an innovative technology, for which Atelier Riforma has filed a patent application.

But it is not meant to be used by the startup internally, but to be supplied to any entity in the sector that needs it, anywhere.

This allows the startup to make a positive impact on a large scale and potentially to reform the entire sector from a circular perspective.

Re4Circular landed on the market in mid-March 2023 – after years of work in design, fundraising and development – and in a few days a few hundred garments were directed for reuse … in short, the circular ecosystem started to come to life and hopefully it continues to grow more and more!

The Consorzio Sociale Abele Lavoro together with the European Association Ensie (European Network of Social Integration Enterprises), is organising an event on the theme: “Social Enterprises for Social Integration. Uno sguardo europeo”, on 25 May 2023 at Sermig – Arsenale della Pace, in Piazza Borgo Dora 61 in Turin.

A European comparison of good practices, similarities and differences, and ideas for innovative collaborations between public authorities and social enterprises for social and labour insertion.
The event will be held on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Consorzio Sociale Abele Lavoro, as well as the Ensie Annual General Meeting.

Ensie is the European network of social insertion enterprises and brings together 31 national and regional networks, representing 21 countries of the European Union, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine. These networks pursue, adapting to local needs, objectives of social reintegration of disadvantaged groups. In total, the network comprises 2,800 social work integration enterprises and more than 184,000 employees.Ensie therefore works for the social integration of groups at risk into the labour market, for the economic viability of social work integration enterprises and for the promotion of equal opportunities.

PROGRAMME

14.00 Registration of participants
14.30 “Social Enterprises: Turin is Europe” – Opening by Massimo D’Amico (Director Consorzio Sociale Abele Lavoro)
Speakers: Patrizia Bussi (Director ENSIE and Vice President Social Economy Europe) and Raffaella Scalisi (Senior Advisor Torino Social Impact)
15.00 “Co-planning and Co-programming: a double interview between the Third Sector and the Public Entity” (Massimo D’Amico and Federica Giuliani from the Division of Social, Socio-Health, Housing and Labour Services of the City of Turin)
Edited by Gianfranco Marocchi (Director of the magazine Impresa Sociale)
16.00 Coffee Break
16.30 “Socio-occupational integration of disadvantaged people: experiences and ideas for different collaborations between public and private social institutions around Europe” (Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, Austria and Italy); moderated by Gianfranco Marocchi and Piera Lepore (Consorzio Sociale Abele Lavoro)
17.30 Audience Interaction
18.00 Closing remarks and greetings

Live stream on YouTube channel

In the digital era, it is important to be conscious citizens capable to communicate complex ideas in simple terms.

Amapola is a partner of Torino Social Impact and has been working on sustainable communication for years.

In this new episode of Bench-Mark, we discover with Alberto Marzetta, partner of the agency, how communication plays a fundamental role in changing the business paradigm.

Interview by Francesco Antonioli.

Watch previous episodes here.

A new collective worksite for the TSI ecosystem has been launched, thanks to the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation: the European Social Economy Project HUB, aimed at seizing the many opportunities that are opening up at EU level with the launch of the Transition Pathway of the European Social Economy Action Plan and the inclusion of proximity and social economy ecosystems among the 14 industrial ecosystems for European economic recovery and the realisation of the dual green and digital transition.

The ecosystem will be involved in a capacity building pathway based on a peer to peer learning mechanism, where participants will be both generators of skills and receivers of support actions. The partners of Torino Social Impact will have the opportunity to take part in real “learning in the field” in conjunction with the European funding programmes identified for the project.

With the launch of the project, a survey was shared within the IST ecosystem to map the partners’ interest in taking part in the initiative and their experience of Europlanning. The results of the survey will be presented during the Torino Social Impact Partners Assembly, scheduled on 12 June.

To participate in the survey or for further information on the project, please contact us at info@torinosocialimpact.it

Read more:

EU co-creation of the proximity and social economy ecosystem

As part of the European RESPONDET (Regional Social Economy Policies for sustainable community-Driven Environmental Transition) project, the City of Turin and the Turin Chamber of Commerce, as part of the Turin Social Impact activities, organized a workshop yesterday at Open Incet spaces entitled “Reflections on the Circular Economy.”

The project aims to promote local and regional development in order to strengthen the social economy, making common management of resources the main element of social sustainability in the Green transition process, with a focus on the issues of circular economy and energy transition.

The goal of the workshop, attended by 11 organizations from the TSI ecosystem, was to gather experiences, suggestions and needs on the topic of circular economy from the local area in order to identify common intentions and strengthen the dialogue with local government.

The reflections that have emerged regarding the project will feed into the development of an Action Plan of the City of Turin, which will be submitted next June to the European Commission along with that of other regions.

The meeting was opened by greetings from Councillor for Ecological and Digital Transition Chiara Foglietta, who stressed the importance of collaboration with local stakeholders to fortify the city’s circular economy practices.

The meeting, led by Circular Market SB, was also an opportunity to reinforce the collective dimension of the Torino Social Impact ecosystem; in fact, during the morning, a new ecosystem project on strengthening communities of practice, implemented with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation, was presented. The partners were involved in a working group on the circular economy theme that, modeled after TSI’s table of benefit companies, will discuss common issues and challenges, pooling skills and experiences in a peer-to-peer learning logic to generate shared value.

Discover more:

The Chamber of Commerce and the City of Turin win the RESPONDET European Project for Torino Social Impact

First meeting of RESPONDET | Torino Social Impact project partners

Turin hosts “RESPONDET”, the European project on Social Economy