Artists, designers, and visionaries meet to envision the future of Venice and creative cities. From October 19 to 24, six days of fashion, high craftsmanship, art, and design with Antonio Marras, Angela Vettese, Sara Sozzani Maino, Dries Van Noten, Marina Spadafora, Jacopo Ascari, Romi Loch Davis, foundations, artists, visionaries
Radar Venezia is the new project by Venezia da Vivere, part of the Major Events calendar of the Municipality of Venice, which gathers and develops the experience built over twelve years of Venice Fashion Week.
From October 19 to 24, six days of fashion, high craftsmanship, art, and design bring together artisans, designers, artists, businesses, universities, and foundations in a program of talks, exhibitions, fashion shows, open ateliers, and international projects, in partnership with universities, foundations, and artisan production entities such as Orsoni Mosaici.
Among the events, on Friday, October 23, Antonio Marras will be in Venice at the House of The Human Safety Net at the Procuratie in Piazza San Marco, in conversation with Angela Vettese and Sara Sozzani Maino.
Why Radar?
Can you build a creative career in Venice? What role do new foundations play in the circulation of knowledge? How can we reorient the narrative of Venice?
These are some of the questions from which Radar Venezia was born, an evolution of Venice Fashion Week, which over twelve years has built a network of relationships among fashion, high craftsmanship, and design culture.
Radar expands this perspective to art, design, education, and research, involving figures from the Italian and international creative scene, institutions, foundations, universities, and production entities.
The goal is to make Venice’s creative ecosystem visible and connected, foster new collaborations, and help strengthen the city’s role as a place where one can study, create, produce, and develop a profession.
Radar Venezia, a project for the city
“Radar Venezia emerges from an organization that has built a network over these years and today chooses to broaden its vision,” emphasizes Culture Councilor Paolo Romor. “Venice has always been a place where creativity meets craftsmanship, research meets production, and culture dialogues with the world. This project valorizes precisely this capacity of the city to connect talents, education, craftsmanship, businesses, and institutions. It is a way to tell the story of a contemporary Venice that is not only a place to visit, but also a city where one can study, create, produce, and build new opportunities.”
The project stems from the network of collaborations built over the years by Venice Fashion Week and becomes an ongoing program
“The 2026 edition of Venice Fashion Week, which this year presents itself renewed in name, demonstrates how the event, after 12 editions, is mature enough to move beyond a temporal delimitation and expand more continuously throughout the year,” declares Fabrizio D’Oria, General Director of Vela Spa.
“A project that Venezia da Vivere has proposed to the city and that Vela Spa has supported from the outset because it fits well with the objective of valorizing the creative and productive fabric of the territory in synergy with institutions and trade associations in the sector. It is a cross-cutting project that, straddling fashion, high craftsmanship, ateliers, universities, museums, and foundations, will lead to the discovery of a varied reality that does not always find a voice to be known, and which demonstrates how much this sector is the focus of attention from new generations.
There exists a reality of young talents who find in events of this kind the opportunity to be seen. Hence the new name “Radar,” which seems to me to correctly express this concept. An initiative therefore highly anticipated and now an integral part of the Venetian autumn.”
How to grow a creative scene?
“Venice is a campus of knowledge. Universities, foundations, museums, ateliers, manufactories, businesses, artists, venues, galleries are just minutes apart. Radar Venezia starts from this idea,” say the organizers Laura Scarpa and Lorenzo Cinotti.
“Proximity fosters the circulation of knowledge and the birth of new collaborations. Radar is born from the desire to make this system recognizable, connect its protagonists, and create the conditions so that more and more people can develop their professional path in Venice.”
Venezia Produce Futuro: from vision to project
How can we transform this network of skills and relationships into concrete opportunities for those who want to work in the creative sectors?
From this question begins Venezia Produce Futuro, the discussion forum promoted by Radar to strengthen connections among education, research, and production, and identify possible shared actions.
On Thursday, October 22 at 10:00 AM, at Palazzetto Tito, headquarters of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, the first forum will bring together representatives of institutions, universities, foundations, organizers, communicators, and the production world.
At the center of the meeting: support for young creatives and the construction of a network of collaborations that can develop throughout the year.
Fashion as Art
Clothing as an artistic medium, mosaic applied to costume, jewelry as an object of research, the artist’s book as a new representation of the city. With Fashion as Art, Radar investigates the relationships among fashion, art, and high craftsmanship, with attention to experimentation, materials, and contemporary languages.
Exhibitions, talks, performances, and collaborations with artists, designers, artisans, and galleries compose a program that tells the story of contemporary creative production and its international connections.
The Radar Venezia program
From October 19 to 24, the Radar Venezia program is built around shared questions with figures from the Italian and international creative scene, foundations, businesses, and local stakeholders, which become talks, exhibitions, performances, fashion shows, visits, and open ateliers.
Events are free and by invitation.
Participation requires an accreditation request. The relevant forms will be available shortly on the website.
For information and accreditation requests, contact press@veneziadavivere.com.
Radar Venezia is conceived and organized by Venezia da Vivere and is included in the official program of Major Events of the Municipality of Venice, with the support of Vela Spa.
Partners
Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Università Iuav Venezia, ITS Marco Polo Academy, MUVE Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, The Home of The Human Safety Net, Designskolen Kolding, Orsoni Venezia 1888, Venice Art Factory, CreativeMornings Venice, Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista, Fondazione Maddalena di Giacomo, Fondation Valmont, Fondazione La Via dell’Ambra, Venice Design Week, Venice Cocktail Week, Hotel Palazzo Venart, Casa Flora, JW Marriott, The Venice Venice Hotel, Lunardelli Venezia. With the support of Vela Spa.
Patronages
Municipality of Venice, Le Città in Festa, Tavolo Veneto della Moda, Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte.
Cover photo by Daniele Notaro, courtesy Antonio Marras.
Other photos: Antonio Marras by Daniele Notaro, Marina Spadafora by Ilaria Magliocchetti Lombi, Sara Sozzani Maino by Illya Ovchar,
Angela Vettese by Marco Paris. Other photos: Igor Serdyukov, Settimo Cannatella, and Marta Formentello.
