The Human Safety Net bookstore opens in St Mark's Square in Venice

• A range of publications for early childhood will be available, focusing on inclusion, social entrepreneurship and sustainability
• A place to delve deeper into the themes that are at the heart of The Human Safety Net, and aligned with the “AWorld of Potential” interactive exhibition

Venice – The Human Safety Net bookstore will open in Saint Mark's Square in Venice. The shop, which is focused on themes linked to social inclusion will be inside No.110, on the ground floor of St Mark’s Square’s Procuratie Vecchie. In addition to books, the shop offers a selection of design and craft objects created by social cooperatives and refugee start-ups supported by The Human Safety Net, that interpret the values of the interactive exhibition A World of Potential set up within the Procuratie Vecchie.

Just over a year and a half after the opening of the Home of The Human Safety Net Foundation, the movement of people helping people committed to unlock the potential of people living in vulnerable circumstances- is enriching its offer to the public with a cultural project that has the ambition of becoming a new point of reference for both Venetians and visitors.

Simone Bemporad, vice-president of The Human Safety Net Foundation and Generali Group Chief Communications & Public Affairs Officer, commented, “Venice has always had a special place in the long history of Generali. The opening of The Human Safety Net bookstore adds a new important chapter to our project, after the restoration of the Procuratie Vecchie, and the opening to the public of the Home of The Human Safety Net. It revives the Procuratie Vecchie as a shared heritage by making this space known to all as an open place, the home of a network that can have relevance for the world and generate a positive impact for the community”.

The management of the bookstore, whose interior design was made by the Migliore+Servetto studio, is entrusted to the historic Venetian bookshop La Toletta, which has been a benchmark in the city's cultural life for ninety years, with the aim of offering a shared space in the iconic, world-famous square where people can meet and nourish their reflection on social impact in a city that aspires to become the "World Capital of Sustainability". The Venice World Sustainability Capital Foundation is also located in the Procuratie, as are both the Council of Europe and the Europa Nostra hub.

The bookstore will be open every day from 10 am to 7 pm. It will also be possible to purchase tickets to enter the “A World of Potential” exhibition inside.

The Home of The Human Safety Net is an open space, a place of work, dialogue, discovery and experience. Venice, a universal symbol of imagination, exchange, ingenuity and cultural openness, was chosen by Generali as the ideal place to host the Foundation inside the spaces of the Procuratie Vecchie.

Open to the public for the first time in 500 years of history in April 2022, the Home of The Human Safety Net on the third floor of the Procuratie Vecchie is housing the interactive exhibition “A World of Potential”, an immersive experience on the theme of the potential in each one of us. It is a journey that stimulates everyone to tap into the potential of ourselves and discover the best qualities in yourself and in others, also through the stories of the beneficiaries, operators and volunteers of The Human Safety Net, which works in 26 countries alongside people to release the potential of refugees along their path to autonomy through the creation of enterprise or work and of families with children 0-6 in vulnerable conditions.

These themes are reflected in the open shelf library of the Home, where hundreds of texts in five different languages, dedicated to adults and children, can be freely consulted. They represent an important and up-to-date selection for discovering, learning about and being inspired by major current social issues, the principle that guides the range of books offered by the bookstore. The library is curated by Libraries Without Borders.

The Home of The Human Safety Net in Venice

The Home of The Human Safety Net is located on the third floor of the Procuratie Vecchie St Mark’s Square.

The building, once the premises of the Procurators of St Mark, high officials of the Republic of Venice, was recently restored to a design by David Chipperfield, 2023 Pritzker Prize winner. It is an iconic space which, since its opening, has been visited by over 85 thousand people and has hosted over 200 events, in this way supporting The Human Safety Net's programmes. In fact, half of the ticket price supports the Foundation's programmes for vulnerable families with children aged 0 to 6 and for the economic and professional inclusion of refugees through training and entrepreneurship.

Inside the permanent space of the exhibition "A World of Potential", developed by Orna Cohen with interiors, exhibition & Multimedia Design designed by the Migliore+Servetto studio with the artistic direction of Davide Rampello, there is the Art Studio, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, where the interactive work "The Hungriest Eye.The Blossoming of Potential” by artist Arthur Duff is displayed.