Great success for “Focus Live -Traguardi” at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, Italy

At the seventh edition of the “Focus” Festival of Knowledge, all of the more than 100 free events were sold out: meetings, workshops and interactive experiences with the stars of science

Segrate, 11 November 2024 – Focus’s festival of knowledge, Focus Live, once again achieved incredible success, with over 18,000 visitors. This is the seventh consecutive year that Focus has carried out this event in collaboration with the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. The brand demonstrated its digital and social media strength by reaching more than 9.2 million users (a sharp increase from the 2023 edition), with posts, stories and videos shared on the Internet, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Tik Tok, all of which will remain available and will be enriched with new content for fans young and old.

Focus Live – Traguardi hosted 120 nationally renowned scientists, popular science figures, and creators, including Vincenzo Schettini, Telmo Pievani, Dario Bressanini, Teresa Fornaro, Adrian Fartade, Barbara Gallavotti, Tommaso Ghidini, and Massimo Temporelli, who involved the attentive and enthusiastic audience.

“The large participation and turnout at our festival testifies to the fact that there is a great thirst for scientific knowledge in our society”, said Gian Mattia Bazzoli, Director of Focus. “These days we’ve witnessed something extraordinary: science has become a common language, capable of uniting different generations. Celebrating the Achievements of Research and Innovation in all fields, we saw young popular science figures in dialogue with established scientists, resulting in an intergenerational exchange that truly bridged the seemingly distant worlds. This shows that when popular science can be both rigorous and exciting, it succeeds in touching the deepest levels of human curiosity”.

The more than 100 events that made up this seventh edition of the Festival special were all sold out: meetings, talks, workshops, and performances that made participants reflect on the fundamental role of science in shaping our future and illustrate in popular language the achievements of human knowledge. This is all thanks to authoritative voices, innovative formats, a mix of genres, fusions between the arts, music and nature, theatre and biology, sports and technology, embracing the nuances and facets of different languages capable of deep connections and interactions.

Contributing to the excellent result of Focus Live were major players in science and beyond, including: the “Three Musketeers” Adrian Fartade, Elia Bombardelli and Benedetta Colombo, social media popular science figures beloved by the younger generation; Alberto Grandi, food history lecturer and writer; comedian Federico Basso; Giampaolo Ricci, Italian national basketball team member and Doctor of Mathematics, who shared how he managed to combine study with competition at the highest level; Manuel Bortuzzo, bronze medalist in swimming at the Paris 2024 Paralympics, who spoke about his story; and Gian Francesco Giudice, Director of the Department of Theoretical Physics at CERN in Geneva. There was no shortage of Italian Institute of Technology researchers: Adriana Traviglia and Ferdinando Cannella, who brought Ringhio, the first robot archaeologist; Federica Pirrone, Professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Milan; Marco Martinelli, popular science figure; and Roberto Valbuzzi, chef and TV host. Ample space was given to health, with Arsela Prelaj, researcher at the National Cancer Institute in Milan, along with Eugenio Santoro, researcher at the Mario Negri Institute and neurosurgeon, Pietro Mortini.

Once again this year, Focus Live gave its many visitors the opportunity to travel into the past or immerse themselves in the future through virtual reality, escape rooms and more, experiencing firsthand how science and technology are shaping the world around us. The experiences at the Experience Area were possible thanks to installations curated by amazing partners like Humanitas University, Scuola Sant’Anna, the Italian Institute of Technology, Airc, Joint Research Centre – European Commission, Politecnico, and the University of Milan.

For children and teens, the Kids area, curated by Focus Junior, offered an even richer program of STEM workshops, with a dedicated stage for talks with writers and scientists. From a magic school to games with graphs; from the use of a digital microscope to travelling around the world with a digital globe; from an escape room to travelling like particles of light to a trip on Santa Claus’s sleigh; from the use of artificial intelligence to write a story to creating a comic, robotics and economics and finance workshops.

Among the new features of this edition were Artificial Intelligence Masterclasses taught by Federico Favot and Jacopo Perfetti of Promptdesign.it, with whom Focus started MYIA, online courses on artificial intelligence. The two lecturers then took the topic to the Main Stage in the talk titled The 7 “Superpowers” You Didn’t Know You Had (Thanks to AI).

Also on display at Focus Live was the suit that will be used by astronauts on the Artemis III mission to return to the Moon, made by Prada and Axiom.

Headlining the Friday and Saturday evenings are two gripping shows: Science Shots, an engaging and interactive conversation between Licia Troisi and Virginia Benzi on the exploration of the unexpected. Then Change the Climate, Change the Music, Change Us Too, a two-voice, three-string, four-composer dialogue on climate change that featured journalist and popular science figure Massimo Polidoro and climatologist Elisa Palazzi on stage along with the Milan Symphony Orchestra ensemble. Closing the festival on Sunday was the lectio magistralis What Makes Us Human by evolutionary philosopher, Telmo Pievani.

Partners and sponsors

Focus Live is a Mondadori Media event, created in collaboration with the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci, and numerous partners:

MAIN PARTNER: Eni, ING
PARTNER: Autostrade per l’italia, Bayer, Humanitas University, Jordan Care, Kia, VTech
CONTENT PARTNER: Airc, Deloitte Foundation, Mondadori Education
OFFICIAL RADIO STATION: R101
AREA KIDS powered by Focus Junior

This edition of Focus Live sees the collaboration and support of various institutions, research centres, and universities: Civic Aquarium of Milan, Ars Dimicandi, Asi, Enea, Esa, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Henesis, IIT, Inaf, Joint Research Centre, Civic Museum of Natural History of Milan, Symphony Orchestra of Milan, Shake srl, Civic Planetarium of Milan, Polytechnic University of Milan, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Smonting, Think about Science, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, University of Milan, University of Milan-Bicocca, University of Ferrara and Way experience.

Advertising for Focus Live is curated by Piemme S.p.A, the Mondadori Scienza S.p.A.

Production and administration by the Left&Right event agency. The advertising campaign and the creativity of the installation were conceived by Zampe Diverse with the help of Artificial Intelligence expert Eddy Anselmi, who produced the visuals generated by generative AI.