Co-Designing Inclusion from the Ground Up: The First Italian DIAMOND Living Lab

How do we build digital upskilling and employment tools that genuinely serve people facing vulnerability?

The short answer: you don’t build them in an ivory tower. You build them alongside the individuals who navigate these barriers every day.

On 1 October, Italian consortium partner EMiT Feltrinelli ETS hosted the first Italian Grassroots Living Lab for the European DIAMOND project as part of Milano Digital Week.

A Living Lab, Not a Lecture

Rather than hosting a conventional academic conference or panel presentation, EMiT Feltrinelli structured the session as an open co-creation workspace.

Around shared working tables, people of diverse ages, lived experiences, and professions sat side-by-side: 

• Local citizens and jobseekers navigating career transitions
• Frontline social workers and guidance counsellors
• Vocational educators and digital skills trainers
• Academic researchers and institutional stakeholders

The central question on the table was straightforward but demanding: How can training pathways and employment support services be made genuinely effective, accessible, and dignified for vulnerable individuals?

Connecting Research Directly with Daily Reality

This co-creative method reflects the core philosophy of DIAMOND. Funded under the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme, DIAMOND is developing a personalised digital ecosystem designed to support vulnerable groups through upskilling and sustainable labour market reintegration.

Through interactive exercises, group discussions, and shared post-it mappings facilitated by Lucia Zucchella and Paola Suardi, participants outlined real structural hurdles. They spanned from digital fatigue and administrative barriers to the need for human mentorship alongside software.

As EMiT Feltrinelli noted following the event, the purpose of a Grassroots Living Lab is precisely this: bringing European research into direct dialogue with the communities living those challenges day in and day out.

What Comes Next?

The qualitative findings and real-world requirements captured during Milano Digital Week will not sit on a shelf. They will feed directly into the technical and pedagogical specifications of the DIAMOND platform, ensuring that every tool, self-assessment module, and matching pathway developed by the consortium is grounded in verified, real-world needs.

Official Website of the EU-Horizon Project DIAMOND: https://diamond-empower.eu/ 

Consortium Partners:

1. Aarhus Universitet (Coordinator)
2. Freie Universität Berlin
3. Universidad de Burgos
4. Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen
5. Universität Wien
6. CETIC
7. Immersion
8. European Centre for Economic and Policy Analysis and Affairs
9. Evolutionary Archetypes Consulting SL
10. Proportional Message Associacao
11. Ente Morale Giacomo Feltrinelli per l’incremento Dell’Istruzione Tecnica
12. Deinde Spolka Z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnoscia
13. Fundacja Obiektywna
14. Youth Power Germany EV
15. Fundación Miradas

Funding Agency: European Research Executive Agency (REA)

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Project: 101178081 — DIAMOND — HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01

Disclaimer: Funded by the European Union.

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA).

Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.