“My will for the future of young people is to have a little lightness. We are often afraid of what will happen to us tomorrow. It also happens that we do not fully live our today. So I would like a little lightness to deal with all the bad things that can happen to us “. The singer-songwriter Mille, winner of the 1MNext contest, said this after sitting in the backstage of the Concertone in Piazza San Giovanni, on the WillChair, the design chair created by designer Derek Castiglioni starting from the recycling of a wheelchair. The presence of the chair in the backstage of the Concertone is part of an awareness campaign on the fight against multiple sclerosis, carried out by Novartis in collaboration with AISM – Italian Multiple Sclerosis Association Onlus.
A campaign created to give sick young people the strength to react and never give up to the limits imposed by the disease: 3,600 young people between 20 and 40 years receive a diagnosis of MS every year, a chronic neurodegenerative disease that affects the central nervous system and that in the 25% of cases cause walking difficulties, having a significant impact on the school and professional sphere, as well as on family and relationship life.
The transformation of the wheelchair in the work of Derek Castiglioni thus becomes a metaphor of hope and a positive neologism for many young people, embodying the progress of therapeutic innovation and research on Multiple Sclerosis. As for his Will for the future of young people to whom multiple sclerosis is diagnosed, the singer-songwriter Mille explained: “it is very difficult for me to put myself in the shoes of someone who is living in a difficult situation so I have no advice other than to make what surrounds us as beautiful as this chair is” .
