Looking Ahead to Steer Change: Strategic Foresight Training for LENS and RURABLE in Tignale
For three days, from 21 to 23 September, Tignale was the meeting point for LAGs from several European countries. At the conference hall of the Latteria Turnaria, 24 representatives from partner LAGs across 8 European countries took part in a training on Strategic Foresight with Valentina Boschetto Doorly, senior Strategic Foresight expert and Associate Partner for Italy at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. The initiative was organised by LAG GardaValsabbia as part of LENS and RURABLE, the two transnational cooperation projects it leads, carried out under Intervention SRG06 – Sub-action A) "Interterritorial and Transnational Cooperation" of Regione Lombardia.
LENS and RURABLE share the same structure and start from a common question: how can rural territories prepare for the changes ahead?
LENS looks at rural tourism. The partnership brings together, alongside LAG GardaValsabbia, LAG Valles Pasiegos (Spain), LAGs Someș Nadas and Someș Transilvan (Romania), LAGs Vallis Colapis and Međimurski doli i bregi (Croatia), LAG Presolana e Laghi Bergamaschi, and the Calabrian LAGs Terre Vibonesi, Serre Calabresi, Dei Due Mari and Riviera dei Cedri. The aim is to investigate which changes will affect tourism in rural areas and which skills LAGs and local communities need in order not to be subject to those changes, but to steer them. The project will run for two years, from December 2025 to December 2027, with a total budget of €170,000.
RURABLE, on the other hand, addresses youth and employment in rural areas, with LAG Wipptal (Austria), LAG Jyväsriihi (Finland), LAG Saldus (Latvia), Heart of Slovenia (Slovenia), Presolana e Laghi Bergamaschi, Terre Vibonesi and Serre Calabresi. Same duration, December 2025 – December 2027, with a budget of €110,000.
The training opened with a provocation: for decades, we have equated the future with progress, assuming tomorrow would be better than today. That certainty no longer holds. We live in a time of "permacrisis", in which complexity is here to stay, and complex phenomena cannot be met with simple, immediate answers: they require reflection and time.
But taking time does not mean waiting passively. The future is never neutral: every major change creates winners and losers, and where one ends up is not random. Those who prepare and know how to seize the opportunities of transformation can find themselves among the winners; those who move by inertia, passively undergoing change, risk ending up among the losers. This is why resilience is not a passive attitude: it means taking a stance and preparing.
Preparing requires a strategy, a bridge between present and future: without a future purpose, there is no strategy. This is where strategic foresight comes in: a set of techniques for anticipating future scenarios, aimed at strengthening the capacity for vision and policy-making from an evolutionary perspective.
Over the course of the training, partners received an introduction to Strategic Foresight and built a shared vocabulary around the discipline — a genuine "future literacy" shared across different countries and contexts. The work started from reading the context: from the taxonomy of megatrends to the distinction between fads, trends, weak signals, game changers and wild cards, through to horizon scanning as a practice of constant, structured and shared observation. Partners also began experimenting with operational tools such as the future wheel, which can be applied within the projects to strengthen their strategic dimension, and were introduced to outside-in thinking: testing one's own strategies, and the assumptions they rest on, against the force of external changes.
The training did not take place in the classroom alone. Partners took part in four site visits across the territory: the Albergo diffuso Borgo Piovere, the Latteria Turnaria di Tignale, and, following on, the Visitor Centre of the Alto Garda Bresciano Park together with the Alpe del Garda in Tremosine. Concrete examples of how a rural community can build enterprise, safeguard its heritage and welcome visitors.
What are we taking home? Three intense days, which gave partners a shared vocabulary and method. The outcomes will feed into the next activities of LENS and RURABLE, in particular through pilot applications of the tools explored across the respective territories, with the aim of equipping LAGs and local communities with tools to read change and turn it into opportunity.
A heartfelt thank you to Valentina Boschetto Doorly, to the partner LAGs, and to all the local organisations that opened their doors to us.
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