Strategic Foresight in Tignale: European LAGs of LENS and RURABLE Learn to Readthe Future

Three days of training with Valentina Boschetto Doorly, senior Strategic Foresight expert and Associate Partner for Italy at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, to equip rural territories to anticipate and steer change.

A three-day training on Strategic Foresight concluded in Tignale, held from 21 to 23 September at the conference hall of the Latteria Turnaria. The event was organised by LAG GardaValsabbia as part of the two transnational cooperation projects it leads: LENS and RURABLE. The sessions were led by Valentina Boschetto Doorly, senior Strategic Foresight expert and Associate Partner for Italy at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies.

The training brought together 24 representatives from partner LAGs across eight European countries. The initiative was carried out under Intervention SRG06 – Sub-action A) “Interterritorial and Transnational Cooperation” of Regione Lombardia.

Three Days of Training

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 (globalisation, technology and artificial intelligence, demographic decline, climate change, deglobalisation) 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.

Among the examples discussed was the silver economy: population ageing and demographic decline as a megatrend with knock-on effects on housing, services, commerce and the labour market — a useful case for practising the shift from “what is changing” to “what this means for my territory”.

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 their own strategies, and the assumptions they rest on, against the force of external changes.

Alongside the intense and content-rich training sessions, the programme included four site visits across the territory: the Albergo diffuso Borgo Piovere, the Latteria Turnaria di Tignale, the Visitor Centre of the Alto Garda Bresciano Park and the Alpe del Garda in Tremosine. These offered concrete examples of how a rural community can build enterprise, safeguard its heritage and welcome visitors.

“Transnational cooperation has always been at the heart of LAG GardaValsabbia’s work,” said Tiziano Pavoni, President of LAG GardaValsabbia. “It is through dialogue with other European territories that we bring innovation and new skills to our community. LENS and RURABLE are two particularly ambitious projects, in terms of the topics addressed, the scale of the partnership and the budget approved by Regione Lombardia. With this training, we wanted to bring topics that too often remain confined to large companies or European institutions down to the local level.”

Pavoni noted that this first stage involved LAG technical staff — directors and project managers — “but the hope is to soon widen the conversation to include local stakeholders across our territories as well”.

The outcomes of the training 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.

The Two Projects

LENS focuses on 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 goal is to investigate which changes will affect tourism in rural areas and which skills LAGs and local communities need to steer those changes. The project runs for two years (December 2025 – December 2027), with a total budget of €170,000.00.

RURABLE shares the same structure but addresses the theme of youth and employment in rural areas. Its partners are LAG Wipptal (Austria), LAG Jyväsriihi (Finland), LAG Saldus (Latvia), LAG Heart of Slovenia (Slovenia), LAG Presolana e Laghi Bergamaschi, LAG Terre Vibonesi and LAG Serre Calabresi.

The project also runs for two years (December 2025 – December 2027), with a total budget of €110,000.00.