Summer Schools of FOSTER are specifically designed for building capability in working within transdisciplinary arenas, across sectors and based on RRI principles including gender aspects, ethics and open science. They are designed to foster exchange and dialogue across on food system concepts and tools for food system change across academic and Change Driven Initiative (CDI) partners.
This year´s Summer School was organised by the University of Oxford and Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research with the participation of other academic partners and CDIs of FOSTER. Over 40 participants had the opportunity to dive into the principles of foresight thinking and try out some tools in practice.
In FOSTER, we aim to have a dialogue with the CDIs on foresight approaches they apply in their work – and this Summer School was specifically focused on practical Foresight experiences and applications for specific CDI issues together with exploring various system thinking tools. In FOSTER we see foresight as a structured debate about complex futures and their implications for food system change, which include interactions with different actors and consideration of different systematic interdependencies.
The main objectives of the Summer School 2024 were:
- To recap on food systems thinking and foresight approaches;
- To explore examples of food systems foresight methods;
- To apply food system methods for CDIs’ activities;
- To reflect on foresight methods in relation to CDIs´ activities and action plans.
Within the three days of the Summer School, participants could expand their knowledge on system thinking tools and foresight methods, apply some tools in practice and reflect on the tools and methods for their own work.
On the first day, CDIs presented their current action plans for work in the project and received feedback and reflection from the project members on how their action plans can be succeeded in real life and what kind of help it would require making it “a living example” of work progressed from planning to action.
In a so-called “mental time-travelling” session, everyone experienced a mental transfer into daily life situations 10 years in the future and what these might mean for that person’s way of life, and, of course, food habits. People were invited to look around in this guided scenery and then share with others some reflections on what would be relevant for them personally and for the food system 10 years ahead. How could the food system then look like and what is different from today? Such an interesting approach prepared participants think in plausible futures and spark interest in foresight thinking methods, opening up to futures thinking.
The summer school also hosted the session on inclusivity and roles of citizen participation in food systems transformation. The session aimed at taking a first step in exploring what, according to the CDIs, underrepresented communities are in the specific part of the food system CDIs are working on. Other goals were to understand who are in- and excluded in the current Knowledge and Innovation(K&I) system; to gain a wider understanding of how inclusivity in food system transformation is enacted; and to reflect on how the CDIs think about participation and inclusion and how they see it reflected in their work. The session gave participants some valuable insights into inclusivity ‘in practice’ and was a unique opportunity to hear from people whose daily work is related to K&I systems in regard to the whole food system.
The second day of the Summer School was specifically designed for bringing some tools to the CDIs’ tables to test system thinking and foresight methods in practice. This work was based on an approach with several steps that build on each other, derived from the University of Oxford approach to food system change. With this line-up of methods, CDIs, in cooperation with academic partners, could build step by step their own ideas about transforming their food system.
The “scaffolding” approach explored in the Summer School included:
- Mental Time travel: Personal trip into a future scenario or single situation to look around.
- Tetralemma: This tool is helpful for thinking about different assumptions for or paths into the future. The steps are to think: A) THE ONE, commonly assumed future, mainstream, dominant assumption, B) THE OTHER opposite, deviant assumption, C) BOTH, a combination, a future in between the first assumptions, D) NEITHER … NOR, a disruption or revolutionary assumption, and E) WILDCARD, a completely new and disruptive situation (maybe the original question becomes irrelevant)
- Rich pictures of the current system: These are pictorial descriptions of how actors currently see their food system and its issues. Participants had created Rich Pictures in the previous Summer School.
- Transformation statements are the formulation of a hypothetical future situation (here of a CDI) that is a desired one and has a time frame, formulated in present tense. It includes: Do what: intervention, By when: date, How: method, Why: to achieve project goal and ends up with a clear statement in less than 20 words.
- BATWOVE is a sequence of steps and issues to consider when thinking about the desired future/transformation statement (here of a CDI). The following items have to be analysed: Who are the Beneficiaries of the proposed transformation, who are the Actors, the Transformation, what is the underlying Worldview of the transformation, who are the Owners of the transformation, who are the Victims of the transformation and what Environmental constraints might the transformation face?
- Using Scenarios: in FOSTER, we had a scenario building process to generate and formulate context scenarios of the world or the environment around food systems from a European Union perspective. The scenarios were introduced once more and each CDI had to place itself, its own future and its own transformation statement into these different scenarios (during the workshop, we only had time for two different scenarios)
- Backwards planning: In a table, CDIs started in the future with the transformation statement and its time horizon. Then each CDI systematically went back to the present, describing actions and conditions to achieve each previous step or milestone. This method trains backwards thinking from a goal to be achieved and can be widened into planning steps later.
In addition to going through the scaffolding exercises, participants heard from the Hungarian CDI about their experiences with using the different tools. This CDI had tested this approach in an earlier, separate workshop together with the University of Oxford and the Fraunhofer teams.
On the last day, we could summarize all learnings and reflect on the tools presented during our journey. CDIs were proposed to leave their thoughts on post-its reflecting on the usefulness of the exercises and how all these learnings can help to develop or re-organise their work.
