The major global transformations of our time – geopolitical conflict over scarce resources, migration, demographics, climate change, or digitalisation and AI – pose challenges to democracy and civic cohesion throughout Europe. While authoritarian, illiberal, and populist forces, amplified by social networks, are well prepared to channel related disruptions into distrust vis a vis the traditional institutions of democracy, defenders and guardians of democracy and civic cohesion, civic actors and educators seem rather ill-prepared to respond to and contain them. Instead of reacting, how can they be better equipped to act preemptively upon disruptive dynamics that undermine civic cohesion and democratic stability?

The Civic Foresight LAB, taking place in Alpbach in August this year, is a learning space of how to apply foresight methodology to build bottom-up preparedness for upcoming disruptions of democracy and civic cohesion. The LAB will focus on one specific transformative development – climate change, or migration, or other – and build cases around it to anticipate the likely disruptive effects of such development on local microcosms (communities, professional, social, or other stakeholder groups). Along the cases, LAB participants will co-create tangible tools for thinking and acting preemptively, to strengthen future literacy and to enhance democratic resilience within those microcosms.

The Civic Foresight Lab contributes to the EFA Democracy Track purpose “Reinforcing Democracy in Europe” by convening actors from all over Europe who are vested in sustaining democracy and civic cohesion – be they in education, politics, policymaking, public administration, journalism, philanthropy, community activism, or other. While foresight as a methodology is common for security experts, it is hardly known to those that secure and safeguard civic cohesion – a knowledge and skills gap the LAB seeks to address.

LAB participants will be empowered to anticipate disruptions and local repercussions stirred by massive global change to be expected in the future. They co-create an analytical toolkit for managing and moderating deliberate processes with diverse and contradicting convictions within groups, a common map of possible disruptions induced by transformative developments on local microcosms, and a plan for how to deal with disruptions likely to occur in the future.