Futuri (Im)Perfetti. Social Foresight and Digital Creativity as Practices to Extend the Ability to Aspire

In recent years social foresight techniques have been developed to facilitate the exchange of knowledge between different kinds of social actors in order to create a shared image of the future in a specific organisation or territorial context. The Italian project «Futuri (im)perfetti» is an action-research project promoted in 2020 by the Giacomo Brodolini Foundation, together with ItaliaCamp, Forcoop, San Donato Scs, Stranaidea and Vides Main, in collaboration with Forwardto-Studies and skills for future scenarios and supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo. The entire path of the project is aimed at creating a cultural association that will be a place of contamination and inclusion where young people can have the opportunity to exchange skills and ideas with their «innovator» peers. In this context, 8 online workshops on utopias and dystopias have been designed and conducted and about 60 girls and boys under-30 have been involved in exploring alternative and desired future scenarios, starting from themselves and their own aspirations. The paper aims to: i) describe the main theoretical and methodological assumptions of social foresight in the context of the action-research project, Futuri (im)perfetti, which highlights the normative and participatory potential of social foresight; ii) present the analysis of the material that emerged in the 8 laboratories on utopias and dystopias (scenarios and cultural mediators) and in the media production workshops of the «Manifesto of the future» (digital creativity), led by the Forwardto team.