Sprout to be here for the summer! 

Hi! This is Tommaso from the University of Sheffield (USFD). I’m writing from Brussels where last week I started my secondment at The Academy of Business in Society. On the first day, I was welcomed by Ivo, Karolina, and Giulia from the ABIS team in their office which is based at Silversquare Bailly, a very dynamic co-working space in Brussels. After showing me around the shared office spaces they shared their great advice around the best places to eat around the office. On this first day I was very lucky because there was the Wednesday food market in the neighbourhood (Marche de la Place du Châtelain). 

During my secondment here, I will help ABIS to build a board game to explore CE futures. The game is an adaptation of the Scenario Exploration System, a game developed by the Joint Research Center of the European Union, which facilitates participants in adopting a systemic approach with a focus on long-term thinking, enabling them to examine alternative futures. One of the expertise of ABIS is the facilitation of the Scenario Exploration System game, having already organised workshops in multiple events with corporates, public sector and academic institutions. My task here consists in supporting them in building a new version of the game, adapting it to the CE context (which is also a deliverable for the ExPliCit project). This activity will require reflecting on different scenarios according to predetermined dimensions. 

Good news is that I won’t start from zero, but I will continue the work some colleagues have started in previous secondments. Karolina and Katarina from ABIS seconded at University of Vigo and have looked at what techniques you can find in the academic literature to analyse futures. Joana, who was seconded by the UVIGO to the CNA, and Jacopo, who was seconded by the UVIGO to the UPN, both institutions in Naples, identified relevant dimensions to be considered in the characterisation of circular futures and worked on their definition; David (UVIGO) during his secondment at USFD expanded on this, picked two of the dimensions, and built a 2×2 matrix exploring the 4 resulting scenarios. During this week I was also reached at ABIS by Abiye from the USFD and David from the University of Catania, which will also help us in this task. 

Our role here is to further develop these 4 scenarios. In practical terms, it is about creating four different stories about how societies will adapt to each of the CE futures. These stories need to be academically grounded, and will require us to imagine contrasting ways of organising economies, providing for societal needs, while respecting the environment. A further aspect consists in characterising each future with a temporal dimension (how is each scenario developing in 10-20-30 years?). In this way we will contribute to WP1 (Plausible Circular Futures) and its deliverables, and will also start to connect this with WP2 (Alternative Supply Chains and Production Networks). WP2 is grounded on the results of WP1, and deals with identifying alternative production networks and supply chain configurations which could be compatible with CE futures identified. Very excited for what is coming and to be in Brussels during the summer!