“The main areas of intervention of the lab were identified as:
● Communication and education: The resources developed by the Milan City Lab serve as tools to train and engage citizens about the future of the food system, and as a mean of communication of the variety of actors and factors that can play a role in the relevant topics of sustainability and complexity of the food supply chain.
● Dialogue among stakeholders (including potential cross-contamination of good dialogue practices and methodologies among different communities): In the Milan City Lab plays a central role the Science Museum of the city: as a network coordinator, it brings the expertise of its staff in facilitating the stakeholder engagement process, in order to foster an active involvement and an authentic dialogue between actors who belong to different fields and have different backgrounds.

● Stakeholder awareness of the system: The Milan City Lab members underlined the importance to spread the awareness of a systemic perspective in dealing with challenges and opportunities of the future local food supply chain. The educational modules developed by the City Lab take this point as a central node and a fundamental message.”

“The teachers’ evolving thoughts about the complexity of the food system and unexpected relations between the actors behind the food we eat were captured on a Personal Meaning Map, a powerful tool to explore people’s knowledge and awareness on a topic. An experimental activity on the identification of proteins and the extraction of lipids as an example of research processes on novel foods (in this case, insects) helped enrich their reflections and their Personal Meaning Maps.
Subsequently, with improved knowledge on board, teachers tried out was a visioning exercise with creative tools such as clay, paper and colours that capture their visions about the role they wish school could play in the innovative transformation of the food system. A learning-by-doing approach, the use of different school spaces (such as kitchens or canteens), reinforcing the links between the different actors of the food system and not shying away from hard discussions about balancing different values were just a few of the ideas brought to the table by teachers about the role of their schools in food system transformation.
Both exercises form part of the educational module ‘Visions of Future Food’. To try it out, visit the FIT4FOOD2030 Knowledge Hub.”

With both the satisfaction from the fulfilment of the action and the awareness of the crises passed, we feel that we learned a specific lesson: when setting a bottom-up process within such large domain as the food system, it is probable that different interests and mindsets will be present at the same table and that creating a common and authentic agenda will not be immediate, with consequences on stakeholder engagement. Therefore, the steps foreseen for such process should take into account different moment of stasis: longer phases that include time and resources for “trial and error” steps, in order to really have the chance to integrate all the feedback (implicit and explicit) that emerge.