Co-Creating the Future of Tursi: Design Thinking for Rural Revitalization in Tursi

The challenge

Tursi faces a disconnect from the outside world, resulting in limited market reach for local producers, underutilized tourism potential, and a lack of skills or employment opportunities that causes local youth to leave. Additionally, past attempts at hosting cultural and skill-sharing initiatives struggled with low local participation and a lack of clear financial incentives for residents to host or engage with outsiders.

Our solution

We designed and facilitated a collaborative workshop series utilizing the Design Thinking Double Diamond framework. By putting users and local citizens at the core, we guided international nomads and local stakeholders through a structured co-creation journey:

• Session 1: Discover (Scoprire): Grounded the project in Tursi’s current reality and ran a “Visioning Exercise” where locals imagined the town 10 years into the future to establish a collective creative vision.
• Session 2: Define (Definire): Filtered the initial concepts and analyzed community friction points using the “5 Why’s” framework alongside locals over an aperitivo. This allowed us to assess feasibility and map out core problem definitions and “How Might We…” statements.
• Session 3: Develop (Sviluppare): Ignited co-creation using ideation techniques like “Worst Possible Idea” and silent brainstorming. Teams mapped out extensive user journeys and built low-fidelity prototypes to bring the concepts to life.
• Session 4: Deliver/Test (Consegnare): Presented the low-fidelity prototypes back to the local community to gather rapid feedback and iterate for long-term implementation.

The result

The collaborative design process yielded highly actionable, community-validated solutions across four primary strategic concepts:

During the final delivery and test phase, representatives from the local THEMA association validated the proposals as deeply helpful for the town’s future. Crucial sustainability pivots were established in order to take these solutions forward, including a shift to direct-income models for local hosts, leveraging existing municipal info centers for QR-code business marketing, and kicking off direct alignment with local producers and the regional bus company (RABITE) to roll out the connectivity solutions.

• Selling Local Products: Co-created frameworks for a co-op farmers’ market, a regional subscription box, digital mapping for local businesses, and specialized local quality labeling to boost economic exposure.
• Unique Experiences: Proposed community-centric art and food festivals, curated AirBnB Experiences, and local cooking classes leveraging Tursi’s unique cultural heritage.
• Skills & Employment: Designed a volunteer attraction pipeline via global platforms (e.g., WWOOFing, Workaway), alongside regional university partnerships and entrepreneurial networks to benefit local youth.
• Mobility & Access: Developed micro-mobility concepts, including e-bike/e-scooter rentals and an informal community shuttle bus network to fix local connectivity issues.

Our team

Nadia Laabs designed and delivered the entire workshop series for the project, with translation support from Serena from KINO Italy, facilitating the bridge between international nomads and Tursi locals to unlock collaborative social innovation.