Policies are meant to work for society as a whole, yet their effects are never felt equally: some groups carry more of the weight than others, and some of today's choices shift costs onto generations not yet at the table. Finding the balance that works for everyone, across groups and across time, is a question of equity and intergenerational fairness.
Farmers are one clear example. They sustain society through food, while being especially exposed to policy change, market volatility, and environmental pressure. Designing policies that genuinely work for them (now and into the future) starts with understanding their past: whether, what, and how collective trauma shapes their relationship to policy and institutions. Only by building that understanding, and by designing policies together with them, can we create the trust needed for policies that hold, in the present and for the future.
From artefact to policy
This experiment connects to Inwards, one of the Futures Garden artefacts. Set in the 2050s, Inwards imagines a future in which people let go of an unquestioning faith in endless growth and technological fixes, and instead turn inward, building the capacity for self-reflection, emotional awareness, and reconnection with one another.
What it suggests is that self-reflection and emotional literacy are not peripheral to a sustainable transition - they are core skills it requires. And if that future depends on our capacity to reflect and reconnect, then understanding, and staying connected to, our past becomes a precondition, not an afterthought. That's why learning from the past, and understanding the collective traumas people carry, sits at the heart of this experiment.
Our approach
- How do we learn from the past that keeps surfacing in current decisions, so we can better support future opportunities?
- How do we understand the collective traumas that specific groups, communities, or citizens carry, so policies can be designed with that in mind rather than in spite of it?
Answering them starts with a specially designed workshop, supported by a trauma expert, that helps us map a community's historical and emotional context, identify its recurring trauma themes, translate them into practical policy adaptations, and establish trust principles for future work - with this, we take the first step.
As a first example, we worked with the Directorate-General for Agriculture to uncover the historical experiences and collective traumas shaping farmers today - surfacing patterns that had gone unnamed, and offering DG Agriculture a clearer, more honest foundation to draw on for its initiatives, communication, and policies.
The workshop led to more than a single exercise. Its findings are now inspiring the follow-up to the Strategy for Generational Renewal in Agriculture, and have reached other units, who are drawing on them as guidance for their own work.
What we learned
A trauma-informed approach is not a replacement for evidence-based policymaking - it is a qualitative performance upgrade. By accounting for trust dynamics, historical context, and behavioural risk, institutions can design policies that are not only technically sound, but durable, legitimate, and effective over time – intergenerational fair policies.
- Treat major reforms as social events, not just administrative acts
- Design transitions with predictability and multi-year horizons
- Prioritize dignity, transparency, and agency over control
- Frame communication around partnership and shared responsibility
Build trust intentionally – as a strategic asset, not a by-product
“Thanks to trauma-informed approaches, we feel humble, moved, closer to farmers; this should help for building better understanding and more trust in policy-making”
Policymakers at the Directorate General for agriculture and rural development
Looking ahead
Beyond agriculture, this same process can be used and deepened by any colleague working with a community who wants to understand its past, in order to better support its future.
Inspired by
Inwards is a series of animations where future citizens of Europe, disillusioned with the myth of economic growth, seek to regain agency through self reflection and emotional connection.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Foresight
- Design for policy