Across Italy, a new generation is redefining what it means to be a farmer. While most sectors led by under-35s – such as construction, retail, textiles, and telecommunications – have declined over the past decade, agriculture stands out as the only one experiencing growth. According to Coldiretti Giovani Impresa, which represents young Italian farmers, increasing numbers of young people are leaving well-paid urban careers to return to the land – motivated by questions of food, ecology, meaning, and livelihood.
This programme situates itself within this transition. It explores how entrepreneurship, design, post-growth thinking, and a nature-positive ethic can support new regenerative pathways for living and working with the land.
Learning with nature
Through the lenses of aquapreneurship, soilpreneurship, and species-stewardship, participants will rethink value creation by learning to collaborate with natural systems rather than extract from them. These perspectives invite students to approach food, culture, and landscape from more-than-human viewpoints, reframing agriculture as a relational, ecological, and cultural practice.
A real place, a real project
The programme is rooted in a real-life project in Tuscany, working directly with a small-scale farm producing wine, olive oil, honey, and more. This immersive, Italy-specific experience draws on ancient, traditional, and contemporary agricultural knowledge to inform sustainable farming methods and regenerative lifestyles today.
Participants actively engage with the local context – its history, community, and ecosystems – while responding to contemporary challenges related to climate, food systems, and rural livelihoods.
Monte Preti: a living laboratory
The programme takes place at Monte Preti, a working farm and nature academy located in the hills of Versilia near Pietrasanta. With a long-standing food culture, Monte Preti is reimagining the historical mezzadria (sharecropping) system by regenerating vineyards and olive groves back into production.
At the same time, it functions as a living laboratory for post-growth experimentation. Drawing inspiration from Italian agricultural heritage – such as the Etruscan living trellis system (Vite Maritata) and the mezzadria sharecropping system – the farm adapts these practices to present and future climatic and social conditions.
Monte Preti is both a farm and a testbed for multi-species learning, where humans, plants, soils, and ecosystems are treated as co-educators.
How the programme unfolds
The programme includes immersive site visits, expert seminars, fieldwork, and a farm school, alongside living and working within the local community of Pietrasanta. Students develop research skills, hands-on experience, and multidisciplinary collaboration through direct engagement with place.
Participants are supported by a diverse team of experts and invited guest faculty from both Sweden and Italy.
A shared, international learning environment
This year, participants from SSES will be joined by 10 students from IED Torino’s Master’s programme Social Ecological Design: Regenerative Practices for Everyday Life. Bringing together participants from SSES and IED, the programme creates a rich interdisciplinary and intercultural learning environment. Ied.edu
Over an intensive 10-day experience, students live, work, build, and imagine together. Collaborative teams develop three hands-on prototypes addressing aquapreneurship, soilpreneurship, and species-stewardship. The experience is demanding, energising, and deeply convivial – marked by curiosity, humour, critical dialogue, and, of course, delicious shared meals.
Why this matters
The programme encourages critical reflection on how ancient knowledge can be reinterpreted to address contemporary challenges related to climate, food systems, society, and entrepreneurship. It aims to empower participants to become regenerative change-makers – capable of integrating design, ecological thinking, and post-growth values to imagine resilient agricultural practices and sustainable ways of living for the future.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the programme, participants will be able to:
- Re-envision what “value” means in regenerative entrepreneurship through a post-growth lens, in light of current climatic, economic, and social challenges
- Reconnect with and value nature as a foundation for sustainable and regenerative design practices
- Understand Italy’s ancient, traditional, and contemporary agricultural systems
- Analyse local Tuscan food production and sustainable tourism contexts to propose innovative, real-world solutions
- Apply low-tech and nature-based design approaches, including biomimicry and post-growth thinking, to food systems
- Critically reflect on the complexities of designing for regenerative food production, consumption, and lifestyles
- Develop site-specific design proposals for sustainable food futures through hands-on, design-driven exploration
References
Article in the Guardian
Coldiretti Giovani Impresa: The Italian Young Farmers
Build your toolkit with Entrepreneurial Mindset and Trendspotting and Future Thinking, then go research-first with these Research Recaps: The Actual Skills You Need for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Teaching the Future Before It Arrives.
About the instructor
Anna Maria Orrù, PhD
Bootcamp Instructor / Teacher
Affiliated Senior Lecturer Konstfack – University of Arts, Crafts and Design
Co-founder Nordic Biomimicry
Dr. Anna Maria Orrù has been actively involved as an educator, professional researcher, and enthusiastic advocate in the field of biomimicry since 2003. She has worked within architecture since 1999, both in practice and research with Grimshaw Architects, Exploration Architecture, and Arup Group in London, as well as internationally. In 2010, she moved to Sweden and has since been teaching, researching, and driving biomimicry education in various Swedish universities. She earned her PhD from Chalmers University of Technology in 2017, with a dissertation titled “Wild Poethics,” exploring nature-inspired sustainable design through artistic research and embodied methodologies. Dr. Orrù also holds an Affiliated Senior Lecturer position at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts & Design, where she spearheads efforts to integrate nature-inspired sustainability into academic programs. Additionally, she is a co-author of the Nordic Council of Ministers’ study on “Biomimicry in the Nordic Countries” and co-founder of Nordic Biomimicry, directing initiatives that harness nature as a source of inspiration; as mentor, measure, and method. To further underpin her service to nature, she is a beekeeper and takes care of a biodynamic vineyard and olive grove in Tuscany. In her continued efforts to co-habit and collaborate with nature, she has embarked on creating a nature academy on her Tuscan farm where she hosts these immersive bootcamps.
Image of Anna Maria Orrù by Christopher Backholm
What is a BootCamp?
SSES Bootcamps are full-time one-week highly interactive deep-dive into an exciting challenge area, where students work alongside each other to learn, solve, bond and grow. This social immersion takes place somewhere around the globe, or in beautiful Stockholm, in collaboration with our world-class academic partners. These bootcamps are designed and developed for engaged and ambitious students, giving them the tools and opportunity to address wicked problems and complex social challenges through interdisciplinary groups. Through a meticulous selection process, we handpick students from each of our six member universities in order to maximise diversity of disciplines, perspectives, cultures, and genders. Bootcamps are completely free and students and alumni of SSES and our six member universities are all welcome to apply.
