Inside the Future Festival Berlin: A Day of Workshops, Inspiration, and a Test Bed for a Post-Growth Tourism Framework

Introduction

As Inholland, we’re partners of Pakhuis de Zwijger (PdZ) in the ConnAct program, a European-funded project focused on sharing knowledge and connecting expertise across the bloc. Five cities are taking part, each with their own thematic focus around themes centring climate change, the increasing polarization of society, and the perspective of minority groups on such crises. In Amsterdam, our focus is Regenerative Tourism, while Berlin’s is Sustainability in the City and the role of minorities and climate justice.

Inholland acts as the knowledge partner for Pakhuis de Zwijger, bringing our expertise in Regenerative Tourism to the table, both to advance this topic among the other participating cities and with our own partners here in the Netherlands. Back in December 2025, we co-created an exciting two-day program with PdZ and the Gemeente Amsterdam, where representatives of the four cities travelled to Amsterdam to learn about regeneration and take this knowledge back to their tourism work. The program comprised a walking tour through Amsterdam Noord where the Urban Leisure & Tourism Living Lab methodology and its prototypes came to life, a hackathon-style workshop tackling the tricky relationship between AI and Regenerative Tourism, and an expert panel discussing regenerative tourism practices in Amsterdam and the wider region. The event was a success! It exceeded participant numbers’ expectations, and it paved the way for the larger Regenerative Tourism Festival that will take place on the 7^th and 8^th October 2026.

Berlin

At the end of April, I took the night train to Berlin for a full day at the Future Festival Berlin – Sustainable Spaces for All, representing Inholland. My goals were to bring knowledge gathered there back home and present my own ongoing work on post-growth tourism to the Berlin audience. The program covered mobility, housing, tourism, and public space, all framed around climate change and the social challenges affecting cities across Europe, such as the housing crisis. The festival took place in the Silent Green Kulturquartier in Berlin-Wedding, a beautiful venue that opened its doors to urban planners, mobility specialists, professionals, and the general public alike.

It was a concise and interactive program. I joined the “Designing Utopias in Practice” workshop, a condensed, one-hour version of a futures-visualizing methodology that normally takes days to complete by Dr. Thomas Mehlhausen from Futuria Berlin. There was also a decolonial city tour of Wedding’s African Quarter, run by DESTA, which unfortunately overlapped with the Utopia workshop, so I couldn’t attend. From what I heard, though, participants explored how street names and existing buildings in the neighbourhood still carry traces of Germany’s colonial history. It reminded me of the Migrantour project in the Lombok neighbourhood in Utrecht, which highlights the colonial history of the Netherlands presented in that area, and run by migrants.

Post-growth tourism framework’s first test

I was also invited to lead a workshop called “Regenerative Tourism: travelling responsibly and equitably”, one of the parallel sessions held in the morning. It was a great opportunity to put my post-growth tourism framework into practice, a framework that brings together regenerative and degrowth theories to help diagnose where tourism initiatives currently stand on the path toward a post-growth tourism system. At its core, post-growth tourism prioritizes human and non-human wellbeing over economic growth. So, with the permission of participants, I proposed slightly changing the scope of the session to encompass more than regeneration.

The framework consists of five characteristics that define a post-growth initiative, drawing on both degrowth and regenerative perspectives, along with a set of guiding questions to help diagnose tourism initiatives. It’s currently being reworked into a new iteration, but the version shared at the workshop looked like this:

During the workshop, participants used this framework to redesign a tourism initiative of their choice. I split everyone into groups of three or four and asked them to:

1. Pick a tourism initiative they knew well: a tour, cultural venue, restaurant, hotel, etc.
2. Diagnose it using the framework, identifying its two or three biggest gaps.
3. Redesign it to better align with the framework, focusing on changes that could realistically be implemented right away.

The examples that emerged were diverse. One group looked at a music festival in a small Portuguese town and proposed weaving in more local elements, such as homemade meals and a stand from the town’s own supermarket on the festival grounds. Another group tackled the Berlin City Card, suggesting it include events that are typically only attended by local residents, and add small scale businesses and restaurants, as well as activities that don’t need to turn a profit. A third group took on the HomeExchange platform, questioning what kind of travel it currently encourages and proposing financial incentives to promote more sustainable travel, with a particular focus on rural home exchanges.

It was a great first trial for the framework, and I gathered some valuable feedback from participants. Overall, the response to using the framework reflectively was positive, though some people found the characteristics still a bit too abstract. A common theme was the difficulty of decentring growth and profit from the goals of tourism initiatives.

This gave me confidence that the framework is on the right track. Alongside refining it conceptually, my next focus is making it more usable for a non-academic audience. Tweaking the framework questions so they clearly apply to a tourism initiative, and by answering them arrive to a good understanding of how well the initiative fits each characteristic, should go a long way towards making the framework more accessible.

But going back to the conference…

A few best practices were also shared during the day that are worth mentioning here.

One municipality wanted to strengthen citizen participation but found that coming into the municipal office for a conversation was too big a barrier for many people. Their solution was wonderfully creative: living room get-togethers at community members’ homes. This let municipal employees talk with citizens in a relaxed, informal setting, including discussing problems that might literally be visible through the living room window.

Another topic that came up was car-free cities and Berlin’s plans to move away from car dependency. In one workshop, participants discussed transitions already underway in other, more densely populated cities. One proposed solution was to make car use more restrictive. Housing was also on the table, with the case of Berlin shared as an example, looking at socialising private housing to ensure more people have access to affordable homes.

One of the great interactive elements of the conference was an idea board, where participants were invited to share ideas for improving their cities. Everyone got stickers to vote for their favourite suggestions, and the most popular one would win a prize. Many submissions touched on the idea of third spaces. I believe this shows how the lack of places to relax, be, and meet, without having to spend money, are a common problem in many places. My suggestion focused on cleaning up city waters to make them swimmable, since free, accessible recreation spaces within a city can really boost liveability. I was inspired by Zurich’s example, a city that I love to visit in summer. Unfortunately, mine didn’t win.

Toward the end of the event, all workshop groups shared their outcomes, and a talented artist created a live drawing that brought together all the elements of the day.

The Future Festival Berlin – Sustainable Spaces for All, was a day of testing ideas, making connections, and finding inspiration. As a final reflexion, the audience itself stood out for me, mobility and urbanism professionals were mixed with elderly citizens and students. This diverse audience was accommodating and open, it felt that we all shared a common wish to see cities improving climatically and socially, for everyone. Spaces like this, built around connection and exchange, give me hope that there’s enough momentum to push things toward a better future. I thank the ConnAct program and Inholland for the support to attend myself.