Social Farming LIVING LABS
UPFARM Living Labs
Where communities, farms, and institutions co-create inclusive and regenerative futures
The UPFARM Living Labs are real-life spaces of experimentation located in four health zones across Tuscany – Valdinievole, Piana di Lucca, South-East Florence and Pisa – where farmers, institutions, service providers, citizens, and long-term unemployed people collaborate to shape new pathways to job inclusion and empowerment through social farming.
Each Lab builds on the strengths of its community, turning farms, local agricultural practices, and civic networks into environments where inclusion, meaningful work, and social innovation can grow.
People’s experiences and local resources drive the process, ensuring that solutions are grounded in everyday realities.
More than physical places, the Living Labs are open and evolving processes. They offer a space where local actors can imagine, test, and refine ideas that are meant to be shared, adapted, and scaled across the region and beyond.
What the Living Labs do
Co-design Inclusive Job Pathways
Each Living Lab develops and tests new ways to engage and support long-term unemployed people through social farming. Participants help shape the tools, activities, and learning paths they experience.
Build Local Alliances
Social services, employment services, health services, farmers, government institutions, research organisations, third-sector organisations, and citizens come together to create integrated, community-based solutions.
Test Innovative Practices
From profiling tools and tailored work activities to new tutoring models and evaluation methods, the Living Labs experiment with practical approaches that can support quality jobs, wellbeing, and social inclusion.
Generate Knowledge for Scaling
The Labs produce insights, case studies, and prototypes that inform regional strategies and EU-level innovation, turning local experiments into models that others can adopt.
An Open and Evolving Space
Each Living Lab brings its own agricultural traditions, community networks, and institutional structures. UPFARM embraces these differences, turning them into strengths for co-creation. Together with European partners, the Labs connect local experimentation with international perspectives, helping shape solutions that respond to territorial realities while remaining adaptable and scalable across regions.
Discover the Living Labs
Frontrunner Labs
The Frontrunner Living Labs – Piana di Lucca and Pisa – are the first territories where UPFARM tests real job placement pathways in social farming. Working closely with Orti Etici and Calafata, these Labs co-create and implement tailored work experiences for long-term unemployed people, integrating on-farm tasks, personalised tutoring, and joint support from social, employment, and health services.
Their role is to pioneer new tools, methods, and governance solutions that will inform and inspire the work of the other territories, and help shape scalable models for Tuscany and beyond.
Follower Labs
The Follower Living Labs – Valdinievole and South-East Florence – will gradually activate their activities through an open call for expressions of interest, allowing local farms, services, and community organisations to join the UPFARM process.
These Labs will adapt, test, and refine the approaches developed by the Frontrunners, grounding them in their own agricultural traditions and community networks.
Their contribution is essential for validating the model across different contexts, expanding participation, and ensuring the transferability and long-term sustainability of UPFARM’s innovations.
