# Vignette 20: North Macedonia's Dream Labs
North Macedonia faces with social and political polarization, a prolonged EU accession process, economic uncertainty, and a degree of disconnection between the public and policy-making, coupled with institutional distrust. In 2021, the UNDP Accelerator Lab in North Macedonia explored ways to involve diverse stakeholders in policy-making, learn from global innovations, build societal capacity for future challenges, and collectively define and work towards shared aspirations for the country's development.
To answer fragments of these questions, UNDP in North Macedonia designed the Dream Labs[\[1\]](#endnote-1) (Figure 35). It was the product of a co-design process between UNDP’s Governance and the Accelerator Lab team, and multiple stakeholders involved in the National Development Strategy process in North Macedonia. The initial framework came from Dark Matter Labs, who suggested to an 'imagination infrastructure.'[\[2\]](#endnote-2) The UNDP team then refined this through discussions with partners and national counterparts to adapt it for the local context. They drew upon their colleagues' experiences with futures methods and foresight playbooks, refining their approach iteratively as they learned.
"We were certain that we wanted to have diverse input," explains Lazar Pop Ivanov, Head of Experimentation at UNDP. "People that are not usually part of public policymaking processes were very important to be part of this." The team also insisted that the content produced within the Dream Labs should feed directly into programming and policy, such as the National Development Strategy that was adopted in 2024 by the Macedonian Parliament, ensuring participants could see concrete results.
Rather than getting trapped in present-day political polarization, the labs encouraged participants to explore development scenarios 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ahead, working backward to identify pathways forward. Since its adoption, Dream Labs had engaged over 10,000 citizens in constructing societal visions for the decades ahead and mapping capability gaps. The initiative expanded beyond UNDP, with institutions like the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences adopting the methodology. The labs' insights shaped policy conversations and helped experts and institutions frame key documents differently.
The Dream Labs established clear principles: they had to be inclusive and engaging for all citizens, informed by evidence, collaborative in nature, and experimental in format. Most importantly, they centered on the premise that societies can collectively imagine futures together[\[3\]](#endnote-3). The results fed directly into North Macedonia's National Development Strategy, demonstrating how participatory imagination could reshape traditional planning processes.
{% hint style="info" %}
#### **Key takeaways:**
* **Create spaces for collective imagination:** Bring together unusual combinations of stakeholders who rarely interact to generate new perspectives and explore various future scenarios and possibilities.
* **Connect vision to action:** Ensure imaginative exercises translate into concrete actions that influence policy and programming.
* **Embrace experimentation:** Test different formats and approaches (online, offline, short sessions, full-day workshops) to find what works best.
* **Build lasting capacity:** Train institutions to facilitate their own futures exercises, embedding this practice into their policy processes.
{% endhint %}
***
## Notes
1. Pop Ivanov & Cvetanovska Gugoska (2022) [↑](#endnote-ref-1)
2. See Lapalme, Grettve & Zaidi (2022). [↑](#endnote-ref-2)
3. Also see the work of Geoff Mulgan (2020) and Cassie Robinson (2022) on social imagination. [↑](#endnote-ref-3)
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