ReThinkable Festival

What is RETHINKABLE? ReThinkable is not just a festival. It’s a process, a platform, and a growing community that works year-round to imagine and test new ways of living and working—starting from the borderlands between Italy and Slovenia. What began as a local initiative in Northeastern Italy has become a unique gathering in the heart of Europe.

Every October, ReThinkable creates a shared space for dialogue, experimentation, and concrete action—bringing together communities, institutions, and innovators to tackle urgent social, economic, and ecological challenges. The strength of ReThinkable lies in its context: a place shaped by crossings—of cultures, languages, landscapes. This mix has become a laboratory where new models of cooperation, resilience, and sustainable development are tried and tested. 

It’s not just about showcasing good ideas—it’s about doing the work, together. Each edition explores a specific theme, rooted in the needs of the moment. From food autonomy to shared resources, from feminist economies to ecological transition, ReThinkable evolves with its surroundings, adapting formats, tools, and partnerships. It’s a festival that moves—across places, disciplines, and generations. The motto “there is no more time” speaks clearly to the urgency many young people feel today. But ReThinkable doesn’t stop at raising awareness.

It combines culture with action—offering hands-on tools, stories, and paths for participation. Because rethinking is not enough. We need to reshape. ReThinkable is for anyone who wants to explore alternatives to business-as-usual. It’s a space to meet others walking similar paths, to share what works (and what doesn’t), and to imagine what comes next—together. A project rooted in local realities, with a vision that reaches far beyond them. Invest in a model of development that puts inclusion and imagination at its core.

The ReThinkable Festival returns in 2025 with a programme that moves decisively from ideas to practice. After three editions of exploring transformative economies and cross-border collaboration, this year’s festival focuses on (In)dependency(ies) — a theme chosen as both an invitation and a provocation. What does it mean to be independent in a world that is increasingly interconnected? Can anyone truly stand alone? The very notion of independence is both absurd and revealing.

Too often it is misunderstood as separation, when in fact what we call “independency” is always built from interdependencies — social, ecological, cultural, and economic — that bind us together. This year’s festival challenges us to re-imagine independence not as isolation, but as the capacity to act, decide, and create within networks of reciprocity. From energy and food to knowledge and culture, we will ask how autonomy can be reshaped into forms that make communities more resilient, fair, and adaptive.

ReThinkable 2025 unfolds across the twin cities of Gorizia and Nova Gorica, offering workshops, talks, artistic interventions, and immersive experiences that blur the lines between practice and theory. The goal is not only to rethink but to remake: to leave the festival with skills, tools, and shared visions that outlive the event itself.