RISE Summit 2026 · Civic Labs
Uncovering a shared map of a sustainable and thriving rural Vermont — and the tools to start building it.
At the RISE Summit, we ran an experiment: could a roomful of people, with the help of some digital tools, build a network of solutions together in the time it takes to eat lunch? This is what we made.
During the lunch and learn we wanted to explore: can we increase civic participation by centering solutions around a shared common objective, mapping clear steps toward impact, and making the whole process fun and exciting to take part in?
The goal was to treat this as a genuine experiment: a new tool, a fresh audience, and a shared goal, to see how this approach can uncover and empower the solutions we share together.
Three questions were on the table — each one a bet that could have failed:
"Can a room move from a shared aspiration to the bones of a real action plan, together, in real time?"
✓ successFrom one collective intention came 17 components and 60 concrete pieces — the skeleton of a plan, in 45 minutes.
"Can we match what a community needs to what those who make it up can bring, in a way that forms a viable foundation for action?"
✓ success78 offers came in and made 102 connections to real needs. The foundation isn't hypothetical — it's mapped just below.
"Can doing a civic exercise like this be a fun and inspiring experience, driving participation and energy instead of draining it?"
✓ successWe had a great time! The tool was alive, exciting, and felt "like a fun game." Thank you to everyone who shared their reactions with us!
Within 45 minutes, a room of attendees created dozens of concrete actions to start making the rural communities we want to live in — starting right now.
From that one aspiration, the room named 17 components — the things that have to be true for that goal to come to life — then filled them with concrete pieces we need, and finally named all the tools people could bring. This let us see quickly, in real time, where the room felt the needs most strongly and which tools are most readily available. Here's where the room leaned hardest, and what it felt like when a piece found its tool.
Thriving rural communities mean places to simply be together — outside home and work. Creating them takes funding, vision, leadership, and ongoing community will. This was the room's clear center of gravity.
To achieve this part of our future, here are a few of the needs the room named, and the tools the room provided to meet each.
The foundation rural Vermont needs to stay alive — without it, workers leave and families can't stay. Closing the gap takes local champions, smart policy, updated rules, and real public investment.
To achieve this part of our future, here are a few of the needs the room named, and the tools the room provided to meet each.
The heartbeat of a thriving rural community — connecting residents to investment, training, fair wages, and clear paths from school to career.
To achieve this part of our future, here are a few of the needs the room named, and the tools the room provided to meet each.
Outdoor recreation, local food, music, and markets aren't amenities — they're the engine of community vitality, and what makes rural Vermont a place people choose, return to, and stay in.
To achieve this part of our future, here are a few of the needs the room named, and the tools the room provided to meet each.
When rural communities can talk across towns, generations, and silos, they make better decisions and waste less effort. The room asked for research, data, and an accessible way to share it.
To achieve this part of our future, here are a few of the needs the room named, and the tools the room provided to meet each.
These are just a few of the needs and ideas — to see them all, explore the tool yourself.
Explore the live map →And the seeds we didn't get to. Just as telling are the components the room named as important but ran out of time to build out. For a process like this one, that's not a gap — it's the agenda for next time.
The most exciting outcome of our experiment wasn't naming the needs — it was finding the answers to them right there in the room. When asked "what can you bring to help create this future?" 78 offers came in: skills, resources, connections, and capacity readily available. They aren't commitments, but they give us a glimpse of the network that's possible. Read together, they point to a handful of shared threads worth exploring as resources we can apply to our rural future.
The room's center of gravity, met with real capacity to create it: meeting space in a historic building, libraries-as-hubs, a community garden, home concerts, fishing programs, event planning.
If we picked one thing to build off of, the energy says start here.
An entire capital ecosystem showed up — grant writing, proposal navigation, mini-grants, housing & small-business financing, and people who know how to move state money.
e.g. VCLF financing & TA, statewide funding connectors, grant-proposal guides.
Strong demand met concrete know-how: zoning & permit reform, transit-oriented development, statewide housing policy, and development financing. The pieces of an actual housing push are present.
There is eagerness and capacity to give our communities a deepened self-understanding: community data, surveys, alternatives analysis, and a door-to-door tool that visualizes who can reach what.
Deep youth and education capacity emerged — student interns, UVM volunteers, school-to-career pathways, community-connected schools. This connects directly to the components we named but didn't finish, and speaks to energy and action waiting to be channeled into solutions.
Maybe the most important thread: the room revealed enough facilitators, conveners, and coaches who offered themselves to help keep this process moving forward. The capacity to organize a community solutions network is, itself, in the network.
Among the offers: a model from Wisconsin's Office of Rural Prosperity for navigating and advocating state resources to build rural capacity — a ready-made template for Vermont, offered up by a group that's already built it.
This experiment tested whether a community can align around a shared future and map it together. We've seen that it can — but alignment isn't the destination. A process that doesn't move us forward toward actualizing the future we've all helped map is just another report on a shelf. The next experiment is bridging that gap, and doing it with "Living Solves."
So what is a Living Solve? It's a simple, repeatable method for turning a thread on the map into real action — the same spirit of toolkit we used to run the experiment at RISE, now aimed at the doing. Three moves:
Take one action from the map and shrink it to a low-stakes experiment a real group can actually run — small enough that trying it is easy and learning from it is cheap.
Put what you've created in front of real people and watch what happens. Treat surprise as information. Know what "value" and "impact" look like, and name clear measures to assess as you test. That data and insight empowers the next phase.
Feed each round's learning into the next and start scaling up in steady steps. Keep the shared intention — and how you're measuring impact — as a north star. Keep the process flowing, grow what's working, and steadily achieve wider and wider impact.
Putting this toolkit to work is the next experiment — and it carries the bets we're most excited to test:
"Can we move from a possible action on the map to a small, real experiment a community can actually run?"
the next betShrink a single need-meets-tool down to something low-stakes enough to try with a community or organization.
"Does starting small and listening produce learning that compounds — each round making the next one more impactful?"
the next betTest and scale impact over time through a measurable process.
"Can making this process fun and rewarding sustain engagement — and can that engagement, in turn, drive stronger outcomes?"
the next betNot a cherry on top of the work, but the engine of it: keep people energized and they keep showing up, and that's what gets things built.
RISE was an experiment in a way of building community solutions networks — aligning a group around a shared intention and the tools to realize it, preparing us to move into creating Living Solves. GameTheory is excited to work with partners interested in continuing to explore and expand this process, from alignment through to measurable action and impact.
If you're curious about trying this to build a future or find your way through a challenge for your community or your organization — let us know.
Tell us where this could work →