chartrain-min

I am a strategic foresight specialist. I conceptualize, implement and lead strategic foresight projects with Mycelium Creative Studio, a boutique agency.

I also have a recognized expertise in distilled spirits as well as in contemporary art.

Mycelium Creative Studio

Recent Projects

Mycelium is a creative studio working at the intersection of strategic foresight & research, both in France and Germany. We help clients to have an informed vision of their possible futures.

Main areas of expertise:
  • Desk and field research on long term societal changes
  • Trends intelligence (space, food and beverages, museums)
  • Concept, implementation and lead of foresight projects
  • Facilitation of strategic scenarios & trends mapping workshops

Working with:

Recent Works

BIG

Strategic foresight research lead
  • Strategic Foresight Research
  • Desk Research
  • Field Research
  • Delphi Survey
  • Expert Interview
  • Trend tours
  • Focus Group
  • Strategic Foresight Writing
screenshot of the cover of one report about retail made for BIG by valerie chartrain

With BIG (Breakthrough Innovation Group by Pernod Ricard), for example, we lead (2015 to 2018) various 360-degree long-term researches on societal changes such as new retail, female empowerment, or distant togetherness. Our work went from defining the scope to analyzing results and drawing insights for a new strategy. Our research mixed desk, visual as well as field research: strategic watch, trend tours, expert interviews (Delphi method), focus group recruitment, and analysis to delivering compelling and appropriable results.

SPACE'IBLES

European strategic foresight network identification and building.
  • Strategic Foresight Formats
  • Germany
  • Strategic Foresight Network
  • France
  • Europe
screenshot of the cover of a report about foresight network building in europe made for CNES

What if a company need strategic foresight to work across nations, what if an institution decided to open up to members from another country? For Space’ibles, a think tank created by CNES in 2017, we identified the conditions, partners and formats under which it could gradually open up to other countries to co-develop strategic foresight projects serving the European spatial ecosystem.

CNES

Scenario workshop concept and moderation
  • Scenario Workshops
  • Strategic Foresight
  • Moderation
  • France
  • Germany
screenshopt during an online strategic foresight workshop with the CNES

In June 2020, France and Germany expressed the wish to elaborate a joint strategic foresight work in the field of space activities, the first focus of which would address lunar resources. The innovation of this project resided in the diversity of the participants, traditional and not traditional space actors -including space agencies, academia, industry and start-ups- as well as the attempt to co-develop the tools which would help producing French-German foresight work in the long run. We co-elaborated an ad hoc scenario building methodology and moderated the several workshops leading to concrete recommendations to the both agencies in June 2021.

This site gives an insight into my multifaceted activities, which of course feed each other. Strategic foresight cannot be satisfied with thinking in silos. It must constantly be informed and challenged by other disciplines or sectors and by new knowledge.

Please check the dedicated websites for details, philosophy, case studies and methodology.

The Beverage Bureau

Recent Projects

With The Beverage Bureau I develop educational programs in/for the spirits industry as well as trends and forecasting workshops for trade shows, or producers.

Main areas of expertise:

  • Conception of conferences, masterclasses, seminars, pop-up events, podcasts, small scale trade shows, etc.
  • Training and education: tasting workshops masterclass, jury
  • Trends mapping workshops
Working with:

Recent Works

SPIRITSFULLY

Education in spirits making and tasting
  • Tasting
  • Spirits
  • Education
screenhot of spiritsfully website

The Beverage Bureau is at the origin of the unique educational platform Spiritsfully offering free access to information about alcohol making and promoting educated drinking as well as in depth classes for WSET students.

OLLY MASION

Online and Offline Tasting workshops
  • Tasting
  • Spirits
  • Education
photo of an online workshop gin and tonic online tasting workshop
photo of a non alcholoc drink tasting workshop for bartenders

I regularly organises and leads tasting workshops in French, English or German for amateurs, professionals (bartenders) and other companies (team building) on subjects such as „non-alcoholic spirits“ or „gin and tonic“ or „European wines“ in collaboration with Olly Masion.

CRAFT SPIRITS BERLIN

Conference program concept and lead
  • Spirits Education
  • Moderation
  • Conference
  • Masterclass
  • Conception
  • Implementation
  • Craft Spirits
photo of a conference at craft spirit berlin in 2019
Since 2018, I annually design and implement a conference series for Craft Spirits Berlin, the leading fair in Europe for craft spirits showcasing the latest trends and most innovative products while providing hands-on education for end-consumers.

BUSINESS FRANCE

Trends Masterclass
  • Moderation
  • Masterclass
  • Craft Beer
  • Craft Spirits
  • Craft Ciders
  • Trends
picture of the powerpoint presentaiton

I lately animated a Trend Workshop on Craft spirits to help French producers navigating this new market and its specificities in the DACH countries for Business France.

NULLPROZENT

Bespoke event concept and development
  • Non-alcoholic products
  • Event
  • Späti
  • Collaboration
photo of the first alcohol free late night shop in Germany

The Beverage Bureau comes up with ad hoc formats for the spirits industry, such as the first nonalcoholic pop-up store („spaeti“) in Germany in October 2020 created with nuechtern to promote nonalcoholic adults beverages in a pandemic year during which fairs couldn’t take place.

CRAFT SPIRITS AWARDS

Jury for clear spirits
  • Non-alcoholic products
  • Testing
  • Clear spirits
valerie chartrain testing clear spirits at craft spirits award 2019

Since 2018 I contribute to the jury of Craft Spirits Awards in Berlin, in the clear spirits section.

COCKTAIL KULTUR

Podcast series concept and development.
  • Podcast
  • Berlin
  • Bartenders
  • Innovation
cover art for cocktail kultur podcast series

For Artisan Bar Camp, animated by Robert Schroeter from Cocktail Akademie, I developed a podcast series giving the floor to innovate bartenders from Germany, Switzerland and East European countries, still ongoing since 2019. It can be listened to here.

#LesFrenchWineDays

Jury
  • Tasting
  • Spirits
  • Craft
  • Beer
  • Cider
picture taking during a professional craft beer tasting during french wines days 2021

I lately supervised the craft beer, cider and spirits selection for Business France’s initiative for Prowein #lesFrenchWineDays 2021 (selection, tasting notes for Meininger Wines Magazine, Masterclass to introduce the top 10 to importers from Germany, Austria, Swiss and Netherlands).

To sum up, I define myself as a neo generalist. I transfer knowledge and ideas. Being a generalist today is a new form of knowledge brokering. I build bridges between people, ideas, concepts. I inhabit the space between particular fields — a vulnerable position filled with precarity, yet richly rewarding and advantageous for it allows to pull together fragments, assemble puzzle pieces.
This broadens the base from which I build forward thinking, in action, for whom I work with.

“In a historical context, clusters of knowledge formed around a craft or discipline have played a major role in the development of societies. Murano [a group of islands north of Venice, ed.) became a center for glassmaking (…). It is, however, not the hoarding of knowledge that produces important innovations.(…). The invention of greenhouses, spectacles, microscopes, telescopes and the camera all depended on utilising glass in new ways. But it was not the glassmakers of Murano that came up with these innovations. They did not have the imagination, ingenuity or skills to apply their specialised knowledge to other domains. The lesson to take away, is that information spillovers depend on people who can cross boundaries, bring a broader perspective into consideration and apply existing knowledge in a different context.”

The Neo-Generalist, by Kenneth Mikkelsen and Richard Martin,
2019 (English Edition)

Art, Artists, Idea

Recent Projects

Since 2002 I’ve been active in the contemporary art world through several medium: magazines, books, exhibitions and galleries. I now favor activities that have an anticipatory dimension.

Main areas of expertise:

  • exhibition: concepts and organisation
  • discursive event / symposium: concepts and organisation
  • publication: editing and supervision
  • custom made research for artists
Working with:

Recent Works

GOETHE INSTITUT MINNEAPOLIS

Symposium concept and implementation
  • Symposium
  • Conference
  • Concept
  • Implementation
  • Talent Scouting
  • Moderation
image taken during Passages, a symposium in Minneapolis

From October 2018 to October 2019, the Goethe Pop Up Minneapolis hosted exhibitions, performances, screenings, and discussions in a vitrine-like retail space amidst an 18-kilometer-long indoor artificial gangway and pedestrian bridge network. I was asked to conclude a year and a half contemporary art exhibition program with a two-day symposium reflecting on the program bringing local and international guests into the discussion.

PETUNIA

Magazine Direction
  • Edition
  • Publication
  • Fundraising
  • Coordination
  • Project Management
screenshot of the website of petuniamagazine.eu

Starting 2009 and for almost 10 years I co-directed the publication petunia, an offline and online intersectional feminist art and entertainment yearly journal and event maker. Cofounded with artist Lili Reynaud Dewar and curator Dorothée Dupuis in 2009, Petunia regularly comes back with thought-provoking or controversial points of view on contemporary culture, in the form of exhibitions and conferences.

KUNSTHALLE FRI-ART FRIBOURG

Exhibition curation
  • Publication
  • Fundraising
  • Exhibition curation
  • Project Management
exhibition views of pro choice in 2013

For example, Pro-Choice was a group show which took place from May to August 18th 2013 at the Kunsthalle Fribourg in Switzerland. Pro-Choice wished to absorb and reflect the myriad of strategies artists can choose to make and create work from, to show how these choices generate meaning and how artists are bound to these meanings. From the refusal to produce at all to the reproduction, theft, copy, invention of alter egos, the show questioned the affirmation of the self at the core of the production process.

My professional life is a succession of sequences unfolding in parallel and not successively. It is also marked by a permanent training & learning.

Contact

Follow

Berlin

Tempelhofer Ufer 1A
10961 Berlin — Germany

Paris