As landscape planner and ‘Green and the City’ programme officer (Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality), I too am keen to help incubate new concepts for a healthy society. So I jump on my bike and cycle to the ‘Binckhorst’ industrial estate. But not before one of my colleagues had indignantly exclaimed: Where?? An industrial estate?? Yes, an industrial estate. But ‘Binckhorst’ is special, close to the centre of The Hague. A place full of potential and promise. Which is what ‘Zinnoveren09’ is all about.

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Choosing is not my strong point. So I am delighted that everyone gets a chance to think about all four themes first: new diets, a web 2.0 approach to health, healthy neighbourhoods and sustainable schools. I can let myself be inspired by the keywords that the other participants come up with for each of the themes; express my wishes; muse about a healthy society where anything goes; and then take my thoughts still further.

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No holds are barred! How liberating! After a few hours of this creative free-for-all, my brain is in a whirl: names, ideas, organizations and concepts keep spinning round my head. Wonderful ‘PastFood’ flavours seduce my taste buds. All senses are mobilized. Cards are exchanged around me. I take it all in. Enjoying the energy around me. Meanwhile cartoons and computer animations, made on the spot by artists, stimulate our creativity. It’s intriguing to see how a text-packed flip chart can be powerfully visualized in a cartoon that needs no words. Plenary summaries are punctuated by strange background noises of screaming people and babbling babies coming out of the monitors. It feels a bit surreal.

Slowly we are all building up to a climax. You can sense it in the air. Choosing between concepts and wishes from your group, in constantly alternating couples, phrasing questions that trigger still more brainstorming. With tasty slow coffee to keep us going. Then more flights of fancy: do-your-own-thing spaces, idea factories, idyllic green bus shelters: ‘from forced meeting to sweet greeting’. Finally, you and your own concept are snapped on camera. And when you are reunited with the other groups at the end of the day, you see that they too have come up with lots of brilliant ideas.

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I feel like I have been immersed in a creative extravaganza. Pink and blue duplo building blocks must decide the issue, but I am not nearly ready for that yet.

As I leave the building, someone asks me whether I have anything else to say.... My silent and probably rather bewildered expression may suggest that I feel empty inside, but actually I feel full, enriched and totally satisfied. I need to do this more often….

Femke van Bree works at the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality