In the wonderful setting of the Money Museum in Utrecht I recently had the privilege of taking part in a special meeting: an Open Space for a Healthy Neighbourhood – special not just because of the location and the form, but also because of the diverse set of participants. I was curious to see what would come out of such a unique combination.

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The meeting was organized by SEV, KEI, the ‘Kopgroep’ and ‘Woonnetwerk’, working in conjunction with ‘2100’, an agency for independent strategic thinking. Krijn van Beek of 2100 explained how the Open Space idea originated: after holding a multi-day conference, the American Harrison Owen wondered what had made the conference such a success. He soon found the answer: the key to success was the dynamics in the coffee breaks. There people had a face-to-face opportunity to exchange business cards and make appointments for future meetings. This insight spawned Open Space, a forum which gives people the opportunity to share information and ideas on subjects raised by themselves. An attractive idea, because getting an audience to listen to a ‘talking head’ is rarely a recipe for progress.

So it was rather surprising that the Open Space began with … listening to a professor. Willem van Mechelen, of the VU University Medical Center, gave the gathering of over 40 people a lengthy PowerPoint presentation on obesity, health and the public space. The slides were amusing - which was just as well, because the story itself was well-trodden territory: people are getting fatter and fatter – particularly in the lower socio-economic classes – because they exercise too little and eat too much, which is very bad because it makes them ill. Actually, the scientific evidence for this cause-and-effect reasoning is still flimsy; but that was evidently no reason to spoil the fun.

The Open Space itself was a lot more interesting and opened up much more space for other perspectives. The participants came from housing associations, municipal services, educational institutions, healthcare institutions and consultancies. Ministries and health insurers were conspicuous in their absence.

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First of all, the participants were given an opportunity to put their own issues on the agenda; issues that they are keen to discuss with others. The organizers had developed a handy method for this, because within 10 minutes over 20 issues appeared on the board. These were all discussed in three rounds in smaller groups, with each group focusing on one of the issues. Only the proposer was required to discuss his or her issue, the others were entirely free to take part in the group of their choosing, which is exactly how it should be: if the discussion in one group didn’t suit you, you simply moved on to the next one. But I didn’t see many people changing groups, which comprised anything from two to ten participants. One of the issues I raised (how can we give children an active role in designing the public space) proved very fruitful in enabling me to make useful new contacts.

Though this Open Space was sometimes a little muddled, it appealed far more to me than the classic ‘talking head’ approach – let’s save that for genuinely gifted speakers who really have something special to say.