Alex Stobart, event attendee, summarises his experience at the Re-Thinking Scotland’s Economy event, convened by SCVO as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science Week. The event took place at the Lighthouse on 8 November and was described by Alex as ‘well spirited and interactive’.

After a light breakfast, we had three speakers up first, of whom one was passionate about the opportunities for Scotland’s future economy, one spoke about the advantages and opportunities of a shorter working week and the final one talked about public policy challenges, including the difficulty for the government in innovation in policy.

Common Weal’s arguments were well made and well received, based on those I spoke with afterwards. Some people were prompted to offer personal contributions on policy innovation. That’s a helpful sign that people turned words into deeds. The Aberdeen Professor will hopefully receive some inputs as well.

After questions and answers, we moved to interactive dialogue at each of ten or so tables, and captured people's contributions and views. This was a cross sector slice – we heard from civil servants, third sector, town planners, SCVO and museums & galleries. People coming to the table later all said they appreciated having the chance to go to a number of round tables and each was discussing different, but related subjects.

Facilators and dialoguers gathered around issues of the Human Kind Index, those campaigning for citizen income and living wages as well as those engaged in employee ownership, community financing, digital empowerment, ethical investment, and banking reform.

We were definitely at the right place for knowledge and understanding of the subjects. Everyone knew their area of operation. It was broadly an audience of those in the know. As a result, those under 30 and over 65 were underrepresented which always poses a challenge to cross sector dialogue.

Next year, we hope to see how the re-thinking, and "Future Shape of Scotland " can be taken further afield and to a wider audience. If the dialogue is happening in community centres, sheltered housing complexes, football pitches, villages, bowling greens and faith gatherings, we can expect to see more ideas.