48 HOURS

Consultancies are always thinking up ways of improving companies. But what about improving a whole town?

My town has just been through such an exercise. 50 or so young people from a business education college descended on us on Thursday and spent the next 48 hours thinking up ways in which we could make the town a better place in which to live. They came from a wide variety of backgrounds - tourism, energy, entrepreneurship, web design and so on - and came up with some interesting ideas. Whether those ideas get taken up and come to fruition is of course another question entirely. But at least there is something to work on.

This was a first for Denmark. The traditional way of getting things done in a high tax, social democratic society is to ask the local authority to do it. However, times are hard and local authorities are short of cash. So if things are going to get done, then they have to be done by the citizens themselves. A group of people have come together and are trying to do just that; the 48 hours project was their idea, so it bodes well.

I was involved on the periphery, since they used the local cinema to present their ideas. A good example of creative thinking, since it shows that the cinema can be used for things other than just showing films. A point not lost on the mayor, who was on hand to kickstart the 48 hours project; his political party have booked the cinema for a political meeting on a Saturday morning next month.

Walter Blotscher