OPEN SPACE TECHNOLOGY

Co-Weaving Our Gathering Using Open Space Technology

Have you experienced a gathering or conference where the most nourishing or inspiring conversations happened in between scheduled workshops? Open Space Technology draws on that magic and turns it into our main afternoon canvas.

This year, the heartbeat of our gathering is a powerful invitation: To Dare to Trust. With our mornings a beautifully curated scheduled programme, our afternoons will be a different take on a living practice of this theme. Stepping out of rigid structures into the collective wisdom and impulses of our community.

If there is a burning question you want to explore, a project you need feedback on, a meeting you want to host, or a desire to wander and see where you land – this is your space to create completely in the moment.

ANGEL MATILLA, JAKE JAY-LEWIS, & LAURA KAESTELE

OST Facilitators

More about the facilitators
Workshop-holder Bio

Pronouns: he/him

Angel lives at Arterra Bizimodu (https://arterrabizimodu.org/) ecovillage and is best known across the GEN Europe network as its IT Manager, promoting digital sovereignty and FOSS. Over nine years of communal living, he has explored regenerative alternatives and sought resilient pathways toward a more equitable future. Along the way he has accumulated extensive facilitation experience across GEN Europe and Arterra Bizimodu, and trained formally at the IIFACE Institute (https://iiface.org/). During the Gathering, he will be hosting the Open Space Technology sessions each afternoon — holding space for emergent conversations.

Pronouns: he/him

Jake is a facilitator and systems thinker with 10+ years of experience empowering people and organisations towards effective and caring collaborations. He draws on his training in process-oriented psychology, Sociocracy 3.0, and a range of other systemic, personal, and organisational modalities, alongside visits to 50+ community projects worldwide. He works with collective intelligence, relational dynamics, and organisational evolution. Born into the Findhorn Ecovillage, Scotland, where he’s currently building his home, he’s been involved in GEN for many years, including co-founding NextGEN in its current form and recently as a GEN EU Council member.

Each morning, our gathering’s overarching theme and the harvest from the previous day will spark fresh guiding questions. From there, we will build the afternoon’s schedule – together.

We’ll have 6 dedicated workshop spaces (including the Main Stage, Seminar and Flow House, and our outdoor off-grid areas), and as many spontaneous meeting spots as you like, available. There will be no pre-submitted applications, no academic filters; just a fresh invitation each morning to sense into what’s arising in the moment, a blank schedule to fill in, and templates for your offers, ideas, or requests.

The facilitation team will support the allocation of spaces and hold some structure for coming together to clarify offers, disseminate resources, and for our spreading out throughout the site.

We will then come together for a facilitated collective harvest to share our learnings as wide as possible through the ‘field’.

Graphic facilitators will be present to visualise what emerges

  • Dive Deep: Discuss topics that are actively alive in you; expanding on or filling gaps from the formal programme.
  • Weave Networks: Gather people around specific project ideas, regional alliances, or shared ecovillage challenges.
  • Co-Create: Move past static presentations and into collaborative, lively discussions.

 A gentle reminder: This is not meant as slots for workshops or offerings that missed the main program selection. This is a container for responding to what’s emerging in the present; for authentic conversation and sharing wisdom.

Our afternoons will morph and shift alongside the beat and flow of the gathering:

  • Days 1 – 3: We gather, check and clarify the offerings and requests, and disperse. At the end of each afternoon, we will come back together for the collective harvest.
  • Day 4: Our final afternoon will have no parallel streams and more time. We will use this to weave any loose or open threads of our week together as we start to embed and integrate our experiences before the closing ceremony in the evening.

🌿 The Core Wisdom: Four Principles & One Law

OST functions beautifully when we trust each other to take personal responsibility for our time, energy, and attention. We live by these simple, organic truths:

Deeply focused conversation between three passionate souls is infinitely more powerful than a room of fifty half-engaged.

We release expectations and welcome the magic of what unfolds.

 
 

 

 

Don’t wait. Trust that this moment, with these people, in this place – is exactly right. 

Don’t push! When the energy is fading, trust that flow and move on.

👣 The Law of Movement (Our Ultimate Agreement)

If you find your attention waning, for whatever reason, if you are neither learning nor contributing, leave.

Listen to your body, remember your agency, move on, whether to a different circle, to wander the EXPO, for a quiet rest, or just see where you end up.

In OST, moving on isn’t rude; it is an act of deep self-care and respect for the collective energy. By honouring this law, you’re fulfilling one of two beautiful and important roles:

Sitting quietly by a tree or in the cafe, creating quiet spaces for the unexpected.

We release expectations and welcome the magic of what unfolds.

 
 

 

Just remember, to please return back to the collective harvest time. All inputs and witnesses bring value.

 
 

 

 

"I love to be among people who seriously believe that a new world is possible. At the gatherings, I meet the passion of young people and the thoughtfulness of elders who have thought deeply about how it is possible and why it is difficult."
2025 Gathering Participant