For a retired raver such as myself, the Arches in Glasgow is the kind of place that brings on euphoric recall. It's my understanding that the less arthritic still go there to throw shapes into the night but, last Sunday, it was the venue for an equally energetic gathering: the Festival of the Common Weal.

Common Weal, describing itself here as a movement of practical idealism for Scotland's future, was established by the Jimmy Reid Foundation and its director, Robin McAlpine, opened the day like a man enjoying a massive headrush.

Six hundred tickets for the event had sold in under two weeks, he said. McAlpine's enthusiasm is radiant. Possible futures - local assemblies! citizen media! a people's Scotland! - tumble forth into the crowd. And it would be easy to dismiss this as giddy fantasy on a weekend when the latest polling appeared to show support for a yes vote flatlining.

But to do so would seem to me to misread what groups like Common Weal are actually about. Firstly, there's an entirely pragmatic acknowledgment that if this isn't the time to think the unthinkable, and to do so with unfettered optimism, then when is?

Secondly, one possible future is a no scenario and so there are questions raised now about how to maintain the momentum and energy of the yes movement in that event, and how the way that this campaign has been conducted will impact politics after the 18th of September.

But does all that unfettered optimism seem, somehow, un-Scottish? I ask because later in the week I followed Yestival, National Collective's crowd-funded summer tour of pro-independence artists, to Edinburgh where John McTernan was giving a talk on patriotism. Not an obvious candidate for Yestival billing, he seemed to revel in his role as unpopular politics lecturer before the mainly young, not always amiable, and formidably informed audience.

"I think the yes campaign is unrealistc and that that is a very un-Scottish thing to be", he told them, adding that he wasn't arguing for Scottish pessimism, but that 'why' and 'how' were great Scottish words, and were the words of the Enlightenment.

"The best case for independence is that it will be costly and difficult and it might go wrong. But nobody in the yes campaign is willing to articulate that or get into the detail on figures," McTernan said.

Interestingly, this was a sentiment echoed by the yes voter sitting next to me. Hannah McKirdy, a Gaelic language and culture student living in Skye, said she was frustrated by the relentless positivity of the yes campaign and the SNP in particular.

"The White Paper skimmed over a lot, which was disappointing, because this was an opportunity to say things won't be great for the first decade," she explained. "For undecideds like my parents, false optimism is off-putting because it's not realistic."

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gerry Hassan and John McTernan at Yestival, Summerhall Photograph: Libby Brooks

Often, this referendum campaign can feel like a battle between the hopey-changers and the just-grow-uppers. The first can segue frustratingly into "it'll be alright on the night", as McKirdy says, while the latter concludes too readily with that weary Scottish cringe of "know your place".

So there is a hunger for answers on the yes side too, and the Common Weal and Yestival speakers are more aware of the space between ideals and compromise, between slogans and detail, than some would give them credit for. And if they consider it their place to think beyond the political establishment whilst they have the chance, they are also aware of the need to hold mainstream politics to account whatever happens after the referendum.

Amongst the younger generation who are driving National Collective, Generation Yes, the Radical Independence Campaign, perhaps we are seeing the difference between acting your age and coming of age.

And that is evident is a powerful desire to act 'as if'. At one Common Weal session, a young woman in the audience describes her frustration with the way that the yes campaign is being run in her native Shetland, where "the men just slogan you". "If we want a genuinely participatory politics then that has to include the way this campaign is run, " she says.

At another session, RIC's Jonathan Shafi talks about the importance of the ideas and attitudes that have shaped the yes campaign continuing after the vote: "if we reject the Westminister establishment then we can't accept a Westminister-lite," he insists.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Detail from Knitting Scotland patchwork Photograph: Libby Brooks

And later in the week, at another Yestival event in Edinburgh, another young woman explained how the most important thing about the independence movement was that "you don't have to wait for someone to give you the opportunity to get involved".

Katherine MacKinnon was presenting a patchwork map of Scotland made up of squares knitted by women from all other the country and from different sides of the debate. The way that people were involving themselves was changing too, she added. This project was all about creating a different route into politics for women who might not ordinarily have the confidence or oportunity to make their voices heard.

I'm afraid this reminded me of dancing again, which is perhaps not so inappropriate given National Collective's emphasis on the politics of culture and vice versa: folk are no longer sitting out politely and waiting to be asked to join in.

As the lights went up at the end of the Common Weal Festival, any aching jaws could be put down to intensive blether rather than unfocussed gurning.

Will this crowd keep on dancing when the lights go up on September 19? John Harris's great analysis of "the third Scotland", after his own time at Yestival this week, would certainly suggest so.

I'm leaving the last word, and dance, to that well-loved 21st century political philosopher Katy B: