Documentary ‘New Connections’ is now available online

On 17 October, the documentary 'New Connections' was launched during a screening with residents from Bospolder-Tussendijken and is now publicly available online. While in many areas in the Netherlands, governments and other actors are working to accommodate the energy transition and engage citizens in this process, little is known about what this process entails daily and what the energy transition means for citizens and their neighbourhoods. To explore this, the Urban Futures Studio and Zouka made the documentary ‘Nieuwe Aansluitingen’ (‘New Connections’) about the energy transition and citizen engagement in the Rotterdam neighbourhood Bospolder-Tussendijken.

In the documentary ‘New Connections’, we meet policymakers, local practitioners and citizens involved in the energy transition in Bospolder-Tussendijken, a neighbourhood assigned as a ‘test bed’ for the energy transition. The film gives insight into the daily endeavours of local initiatives to engage (other) citizens in the energy transition. It shows how the energy transition impacts citizens and their neighbourhoods.

We notice that the documentary ‘triggers’ something in the audience. Some people were touched by it and fell silent. It is quite confronting to see on screen the energy transition’s impact on individual residents and their homes. For this reason, there’s an interest in screening the documentary in more places. And because of the positive initiatives portrayed in the film.

‘New Connections’ is part of Irene Bronsvoort’s PhD research on citizen engagement in the energy transition at the Urban Futures Studio. The UFS made the documentary in collaboration with the creative agency Zouka and with the support of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and the research project Reconfiguring Energy for Social Equity (ReSET).