Government solutions are often difficult to communicate to the target audience. Especially when it comes to European projects. This is because they are overarching and often not very concrete. Nevertheless, together with Marcel Meeuwissen of the municipality of Enschede and the EMPOWER project, we proved that we knew how to communicate a government concept simply with film and animation.

EMPOWER is a project supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program.

Living labs: experiments in practice

The reason for the whole EMPOWER project is that the government wants to get more people to travel by bicycle or public transportation. By reducing car traffic, the city becomes more accessible and air quality improves. Within the knowledge project, the city of Enschede works together with the University of Twente, but also with companies, knowledge institutions and cities from all over Europe. Developing new knowledge and sharing experiences is the goal.

Through 'Living Labs', EMPOWER experiments on the street, in real life with methods to achieve their goals. This provides real-world knowledge, real reactions from real people. This allows for continuous adjustment and learning from each other.

There are three levels of communication about EMPOWER, Marcel Meeuwissen explains. "On the one hand, we communicate about the project in general; in addition, we inspire other cities to participate by sharing our insights with them. And finally, we want to involve our residents and explain to them what is happening and what they can gain from it."

What will you communicate when?

When you start communicating about EMPOWER, you always have to deal with the different interests of all participants and target groups, but also with the reason for which you are communicating, says Marcel Meeuwissen: "A government sometimes wants to communicate very different things than a company or a knowledge institution. Together with C4Real, we therefore thought very carefully about what we wanted to communicate and when.

In the first phase of the project, for example, we first had to explain what EMPOWER entails in general terms. Then you do not yet zoom in on specific cases in the various cities. You can do that in the next phase. The first film we made very visually summarizes the project in a few minutes. Then we went into much more depth by working out concrete examples per city."

Every city its own movie

The experiments in three "Living Labs" were elaborated through visualizations to be used in the communication of Enschede, Gothenburg and Milan. In these, each city is very clearly recognizable so that the viewer feels more connected to it. The films show which projects are in which city and how you can participate in them. They are used for presentations, at trade fairs, on the website and on social media.

Marcel Meeuwissen is very satisfied with the realization of the films: "We have good personal contact with C4Real, so that we can respond quickly if necessary. They were able to show us something very quickly so that we could get an idea of the direction. They also inform us well about the options available. Together we then look at what best suits the issue. Because of their approach, C4Real could very easily put down a communication message clearly. Even in this project with all those different stakeholders."

Good tip for other government projects

What is special about this project is that C4Real was already hooked up even before EMPOWER had actually started. Marcel Meeuwissen therefore has another good tip for similar government projects: "With their help, we were able to visualize ideas and concepts even before the project started. For example, if you want to apply for a grant or you want to present something before a city council to organize finances, you can make a film like ours as a pre-investment. That way you can communicate very clearly what you want to do. Especially in a collaboration where several European stakeholders are involved. "

Human character first

CEO Ton Kuper of C4Real says that the collaboration with EMPOWER was very pleasant: "That was especially notable because it is a complex story involving communication specialists from several European cities. We quickly figured out that we had to pick up the communication in phases and then how to fill those phases. To fill in the core video, we used film images combined with graphic content. The human character is always central though. It is ultimately about the people who have to embrace EMPOWER. In terms of execution, we were able to switch quickly with the European project members, for example, where we were allowed to film and where not, whether we could film with a drone, and so on. Marcel Meeuwissen's good international contacts allowed us to achieve results quickly. It is otherwise quite a task to interview and film a city council member in the middle of Milan, for example. It was a very fun collaboration with a mix of cultures."