Quiet Forces (Stille Krachten) - A Community-driven Approach

Projelct Activities

Through a collaboration with a local community worker, Bureau Spotlight was able to build close ties with a group of women in Ede-Zuid, a neighbourhood in the Dutch city of Ede. It developed methodologies for community-centred investigations that it can use for future investigations.

Bureau Spotlight published a series of six articles in a local newspaper and one feature story in a national newspaper, accompanied by documentary photography. All pieces were produced using a community-based approach.

For Bureau Spotlight, the project was a learning process. It tested whether community journalism can work within the context of investigative journalism, where time pressure often dominates. During the project, it encountered challenges around trust, access, and balancing openness with editorial independence. By reflecting on these experiences, it developed new ways of approaching sources, building networks, and working more relationally over a longer period of time. In this way, the project helped it move from a more 'extractive' approach toward a model based on sustained engagement. As a result, it is now better equipped to integrate community journalism methods into future investigative projects.

What is the impact?

The community Bureau Spotlight focused on is located in the Ede-Zuid neighbourhood, which is often described as a 'problem area' due to high crime rates and public disturbances. Media coverage and municipal reports tend to focus mainly on crime statistics and negative developments. But when Bureau Spotlight spoke with the people who live there, they said that they find it a pleasant place to live. They do not recognise themselves in the dominant narrative from local media and municipal reports.

By investing time in building relationships and listening to residents, Bureau Spotlight was able to include their perspectives in its reporting. In this way, it contributed to addressing a local "news desert" — not in the sense of a complete lack of coverage, but in the lack of nuanced, community-driven reporting. With its stories, Bureau Spotlight aims to add context and lived experience to the public debate about Ede-Zuid. It believes this broader and more balanced perspective is an essential part of serving its target audiences and strengthening local journalism.

Many of the women interviewed had never spoken to the media before, and for the first time their stories and perspectives on the neighbourhood were published in a local newspaper.

Bureau Spotlight believes it is important not only to give these women a voice, but also to ensure they feel heard and taken seriously. It hopes this experience helps them realise that their opinions and voices truly matter.

Many people in this community are not reached by local media; they have either disengaged over time or were never engaged in the first place. If they feel represented, they may be more inclined to follow and trust local media in the future. At the same time, Bureau Spotlight considers it essential to show that this neighbourhood is more than just a collection of social problems, an image that is sometimes reinforced in media coverage.

Project Links

• Bureau Spotlight

Project Pictures

Photos by Negin Zendegani