Northstowe Neighbours: A documentary approach to filmmaking in the housing sector

This article about the use of video production and filmmaking to address issues of community cohesion and engagement in the UK’s new towns was originally published in Estates Gazette in 2024.

Here, I explain how Paper Films spent 10 days immersing itself in the new community emerging at Northstowe, a new town just outside of Cambridge.  Not every client needs a shiny, glossy corporate film.

In this instance, we employed a documentary-filmmaking approach, working with local residents and community volunteers to explore their hopes and dreams for their new town.

It is a tender and heartwarming film and provides a snapshot of life in Britain in the 21^st Century. In terms of filmmaking, it is a powerful example of what happens when a client allows us to spend time filming real people, to hear real community voices.  While the film isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and actually it appeals to a niche audience consisting of present and future residents of the new town, it will stand the test of time.

This film has a sense of purpose. It has a sense of honesty and integrity that will far out last the corporate films which gloss over the issues and simply try to sell something. It is also a little slice of history, a real-time view of what life is like, or could be like, in the newtowns being constructed across the UK.

Northstowe Neighbours: A documentary approach to filmmaking in the housing sector

Runtime: 27 minutes.

ON BEING commissioned by Homes England to make a film about the nation’s biggest new build housing development, I felt the responsibility of being in a grand tradition.

The 30-year, £124m new town at Northstowe with 11,000 new homes for 26,000 residents was first conceived as a ‘Healthy New Town’ under the 2007-10 Gordon Brown government.

The British planning system being what it is, the first pioneers moved in in 2017, and real progress at Northstowe is only now being felt with a further 1,800 homes in the early stages to add to the 1,500 occupied to date.

The desire by Homes England to both record Northstowe’s evolution and to communicate its purpose to everyone from its current community to potential future residents and external audiences is firmly within an 80-year heritage.

After the war, bombed-out cities led to the New Towns Act of 1946 and a building boom to develop the first wave of quick-construction communities in the South East, variously praised as modern-day utopias and dismissed as failed social experiments.

Encouraged by government, virtually all the Development Corporations recorded their towns’ development, often a mix of documentary and promotional film.

They include Hemel Homestead (1957); Views of Hatfield (1952); Stevenage the First New Town (1977); Basildon Our Town (1974); Peterborough - A City Fit to Live (1971) and Milton Keynes - A Village City (1973.

My film production company Paper Films met residents at Northstowe Community Centre, where we saw people from all walks of life and all ethnicity, many from immigrant communities, coming together to play chess, Ping Pong and MahJong, unsegregated by age and ethnic identity.

One scene has children of Indian heritage making Easter celebration cards guided by a local woman British white origin, proceedings chivvied along by the volunteer local councillor who hails from from Kerala while a volunteer recently arrived from Hong Kong takes them orange juice and custard creams.

It was in the final stages of production, working to a July deadline, that the general election was called, bringing an added gravitas, preserving a moment in time at the point that diversity was at the heart of national debate.

Northstowe is blessed with attributes many places would love to have – social housing provision, proximity to a buoyant job market, career opportunities pathways for personal social improvement.  Residents include many Europeans working in Cambridge’s bustling sci-tech industries. A policeman we spoke to said that the town had very little crime.

Yet there are of course significant challenges. Early media coverage focussed on the lack of health and retail facilities but in a new survey, half of those quizzed said that their health and wellbeing had improved since their move there.

That in-town health services have not yet been delivered represents the most common grievance we encountered when speaking to residents. We mentioned this in the film but we decided not to focus disproportionately on this subject. The lack of GP and Dentist provision in the UK is not unique to Northstowe.

Our film shows the exciting potential that placemaking brings and how people respond to their part in creating a new future. Rather than more static and uninvolving mediums, films cut through what can be complex, multi layered problems in a way that is clear, unambiguous, jargon free and with real impact.

Paper Films uses films to communicate the breadth of things councils and RSLs do in their communities and for tenants, and to show what large-scale house building actually involves.  

Their projects may be complicated and often are subject to significant criticism - but we start from the point that ultimately, they are needed and delivered by people and organisations that really want to do the right thing. Our work for developers, architects, house builders and urban planners which helps to cement relationships and understanding among wider, diverse audiences.

Northstowe’s ethnically diverse population is different from the surrounding rural villages and towns. This is a new town in every sense of the word, a little version of a modern England where the schoolkids grow-up playing with children whose families hail from all over the world. This is normality for the children and for their parents who like the fact that the town is accepting of everyone. And in the UK’s big cities of course, diversity, especially for younger people, is normal.

With a new Labour government announcing a huge house building programme, Reform’s vision of an England divided by immigration did not stack up here.  Of course, Northstowe is not a forgotten town and jobs aplenty lend Northstowe an affluent feel. Perhaps this relegates extreme views to the sidelines. Any animosity was invisible to us as filmmakers, walking the streets and interviewing the townsfolk.

Could it be then that Northstowe is the new model town for England proving that a good job market, a decent standard of living and mixed-tenure housing schemes can build communities that come together and thrive? It is a process that will make for fascinating viewing as a test bed for the wave of new build communities that the new government will be seeking to create.

Article by filmmaker Daniel Kennedy originally published in Estates Gazette 2024.