Approach from the Communications and Development Platform

The Energy Academy is a development organization, which simply means much of what we develop is new—we investigate and test. As a demonstration site or model society, we’ve had reasonable success for about 30 years. We’ve had a charismatic director who, in close partnership with farmers, business, and politicians, created a solid foundation that still holds today. The Energy Academy can never rest on its laurels, as society has opinions—many of them—about what we as employees must deliver locally, regionally, nationally, across Europe, and globally. For us as project managers, there are huge demands to develop, including, and network to remain relevant and on course. We usually need exquisite intuition and steady nerves to keep a healthy, activist focus on the outside world, since that activity and work pay our salaries. We know a lot of locals don’t fully know or understand the difference between Samsø Municipality and the Energy Academy. Samsø Municipality are lawmakers, while the Energy Academy are developers who should preferably lead with untested social designs or unconventional methods and meeting formats. We also experiment with cross-sector partnerships.

The Power of example

One of the development projects is called “Project Plus 22,” which concerns initiating land use on Samsø. This project has now transitioned into tripartite measures in relation to legislation and sits with Samsø Municipality. If our former director at the Energy Academy had not served on the ministry-appointed group selecting low-lying land, were the Energy Academy met with the University of Copenhagen to exchange knowledge and ideas about the project’s creation and the possibility of applying to Realdania, the project might never have become exposed.

Today, Samsø Municipality has hired a man funded by EU projects who works with Samsø’s local tripartite initiative as one of several project pillars. It’s quite an achievement that cross-sector cooperation is possible, and that the Energy Academy could secure its own funding to ease and host the project through to completion in close collaboration with the municipality and the university. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

New Director and looking back

For several years, the Energy Academy has been working toward a director’s transition, and the wish to hire a new leader has been a challenge. It’s not an easy task, especially on an island like Samsø, where we can’t offer big salaries in a non-profit organization. The board gathered and figured out who among the roughly 28 candidates would take on the role as new director, and the choice fell on Morten Westergaard. Today it’s an uplifting reality, and we have a new colleague on the team. In our world, Morten prefers to be referred to as a colleague.

From the best to the next

After a fantastic reception—from the best to the next—with a detailed program and a solid mix of seriousness, humor, and new knowledge, anticipation was high for one of many presentations by Åge Hulgaard. He’s a part-time Samsø resident, trained jurist, and in his prime delivered a talk based on his new book about the local political landscape on Samsø from 1960 to today. He honored the outgoing director by comparing him to Hal Koch, described as a champion of democracy. During the occupation, Koch gave a series of popular, unifying lectures on democracy, later published in the book “What Is Democracy?” (1945). He believed democracy is not only a form of government, but a way of life based on dialogue and trust.

A values-political battleground

Where Åge Hulgaards points landed clearest, in my point of view, was when he noted how not only Samsø, but nationwide, there’s a development in our municipal organization that hampers our social cohesion. He reminded us of the simplicity of earlier times when organizational power lay with parish councils. On Samsø there were then four candidates who administered and made decisions on behalf of the whole island.

In the 1970’s, a decisive school reform came through Parliament, with broad agreement that the public school needed modernization considering the major societal and cultural changes since 1937. There were also big disagreements about the school’s primary tasks. In the 1970’s, school policy therefore became a values-political battleground, and at the same time the national local-political landscape steadily and slowly shifted from parish councils toward increased municipalization.

Urbanization

Another decisive angle, running in parallel from 1921 to 1970, is declining population. On Samsø, the population went from 7,283 to 5,164. The decline was largely because young people moved to larger cities—a quiet urbanization. Today we are 3,614 inhabitants. Åge Hulgaards points critically to municipalization, as it puts civil society in a kind of transit, and we as citizens get used to others overseeing all tasks—and being paid for it. His point is that before municipalization, civil society was self-reliant and could self-organize. He also notes that not everything in society should be professionalized or converted into positions and salaries. Municipalization is a slow alienation eventually. He points out that we are at a democratic low point right now, which is a wake-up call for society. We must act ourselves.

We need dialogue and trust

Åge Hulgaards still has a twinkle in his eye, and after 80 years of experience, he knows a lot about social conditions through the ages. He appeals to us to dare to illuminate the consequences of too much bureaucracy. I also read between the lines that our democratic muscle is shrinking. He delivered a scolding to our local newspaper, which he finds unserious and unstable in its writing. Yes, our local paper is dwindling and has almost been a public treasure. Today it has only a small group of subscribers, and quality has dropped in both print and digital formats.

But just imagine what we could do with an analog print edition if we cared a bit more. The paper could be a democratic signal for civic formation. As Kim Larsen sings: “What do we do now, little you?”

Samsø is known in many corners of the world that all struggle with the same challenges: schools closing, long trips to the emergency room, and the local grocer shutting down.

Villages and houses lose value because depopulation is a reality. I could go on and on about how the outside world pushes daily challenges to get everything that lies farther away—about a 2-hour round trip from a big city—what it takes to dare to settle outside the big cities.

A number of regions, islands, and villages may become the signposts of the future, because people may want to live there. The values and sense are that people here want to work toward a shared future and awareness. That across local political compositions there is also space and conversations about how we can all help shape development right where we live—and again how all this creates shared value, and people help each other.

JORDFAST

The JORDFAST project is a four-year initiative led by the Samsø Energy Academy focused on creating sustainable rural districts and rethinking our relationship to land, nature, and local communities.

Democratic sustainability: Developing new, close-to-home democratic pathways so local citizens can influence the green transition and land management.

Local development on Samsø: Creating open dialogue and integrated planning on how the island’s resources are best used among agriculture, nature, the marine environment, and tourism.

Experiments in practice: Serving as a laboratory to assess new forms of collaboration on land use to tackle climate change challenges. Would you like to hear more about how the project involves citizens, or learn about the concrete green initiatives being pursued at the Energy Academy on Samsø? Then write to us or drop by. Samsø is doing reasonably well, but we must keep wanting to work together to shape and propose how we actively take part in our shared civil society. I just read that 19 municipalities have applied to become emergency-preparedness municipalities. I don’t know if Samsø Municipality is on that list, but I know the idea was mentioned in a futures scenario with futurist Henrik Good in April, where we precisely developed the approach of sharing and exploring the future we want. The JORDFAST project has now put major effort into genuinely nudging and nurturing and has included outside ability. We have three different men and women from way up in Sweden—Stockholm. See who has said yes, and what defines a council of wisdom for the JORDFAST project, supported by the Velux Foundation with a focus on sustainable democracy.

Thank you for an exciting opening meeting for JORDFAST in April at the Energy Academy, and we’ll return with the next steps after the summer break, around 15/8/2026.

Grant from the Europa-Nævnet

The Energy Academy will produce a series of videos and podcasts for our channel “Evergreen.” We have started and further developed our collaboration with journalist Klaus Mortensen, and you can listen to our EVERGREEN podcast channel. This time we’ll go out and ask local agriculture and the Nature Conservation Association how the green tripartite on Samsø is seen and experienced. We also imagine holding an event at the Energy Academy where we bring parties, stakeholders, and landowners together to prepare a string of questions. A series of podcasts and video clips will be produced for our upcoming new website. If you want to know more or take part with a focus on the topic, please contact Malene Lundén.