Indigo made a series of films for Ebbsfleet Garden City, directed by me, bringing the idea of ‘nature on the doorstep’ to life for the launch of their GREENmap platform and the four community tools built into it.
This two-minute film anchors the GREENmap launch, and it was built to do one job: show residents and visitors the nature that really is on their doorstep, not somewhere they’d have to travel for.
I sat down with senior ecologist Lydia Ennis for this companion piece, using the conversation to get into Ebbsfleet Garden City’s biodiversity ambitions and what a public mapping platform like this can realistically do for residents and wildlife alike.
Ebbsfleet Garden City had built something quietly brilliant in the GREENmap: a single platform pulling together four tools, Habitat Heroes, Tree Trackers, Wildlife Watchers and Water Wardens. It needed film that felt personal rather than municipal. They asked Indigo for something that would land equally with families on the school run, dog walkers, new residents still finding their feet, and the partner organisations backing the project.
I directed the films and structured the shoot around the GREENmap’s four pillars, giving each one its own short story before stitching them together under a longer hero film. A single seasonal window meant moving fast between parks, lakes, sustainable drainage systems and woodland habitats, capturing real residents alongside the wildlife they share the space with, an Indigo stills photographer working beside me throughout. And I pushed the tone toward warm and curious rather than corporate: closer to a nature documentary than a public-information film.
The GREENmap took off from launch week, with platform usage hitting record numbers and continuing to climb long after the initial noise died down: the strongest community engagement Ebbsfleet had seen on a single rollout. The vertical-first social cuts outperformed previous activations on reach, watch time and click-through, and both the hero film and the Lydia Ennis piece are still doing work today, turning up in community events, seasonal pushes and partner content. The GREENmap is now the front door to Ebbsfleet’s green spaces. The films are the welcome mat.