The Brief

We were asked to make a film for the Green Roof Day project being led by both Natural Resources Wales and Swansea Council and what they are doing to both improve the environment and implementing more green infrastructure across Wales.

Natural Resources Wales are an organization sponsored by the Welsh Government with a purpose of sustainable management of natural resources. On the website for Natural Resources Wales they list their approach to doing this. The reasons listed are on taking collective action when it comes to nature’s recovery, resilience to climate change and minimising pollution.

Swansea Council have also been looking at ways as to how the environment can be improved and as a result have been able to form this partnership in order to help influence change.

With there being a large focus on what we can do as a nation to reduce our impact on climate change and green rooves are becoming a developing trend. We looked to highlight the positive impact that this project has had on Swansea and what this means going forward.

The Content

In our film we highlighted the purpose of this project and how integral Green rooves are to infrastructure and that there are numerous positive aspects to green rooves going forward as both Natural Resources Wales and Swansea Council look to expand on their work over the coming years.

In our video we covered numerous examples of how the Green Roof Day project is having a positive impact on the environment with the individuals we interviewed listing a range of positive impacts that they are having. Some of the practical examples we listed were that they are helping both absorbing rain and flood reduction as well as pro-longing roof lives.

We also highlighted positive impact on the environment by demonstrating how they have been good for nature and biodiversity and how they are great for pollinators as well as birds and other mammals due to the extra space they provide.

Another important point that was emphasised in our film was the positive public reaction to the project with many individuals. One of the people we interviewed explained how she can take her children up to these areas as they can play in the area. Another listed how they were simply just a nice place to go to and be surrounded by nature.

We highlighted how Swansea Council’s lead councillor Rob Stewart was happy with how the project had gone and highlighted what the future plans were for Green Roof Day. In his interview Stewart stated “couldn’t be prouder of what’s been achieved here. And, you know, green rooves are really important. We’ll have about 17 of them in, in a year and a half’s time from a starting point of 0, just five or six years ago. So real improvements being made in Swansea”

One of the major benefits of the film from our perspective was how we were able to conduct one of our interviews in Welsh. This was very beneficial as we were able to demonstrate our passion for the Welsh language and with more and more employers seeing the benefits of staff being able to speak the language and it’s important to demonstrate the language being used.

The Result

We were very happy with quality of the film having gained several different perspectives which captured the positive public mood around green rooves. We also got high quality shots of what green rooves and a range of different shots for our film.

With the range of positive aspects that were addressed in the video this was a very successful video in highlighting how the Green Roof Day project is addressing issues, seeing positive benefits in several different aspects and what the success of this project means for the area.