As climate change brings more frequent floods to Turner Station, Maryland, residents like community leader Olivia Lomax and her granddaughter Taysha Barnes are working alongside The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to discover climate resilience in nature—and in their neighbors.
Turner Station is a post-industrial community near Baltimore that has faced decades of challenges: frequent flooding, air and water pollution, and most recently, the collapse of the Key Bridge. Through it all, the community continues to come together, working to build a climate-resilient future.
But there’s an urgent need: Turner Station’s longtime volunteers are aging, and they need the support of younger generations to carry the torch. That’s why we chose to create a film telling an intergenerational story, to highlight the importance of passing on this legacy of stewardship and resilience.
This short documentary was created as part of The Nature Conservancy’s “Climate Strong Communities” campaign, a global storytelling initiative designed to showcase how communities are adapting to climate change with nature-based solutions.
Our team’s goal was to create multichannel content that aligned across channels: the film for the campaign landing page and Youtube, cutdowns for social media, and an embedded feature in the TNC magazine article.
By weaving together personal narratives, historical context, and visually compelling scenes, we aimed to celebrate the resilience and dedication of Turner Station’s residents, inspire viewers to volunteer within their community, and encourage audiences around the world to support climate efforts in their own backyard.
With our objective of creating multichannel content that tells a personal, powerful story of a climate strong community, we knew we had to find participants who were deeply engaged in bettering their community.
This film involved extensive pre-production work. We worked with TNC’s Maryland chapter, as well as the magazine and photo teams, who were simultaneously developing a written and photo feature on Turner Station. They had identified several potential participants in the community, and we conducted multiple scouting trips to meet with them. It quickly became clear that Olivia was a natural anchor for the story. A lifelong resident, Olivia is a pillar in the community, from leading the local food pantry, to volunteering with the Turner Station Conservation Teams, to helping with the local girl scout troop.
To broaden the story’s impact and emphasize the importance of intergenerational stewardship, we were excited to include Olivia’s granddaughter, Taysha. A junior in high school, Taysha captivated us with her focus, poise, and interest in also helping Turner Station in the future, potentially with a career as an environmental engineer.
At TNC we are committed to a collaborative, participant-led storytelling approach grounded in our core values of Trust, Respect, Authenticity, and Reciprocity. This meant that Olivia and Taysha were partners in shaping the film. After conducting multiple interviews with Olivia and Taysha, we co-wrote the script with them, developed a shot list that reflected their daily lives, and then spent a few weekends filming with them at locations they helped select.
As with any documentary, there was unpredictability and unexpected turns, like unexpected torrential downpours, but Olivia and Taysha were flexible and dedicated contributors and partners in the process, excited to tell their story and share their experiences. In the end, the rain became a powerful visual element, illustrating the very climate challenges Turner Station faces.
For our storytelling, we employed a hybrid documentary approach, blending documentary style with planned production techniques. We wove together scripted narration, planned b-roll shots, and cinema verité scenes, to create an authentic and engaging narrative. We aimed to capture the intimate story of a grandmother and granddaughter and the deep love they have for their home and each other, as well as showcase a resilient community, and the work TNC is doing to support them.
We also wanted the film to have a warm, hopeful, and inspiring tone. It had to reflect the characters’ deep love for Turner Station and their determination to create a better future for their community. And, we wanted the viewer to be inspired and take action in their own community.
Ultimately, this project was about more than documenting a place. It was about co-creating a story that could inspire action. By centering community voices and crafting a narrative that could live across platforms, we created a film that is both deeply personal and strategically aligned with TNC’s marketing and communications goals.
This film was published as part of the Climate Strong Communities initiative at TNC, a multi-month storytelling effort focusing on communities working with nature to increase climate resilience, carbon reduction, and protection from sea level rise and severe storms, floods, and wildfires.
This project was very successful from a storytelling perspective, as it blends verite filming with scripted voiceover, creating a powerful story that interweaves Olivia and Taysha’s stories with the work TNC is doing.
From a marketing perspective the film was very successful, driving traffic to a TNC magazine article about the community, and helping boost TNC’s web impressions.
We also created short cutdowns (in different languages) of the video for use on instagram, linkedin, and Youtube shorts, to provide more concise ways for people to consume and understand the story. Before publishing these, we utilized A/B testing to learn how viewers might engage with versions emphasizing the problems Turner Station faces, vs a version emphasizing the human-centered side of the story. The film was also re-versioned for use in regions like Latin America. Our colleagues there reported it performed well and resonated there, because many communities are vulnerable to climate change and could see themselves in the Turner Station community.
We view the film as a success because Olivia and Taysha were thrilled by it and how it presents their stories, and because the TNC Maryland team felt it accurately represented their efforts and the community.
