Five Years, Brought to Life
(Overview)
Active Withernsea is a Sport England-funded, place-based programme working to make a small East Yorkshire coastal town happier, healthier and more active. After five years of pioneering work, they came to Umber Creative wanting to tell that story properly - not as a dry report, but as something engaging enough to do the work justice. We built them an animation-rich, scroll-driven website that turns five years of delivery into a story people genuinely want to follow.
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(Challenge)
Active Withernsea had spent five years doing genuinely ground-breaking place-based work in one of the East Riding's most isolated towns. The difficulty was how to capture all of it - the milestones, the four deep themes, the impact data, the people and the hard-won lessons - without it landing as a document nobody finishes. They needed something that honoured the depth of the work but actually held attention, and that sat comfortably within the colourful and energetic brand they'd already built.
(Approach)
From our very first conversation it was clear we were on the same page. Active Withernsea were excited by the possibilities and gave us the room to be ambitious - so rather than a conventional website, we proposed telling the whole five years as one continuous, scrolling story. We worked closely with their team throughout to get under the skin of the programme: the deep themes, the five-year timeline, the evidence of change and, above all, the people behind it. Using current web animation techniques, content reveals and scroll triggers, carrying the reader through the narrative rather than leaving them to dig for it. Throughout, we worked entirely within Active Withernsea's established brand guidelines and colour palette.
(Outcome)
The finished site presents five years of complex, pioneering work as something people actually want to read - engaging, rich in detail and a pleasure to move through from top to bottom. Alongside it sits a five-year report that captures the same journey in print.
This was the kind of project where a client's ambition and trust bring out your best work - and it is a brilliant story to be a part of.
