“The most difficult thing is to free oneself from the trap of one’s own knowledge and ideas. At this time, the only thing that can expand the world is imagination, because new realities are born from fantasy. Today, when we are drowning in an ocean of information, what is important is no longer what we know, but what we can imagine and what we believe” — this is an excerpt from the editorial letter of the Indigo team, with which the first issue of the magazine began.

Following this text is a list titled “We believe in”:

• Sharing
• Optimism
• Humor
• Happiness
• Freedom
• Dreams
• Love
• Family
• God
• Immortality
• Sex
• Experiments
• Death
• Knowledge

This is how the story of Indigo began in October 2015. In less than ten years, the publication has managed to unite hundreds of authors around new times, ideas, and people; the Indigo team, alongside the magazine, has published books, made films, created a website, and even held a festival. At the same time, as the publication says, they have gained the most important thing — the trust of their readers.

Today, Indigo is among those media outlets that are threatened with extinction due to the repressive policies of the Georgian Dream, although they continue to fight for freedom of speech.

Indigo co-founder Nino Lomadze and director Nata Dzvelishvili talked to Aprili Media about the path they have taken since their formation, and share the core values ​​and ideas that Indigo stands for. Nino and Nata talk about loyal readers, resistance, unity, and the importance of independent media, as well as what will happen if free media no longer exists.

 “We brought to life what we believed in, and that is a very precious thing.”

Indigo was founded in 2015 by friends — people who believed in the importance of freedom of speech and expression. They were driven by a common desire — to create a space that was different and distinctive not only in form but also in content, where people could analyze and prepare materials that would show the audience events from a different prism; interested in topics that required long-term work; processes in which they lived and events that required more thought and delay.

“Since we didn’t have such a space in Georgia, we decided to create it ourselves, to work on topics, ideas that we believed in and were concerned about. That’s how Indigo started. Today, Indigo is a platform for more than 300 such authors who think, search for news, stories, events that really excite them, touch them, and that they think about for a long time. That’s why it’s not just a union of journalists, it’s a collective of authors. Authors include journalists, as well as scientists, artists, and people working in various disciplines who work for these ideas. These are stories about ideas, people, and new times. New times are very important, and we look at everything we work on from the perspective of the future, and only what is important is what can have weight and significance in the future. That’s how we choose topics,” says Nino.

This undertaking was accompanied by many difficulties – the main one was courage, because, in addition to the fact that the idea of ​​Indigo was not convincing to everyone at first, according to Nino, doing something new and different in this country has never been easy. She recalls the emotion when she first saw Indigo on paper, as an idea brought to life.

“It’s not just a source of income and a job. It is a vital space for us to be who we are — it’s part of our identity.”

At the time of its founding, all three of them were working in other jobs, and their work at Indigo was voluntary. Nino evaluates this period as a stage of endurance and testing. Only after 4 years were they able to make Indigo their job as well.

“This is a common experience and we know that we are not the only ones. This is how independent media in Georgia begins, all stories are identical and this is not our unique experience. This is such a big test and such a weighty experience that I think that pressure from the outside will be very difficult to do anything about, so this confidence that all obstacles can be overcome has somehow come naturally. This is not the arrogance of ignorance, this is confidence brought by experience and we know for sure that doing what you believe in is absolutely possible in a free media. It happened. It has already happened, so now we have to deal with other challenges and strengthen this foundation in our media,” Nino notes.

Initially, Indigo appeared on the market as a printed magazine – a magazine that wrote about people and talked about ideas from a human perspective. Nino also tells us about the first editorial letter.

“It was a story about our beliefs and perceptions, what we believed in, why we believed in what we were doing, and it was a very important story that we told for the first time about ourselves and about the media that didn’t exist at that time and that was emerging before our eyes. It was the most important story for us, about ourselves and the space that we were creating at that moment,” Nino recalls.

According to her, a lot has changed in Indigo since then — the publication has expanded and covered more areas and content, a web platform has been created, and a number of long-term projects have emerged. However, Nino emphasizes that the main thing has not changed — the ideas and values ​​that they still follow.

“It’s very sentimental sometimes. On the one hand, it may seem naive from this perspective, but it’s really very precious and valuable to us,” says Nino.

In addition to values, Nino also talks about the emotional bond that the Indigo team has with this publication. According to her, it is not only a source of income, but also a part of their identity.

“I don’t know if we could have realized ourselves elsewhere, but we wouldn’t be who we are […] No one has gone anywhere, I don’t think it’s possible to leave here. It stays with us as a part of life and experience,” says Nino.

Digital Indigo

Nata Dzvelishvili shares the stages of development of Indigo and explains that since 2019, they have begun digitizing the publication — the number of printed publications has decreased, it has become quarterly, and the main focus has shifted to multimedia materials. Now the leading platform of the publication is digital and it combines the website and social networks.

“In fact, every year we managed to develop and take different directions to another level — whether it was from a storytelling perspective, in terms of print publications, or something else. We also created a mobile app and worked very hard to make the media publication financially sustainable,” says Nata.

For the Indigo team, reality changed in 2024. Nata says that until then, the publication was on a path of continuous development, but after the Russian law came into force, they began to fight for survival.

“We will not extinguish this light, and in this we simply need more support and help from our readers, for whom we do not want darkness to descend in this country.” 

“Slowly, all the ways that would have allowed us to do new things were being closed. Despite the fact that we did not cover direct political news in the news mode and were not a political publication at all, our publication “The History of Protest and Resistance in Georgia” became a target of high-ranking officials. No one had even seen the publication when they started attacking and decided that it was training on how to organize a revolution. Then I realized that a new stage was beginning in the history of Georgian media, when we would all be targets of this government, and that is exactly what happened. Since 2024, we have seen how they are deliberately trying not to develop the media in this country, but to stop it altogether,” Nata notes.

According to her, the government was well aware that critical thinking and attitudes towards the government were slowly growing in society, and a great contribution to this process was made by independent media – media that managed to inform the public and could not cover up government propaganda.

“The best illustration of this is the cases of prisoners of conscience and court coverage. Whether it was news media or not, we all found our own focus to cover the unheard-of events that were happening in court in as many ways as possible. This led to the closing of the sessions, but this did not prevent us from providing information to the public,” she says.

“I am proud of the trust that people have in us”

During this time, Indigo has managed to unite people of different interests, ages, and views and gain the support of many readers. Today, it has a large audience on various platforms. According to Nino, the most proud, precious, exciting, and sentimental thing is the trust they feel from the audience. She notes that this is also a great responsibility.

“It’s very gratifying that people not only trust the stories, but for them the stories we tell are often a source of comfort, inspiration, finding each other, and thinking about new things. That’s why we’re not afraid of propaganda. Propaganda will have a very difficult time dealing with this, because there is so much trust and shared experience.”

Nata also speaks about the trust they feel from their readers. According to her, Indigo constantly maintained a close relationship with its audience and thus received feedback from those who have been their loyal readers since the day of its founding. Part of the constant communication was that events were often held that provided an opportunity to meet with readers in different formats.

“We held various events where we had meetings with readers in various formats, whether it was workshops, exhibitions, presentations, etc., and we used all these opportunities to personally get to know our audience and have closer communication,” says Nata.

“The most important and appreciable thing for us is that people entrust us with their very painful and personal stories. We receive a lot of feedback that something has changed in a positive way; that we have focused on an issue that was not being paid attention to in the news space.” 

Nata shares a case with us: After recording one of the episodes of We Talk About Relationships, a mother told the Indigo team that they were able to show her and her son’s relationship from a completely different perspective, and that it was after that that she decided to talk to her own son.

“This is such a big award that I don’t know what else can compare it to. People sometimes get confused about what an award is. I think people working in independent media know exactly what an award is. In reality, what an award is very little related to material things, it is something much bigger than we can imagine, and this gratitude keeps coming, for which we are also grateful,” says Nino when discussing this topic.

Indigo readers are no stranger to the thematic diversity that characterizes this publication. Under their logo, you will find stories that concern people of all generations, interests, and experiences. The projects that readers and viewers learn about on Indigo truly confirm that this publication’s desire is to show news from a perspective that no one has ever thought about before.

One of these is known to readers as “Reviving Memory.” It brings together the stories of people with war experience from the controlled territories of Georgia, as well as from Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“This was an important project for us in that we touched on a part of history that had been lost from the archives and was disappearing along with the people. We were able to pull ourselves together and restore that episode, especially from the 1990s, that was not read about anywhere,” Nata told us.

She recalls another one involving teenagers, where it was not the adults who spoke about their worries, but the teenagers themselves.

“We basically gave a platform to minors to have their say and prepare materials that reflect their needs and interests, and so we collected a lot of work and then turned it into a common project. Then we invited everyone to Tbilisi, and this meeting was also very emotional and important, when teenagers participating in this project came from different parts of Georgia,” says Nata.

Nino also talks to us about the important issues that Indigo is working on and recalls materials that dealt with the topic of conflicts.

“We focus, observe and intervene in processes that can generally be called conflict and we are interested in how societies that are opposed to each other, distanced, isolated can be connected again, and therefore, for us, forging real connections with people is very important. This is the idea that we serve and we implement this idea with the help of different content — it is to reveal what is common in people and then work on this common. We also work with young people, children, for example, in the villages of the Gori region, where we give children the opportunity to express themselves. This is also a long process and very important. This is also a reward, these processes have such a great feedback and the result of the work is so visible that nothing can compare.”

Nata notes that Indigo is not a traditional media outlet, which is also reflected in the fact that the team that constantly works at the publication consists of only a few people. Despite this, they have a large circle of contributors, for whom Indigo has become a space for self-expression over the years.

“This space is for everyone who has a creative mindset, who wants to express their potential, and for us it was an opportunity to find new people. We gave them the experience and space to do what they wanted, and that’s how we found new people with whom we continued to collaborate.” 

“The end of this platform would be a great tragedy”

“If it weren’t for Indigo, there wouldn’t be the processes that have been set in motion; there wouldn’t be the books that people have created; there wouldn’t be a lot of content that gives people the opportunity to think about things, see things differently, find new strength in themselves, and awaken inspiration. For us, for whom Indigo exists,” says Nino, adding that if Indigo does not exist, it would be a tragedy not only for the Indigo team, but also for the many people for whom it is a space for self-expression and creative process.

Nata says that she has a feeling that if anyone in Georgia is fighting for the country’s interests now, it is the independent media. She notes that online publications are often called small media, although in reality this is not the case, and the number of readers confirms this. That is why the government has to spend more and more resources on digital information attacks using trolls and bots in order to neutralize critical information.

We asked Nata how she imagines the future without such publications:

If this media does not work, if it does not have the resources to work properly, it will not be able to spread the voices of the most vulnerable groups. It is through these media outlets that news about people who are of no interest to anyone in this country is often made public.

If there were no independent media, the stories of prisoners of conscience would have been lost, no one would hear about them, and they would not be as mentally and emotionally strong as they are now. The media is the voice of the ordinary citizen, and without this media, their voice would not be able to spread anywhere. We are, in fact, mediators and we bear all the difficulties and pressures that the government imposes on free speech.

With hope of the people and each other — “The light must not go out” 

A unified platform has been created to support independent media: sinatle.media, from which it is possible to transfer funds to a shared account. Among the online media participating in the campaign is Indigo.

Nata also talked to Aprili Media about this campaign and tells us the reasons why it is now necessary to help the very people whom the Georgian media has been caring about informing for years. Nata notes that the Georgian Dream has blocked all the financial sources necessary for the existence of the media, and if until now people working in this field managed to save independent media through devotion and sacrifice to the profession, now this is no longer enough.

“Independent online media have never talked about this, never asked for help. Not because we were doing well, but because we had hopes and were clinging to every little resource and trying to survive. But now a completely different situation has arisen, when there is an attack from all directions, safety is in question, because when you send a journalist into the field, you don’t know what conditions they will have to face there and how they will return. From a mental point of view, there is also terrible stress and pressure, because this uncertainty and instability are actually destroying — you don’t know what will happen next and you, as an ordinary person, simply can’t plan your life; you don’t know, in the end, what fate awaits you, even in two months, and what makes us stronger is just being together,” says Nata.

She also speaks about the importance of the solidarity that media representatives show towards each other in this process.

“I don’t think there are any other professions in the country today that are as united as journalists are now. This situation has also led us to reevaluate and value each other’s work and work more, and we realized that if we are not together, it will be easier to break us. This commonality has led to the fact that we have been in conflict for so long, and this conflict is completely deliberate. No one expects that someone ended up here by chance. In other words, it is a deliberate choice by everyone. The situation is the same in the office — we all know what situation we are in, but we have our responsibility and we are aware of this responsibility.”

Nata says she believes that only this solidarity and mutual help can help Georgian media overcome this difficult situation and give them the opportunity not only to exist, but also to develop. She emphasizes that even a small amount of help from each citizen is very important and empowering, noting: “Moreover, the solidarity that we receive and what is written on the registration forms strengthens us even more emotionally, and we see that so many people are worried about what will happen.”