The journey of Mātai Media is one close to our hearts and this week we are excited to celebrate our 10-year milestone. Ten Years! That’s ten times around the sun… 130 times for the moon around us… We think you get the point. So, as we expand our growth and focus our direction with Mātai Collective, we pause for a moment to get a bit nostalgic about the journey that has brought us to this point.

Our storybook of some memorable projects and adventures… 

It all starts with our first gig in 2010. Lu heads off on seafaring expeditions between Canada and Antarctica and everything in between, filming wildlife documentaries and hosting workshops. She captures the historical journeys of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the marvels Panama Canal, wild sharks in Costa Rica, masses of king penguins and elephant seals, and the spellbinding beauty of Antarctic life and landscapes.

Mātai Media continues to grow in 2011 as we produce a Collection of 60s-Civics, driven by superhuman Lani Evans and the Regeneration crew and supported by many New Zealand city councils. These 60s animations explain local governmental processes and civics through tangible analogies created and narrated by everyday Kiwis.

By forming a collaborative project with two super talented humans, Char and Beka, we create “Force of Habits”. We show how easy it can be to turn important and climate-friendly lifestyle choices into everyday habits. It gets picked up by film festivals around the world – all done whilst wearing onesies.

We create short videos and animations with unique and quirky styles and call-to-action messages for organisations who strive to better our earth such as Enspiral, SaferMe, The Dunedin City Council, Enviro-mark Solutions and the NZ Classifications Office.

We work with the Gibson Group, one of New Zealand’s most renowned production houses, for over 5 years to produce an extensive collection of celebratory stories around education in New Zealand for the Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards.

It is an absolute honour and highlight to work alongside NZ Parliament’s Office of the Clerk to produce various in-house instructional videos, social media highlights and set up the groundwork for their continued short video productions. Some of our favourite stories filmed are about New Zealand’s largest flag on top of the Beehive and how the Select Committee process works when citizens want to have closed captions for public television.

Working alongside Josie Galbraith to bring her very important PhD thesis (University of Auckland) to life through animation (thanks to funding support from Siouxsie Wiles) – Feeding New Zealand Birds takes on a life of its own on social media in New Zealand, with thousands sharing the video to spread the good word of how we can best support and nurture our native birds.

Mātai Media is honoured to work alongside Adelphi in Berlin, Germany to create animations for powerful messages around water resource management and climate change dialogue support.

Working alongside incredible charities and organisations such as Inspiring Stories Trust, Lu teaches young people all about creating their own films with their own voice to make the world a better place. They would then support these inspirational films through a nation-wide film competition and then showcase then all around the country in a travelling film festival.

Mentoring and teaching has always been a huge passion for Lu. Before Mātai Media was born, she taught teenagers in the Himalayas how to produce videos through their own perspective and voice. This work continues with Inspiring Stories all through New Zealand, where Lu hosts over 200 full-day workshops. Mentoring through one-on-one or group workshops with companies and individuals has been a part of Mātai Media’s favourite projects, including a series called ‘Videography for Positive Action’ based in Berlin and designed for non-profit organisations.

We love creating whole collections of videos for community-focused organisations such as The Bizdojo. They wanted to share the achievements, events and knowledge of their co-working community, and so a growing YouTube channel is born!

What’s in store for the upcoming years?

After ten delightful and inspiring years, we have built up an extensive and creativity-entrenched portfolio, hacked a few processes and mastered the art of storytelling, all the while focusing on translating complex yet important messages to inspire powerful action. It is time to take Mātai Media to the next level and bring in more expertise to have a wider-reaching impact. As a result, Mātai Media has now grown into Mātai Collective, a bundle of uber-talented humans who have their own back catalogue of experience, knowledge and skills to bring to the table which will be shared and spotlighted in the forthcoming posts. 

We have been busy queen bees these past few months and shall continue to be in the ones to come. The Mātai hive has enlisted new members to form the mightily interdisciplinary and multi-skillsetted Mātai Collective. Our crew of badass queen bees can now provide an extensive array of creative content and communications services, including:

Volunteering skills and time are important pieces to the Mātai Media & Mātai Collaborative ethos pie. Over the years, we have dedicated a certain amount of our time to help artists, non-profits, students and youth.

We shall continue our social enterprise approach by volunteering at least 10% of our time for positive social and environmental impact-driven organisations who have limited capacities to afford communications support. Our clients can share in the goodwill, knowing that their choice to collaborate with our team will have positive flow-on effects to support others.

Curious about who we are and what experience and knowledge we can bring to your table? Check out the full team description here!

for collaboration ideas and keep following our updates and posts for comms-related tips and tricks, celebrative stories of projects, our awesome clients and dreamy collective members.

Blog written by Jess & Lu of Mātai Collective