Little learnings for big thinkers

Collected and shared by Curative. We believe that you learn something new everyday. Some things you can only learn from experience, sometimes it’s a word of advice that serves as a lesson, and even little mistakes can teach you new things. So, as we learn and grow, we’ll collect and share our lessons here. Hopefully you’ll learn something new too. About Curative Enabling Community Communication; with a passion for connecting communities, sharing learnings and empowering social change. We have established http://curative.co.nz

[curativenz]

An Easter Egg-scursion

This Easter, Kiwis can take part in The Whittaker's Big Egg Hunt, the first event of its kind in New Zealand, showcasing 100 giant eggs designed by New Zealand artists to help raise funds for Starship Foundation. All the eggs, hidden throughout Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, are being auctioned off to support the national children's hospital, which provides world-leading care for almost 120,000 patients each year.

Starship Foundation approached Curative to create The Big Egg Hunt's official site. Aria and Kaan spearheaded the design, in collaboration with our ever-awesome development partners, 96Black. Meanwhile, Starship also invited me to be one of the artists, to paint one of the giant eggs. Team Curative then had the lucky privilege of contributing to this event from these two very cool prisms.

Meghan Geliza [Sliver, #Egg94] Photo: Debbi Shibuya

With this event well under way, it was awesome to see how much fun people are having with the event -- taking their families out on hunts in the weekend, collecting points, supporting the cause. Seeing a community fully embrace and be mobilised by an event of this scale; an event that is very fulfilling to support on so many levels -- from playing in on the hunt, to enjoying works of art in public spaces, to supporting both local artists and the children at Starship during the auctions. It was amazing to see the power and resonance of a great idea: an idea that combines the best of our human attributes -- creativity, beauty, play and generosity.

There's still time to join in on the hunt to win a unique 18ct Whittaker's Gold Slab, or, to support the artists and Starship Children's Hospital by bidding on one of the eggs here. 

Happy egg hunting!

Meghan and Aria

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“It’s a bad plan that admits no modification”

The Latin writer, Publilius Syrus, said this two thousand years ago; and he really couldn’t have said it better. 

As a team that’s constantly planning and shaping new projects we’re learning the importance of being prepared for the things that you just can’t plan for. We’re learning to adapt as we go. And we’re learning to manage the difference betweens the absolute musts, and the nice-to-do’s.  

Recently, this has been especially true of our development of ‘Steer Clear’; a campaign for the NZ Drug Foundation which encourages young people to find safe alternatives to driving stoned. 

After a lengthy planning process with our friends at Innovate Change, we identified a target audience, the change we want to create and some clever methods to get there. It’s a pretty great plan with lots of facts, figures, insights and ideas. It’s beautifully designed, carefully thought through, and hits all the right marks. 

So, now it’s just as easy as making it all happen over the next 18 months. Easy as. Well, kind of. 

The campaign launch had a fixed date, as we were booked in to kick off at Splore. And that date came with some pretty unique deliverables; including building a full-scale ‘Dope as Drive’. Essentially a converted van which simulates the experience of driving high, highlighting all of the risks along the way.   

For an undertaking like this, unexpected obstacles aren’t, after all, all that unexpected. This meant that the ability to pivot and adapt on the go was fundamental to getting everything ready in time for launch. 

We definitely believe that being agile is that much easier when you have the right people on the team. And, to convert an old van into a gaming device, build a digital experience and manage the many layers of event logistics, we needed a pretty special team. 

When things need to happen, the right  people are never idle.

To compliment the Curative crew for this project, we buddied up with Mindhive to build all the physical bits; Handle the Jandle to take care of all of the event details (with the ease and care that can only come from their years of experience); and our very clever besties at 96Black who took on all of the technical requirements to turn an online experience into a real life one too. 

As you can imagine, a huge sigh of relief was audibly released when the Dope as Drive had it’s first run through at Splore, (all while the TV3 camera was rolling). Especially after the unplanned hour of ‘tinkering’ on-site to get it going. 

And as the hot sun beat down, the music played on, and the festival goers got festive, we learnt a whole lot more over the launch weekend that will help us improve the whole experience in the future. 

So, it’s a plan that’s being modified. And for that reason alone, we know it’s a pretty good one. 

We’re comfortable knowing that getting started on a great plan today which may need some tweaking and adjusting, is better than waiting to write the perfect plan tomorrow. 

Check out Steer Clear or our Curative website to find more interesting things as we roll out our plan. 

Eddy & Eddy 

Curative Crew 

[curativenz]

Two + People

It’s funny how we measure things in time. Although, there’s no doubting the wisdom that comes with great duration, or the naive optimism in relative youth.

But as we turn two, we’ve realised that time is not the yard-stick for our success (we’re pretty pleased to have surpassed the milestone that befalls more than 80% of small business though). Instead, our measure is the people who surround us.

Curative started with just two. Jade & Eddy. And as we looked around the room at our 2nd Birthday Party, it became clear that Curative is so much more than just the two of us now. And it’s even bigger than our incredible little team.

It’s an idea that people believe in. That people support. And that is kept alive by the partnerships that we’ve formed, and the people we’ve met along the way.

The costumes that showed up at our party were a small hint at the energy, passion, commitment and wild ideas that live in our network of friends, colleagues, clients and supporters.

And they highlighted something we’d already learnt. You only need to give people the permission to be creative. To be part of an idea. And they can and will do great things.

So, as we move into year three, we are so much more than two.

And we have you to thank. If you’ve read our blog, been to our events, worked alongside us, tasked us with a brief, inspired us with your own work, or entertained us with conversation; you have been part of our idea.

You’ve challenged and enriched our thinking. And we hope to meet more people like you. That’s what will make us feel truly wise; and always full of optimism.

Love, love Eddy & Jade :)xo

Check out more photos from our Curative Cardboard Birthday Bash » 

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Curative's Christmas Office Dates

It's been a busy year, so we are closing the doors at Curative HQ for a few weeks so we can regroup, and return next year just as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. 

Our doors will be closed between the 20th of December - 13th of January. 

We are looking forward to putting our feet up for a few weeks, and we encourage you to do the same; you deserve it. 

We look forward to getting back into it, and connecting with you in the new year. 

[curativenz]

A Festive Future

As our action-packed year draws to an end, we’re counting down til our holidays begin and, as always, we’re full of hope and inspiration for the future.

The tail end of November took the Curative Crew out of town and down to Wellington, for an action packed extended-weekend of future-filled thinking.   

Our epic little field trip was largely due to Festival for the Future, an annual event bringing together a diverse range of thinkers, change-makers and doers to spark world-changing ideas for a better New Zealand. For two days, we all flitted between keynote speeches, workshops, films and performances around Te Papa, triggering a bombardment of inspiration and ideas that we found ourselves marinating in days later. 

Stellar speeches we all loved included Kiritapu Allan's one on being a lawyer making change for young Maori, and the one by Weissenborn guitar musician Thomas Oliver, who also crooned us with a lovely performance by festival's end. 

But I’d have to say, my favourite was definitely Martin Leung-Wai's talk on The Roots. As an architect, he has empowered communities by combining sustainability and art in his beautiful installations. This talk made me ruminate on the thought that all of us have certain skills or inclinations and how these can be seen as gifts which, when fully expressed, actually benefit the world. One of the quotes I really loved was from the festival film Who Cares, which sums this thought up beautifully:

“Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~Howard Thurman

Different versions of this thought echoed through the weekend, confirming the idea that charity starts at home; that the best way to effect change is to begin the journey inwardly, then as we build relationships around our communities, we can spark something in each person we touch that will help them recognise their own gifts, their own potential. In most of the change makers we’ve heard during this weekend, the common theme was of the individual sparking change when they recognised, acknowledged and brought forth innate strengths in the community. This profound thought will be one of many we’ll carry with us as we move forward with our work.

Our final day in Wellington made us bring all of our thinking and dreaming from Festival for the Future into our Curative strategy sesh - a day of play while sparking ideas, visualising possibilities on what Curative could be in the future. Despite dividing into teams for much of the day we freakishly realised, after reconvening by the end of each exercise, that we are all on the same page on how we envision Curative years down the line. It was pretty exciting, to get to that sort of depth in our exchanges, collectively looking at this beautiful entity we're part of and being able to evaluate how we can help in its growth.

We seriously recommend taking a day (or in our case a whole weekend) away from the day-to-day doing, to check in and re-set the course, or make sure that you’re all still heading in the same direction. 

As always, we know it sounds like it’s all fun and games here. But it’s the fun and games that power us through all of the work that we have going on. 

One of which is launching the new website and video for The Tindall Foundation. With nearly two decades of doing good work strengthening New Zealand communities, The Tindall Foundation approached Curative to help them tell their story and the family values that drive them. This is something they haven’t previously done to this extent, being very private about themselves and their work. Working with the family and team was definitely inspiring to say the least. It is crucial that the The Tindall Foundation has a vibrant and accurate online presence, being the foremost thought leaders in NZ philanthropy, as they move towards becoming philanthropic global players in this increasingly connected world.

Another piece of work we're really proud to release is the second video for Complex Care Group, putting the spotlight on Jo and her beautiful son Harvey, and the life they lead living with complex needs. It is truly heartening being able to help share their amazing story.  

As we nearly wrap up the year, looking back on how incredible 2013 had been, we set our eyes on what's yet to come on the other side of the holidays and beyond. Every exciting growth spurt and change we've all gone through together just affirms the adage that life just gets better as it goes on. 

So here’s to the future - to more adventures, more solutions for our communities, more positive ripples to send out to the world, and, relationships forged and strengthened, as we create more beautiful and meaningful work together. Taking time out to shift the focus inward definitely makes the view ahead that much clearer. 

You can check out photos from our weeked away here. 

And with that, have a lovely holidays everyone! xxx

Meghan (& Aria)

x

P.S Our good friends from One Percent Collective featured Curative directors/besties Jade & Eddy on their monthly Generosity Talks. You can read all about it here.

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All in a days work...

Three months ago Sam wrote a post about his experience of being the new guy at Curative. He wrote about how his first weeks were a heady mix of myriad tasks. He wrote about how July was a month of disruption and that things seemed to be moving incredibly fast as Curative grew. But he wrote all of this with a tone which implied that it was only temporary – that there was some base-line of normality to which Curative would eventually settle.

This idea has persisted; yarns of a world where things don’t change quite so fast were spun to me in my first few weeks as well. “It’s not normally like this…”, I would be assured. “Wow, this week is crazy”, would be exclaimed. “Amazing events like this don’t always happen”, I would be emphatically reminded. But, having been here for over a month now, I’ve come to realise something: it *is* always like this; life at Curative goes at a million miles an hour - and that’s exactly the way I like it.

This month’s list of things to keep us on our toes has included launching some very exciting new projects. It’s always a delightful experience finally opening the gates on a piece of work that we have poured so much time and love into.

One such project that deserves special mention is The Harbour: Everyone here says that it seems so long ago that the wonderful people at SAFE, Help and RPE asked us to produce their incredible new online resource.

The Harbour is a platform for people to access information and support about harmful sexual behaviour, addressing a really important need within this area. The material we needed to tackle covered some pretty heavy stuff, especially when it came to collating contributions from both those who have been harmed, as well as those who have caused harm - there were certainly times when this content weighed heavy on our minds. That said, we are already starting to hear some really rewarding feedback about how affected  users have been by reading these contributions. 

And so now, all of a sudden, it’s complete & launched. For me, The Harbour has been one of the first projects I’ve seen fully-launched at Curative, and it’s taught me a lot about the transient nature of our working process: about the necessary level of connection we have with our projects and their subject-matter, while knowing that eventually we will have to let go and set it free at some stage in the future. 

The Harbour’s  release came right off the back of an extremely full-on period for the Curative team, a time when a whole bunch of projects were coming to a head at exactly the same time. As this particularly busy period approached, anticipation rose to the point where the phrase ‘hell-week’ started being bandied about. But we were determined not to let this week get on top of us; we are the masters of our own time, and so we collectively renamed hell-week ‘HELL-YEAH Week!’.

One of the largest (and definitely the most delicious) components of hell-yeah week was our Social Innovation dinner event, The Feast, which Curative hosted in collaboration with the Sustainable Business Network and our friends at Innovate Change. The Feast is an opportunity to get some of Auckland’s greatest social innovation minds in a room, feed them wine and delicious food from POPdining, and then let them loose on a challenge. This year’s dinner was based around identifying interesting and innovative solutions that could provide safe, warm and sustainable housing for the Auckland’s growing population. Lots of great connections were forged during many interesting conversations. Check out the photos of the evening here...

But even as the final morsels of dessert were devoured, the Curative team were all conscious that ‘Hell Yeah’ week was still in full-swing; we managed to race home for a few short hours of sleep before being up again to host CreativeMornings six hours later. Another global collaboration, which this month saw 50+ chapters from around the world host a talk which followed the theme of ‘Play’ proudly set by our own little team. 

All the while, I still had a sense that everyone expected things to slow down soon, back to some level of supposed normality...

‘Hell-Yeah’ week ended with a special treat for Eddy & I (Double-Eddies!) when we were asked to speak at the Tall Poppy conference that was expertly brought together by Brook, Elliot, and the awesome team at ZEAL. Tall Poppy pulled together some of the most interesting change-makers in the country to share the ways in which their work is having positive impact on the lives of young people. While the day was choc-full of incredible speakers, some stand-outs for us included hearing NZ’s principle youth court judge Andrew Becroft talking about progressive new approaches to youth justice. Another memorable moment was hearing Chris Clark, CEO of World Vision, talking about the importance of adaptability within the social sector - which certainly resonated with us during this fast-paced week. From my perspective, it was fantastic to get a chance to meet some of the best movers and shakers in the sector up here, and to reconnect with some I’d met before. 

As the sun set on Tall Poppy, so too did it set on ‘Hell-Yeah’ week. Eddy and I both (respectively) went home to our first home cooked meals, our first early night, our first chance to not be out the door before 6am, in a week. Team Curative slept well that weekend, no doubt. Perhaps they did so under the illusion that it wouldn’t be the same in the coming week; that this was going to be the settling week, the promised-land where time comes in healthy portions, and nothing needs to get done until tomorrow. 

Maybe this is the way we need to think in order to stay sane, but as for me, the new guy, I see through it; I’m quickly coming to the realisation that the pace never drops in a place like this, there is always more to do, more exciting projects and ideas, and more wonderful organisations to help. But then again, I think the thing we all share in common here is that none of us would have it any other way. 

Have a great November, everybody.

Edward & Kaan 

[curativenz]

Constant Ch-ch-ch-changes…

With all the changes and upheaval that Team Curative have undergone over the last couple of months, David Bowie would have been telling us to ‘turn and face the strain’. And we’d be fibbing if we didn’t concede that there has been extra pressure on us all. But, for the most part, it’s been an amazingly unifying and uplifting time as we’ve moved into our new home, and grown our family.

Moving into the new Curative HQ studio was a pretty natural change. After 18 months of co-working, first at The Kitchen, then a brief stint at Movers & Shakers, it was definitely time for us to cultivate the Curative culture, and find our own space.

So on Friday 30 August, we once again loaded up the cars with all of our belongings, and this time trekked off to our new and permanent home at the foot of Mt Eden.

The chaos and elation of unloading boxes, unwrapping all of our new goodies, and placing all of our furniture in just the right spot, was all consuming on moving day. But as we arrived for our first working day, and settled in our new desks, it finally dawned on us - we were all alone.

While we’re now sharing our new spot with with our pals at Innovate Change and Core Education, for the first few days, it was just us. It was a strange realisation. And we felt a bit lonely. Having cohabited with dozens of others in our previous homes, we found ourselves missing the unpredictable comings and goings that we’d become so accustomed to.

Turns out, we are people people. We thrive when we’re surrounded by others. We like noise. We like the energy of new ideas, and interesting conversations. But, we also really, really need some quiet and some focus to be able to get things done and invest in supporting our own team.

Thankfully, we have the best of both worlds now that we have a few extra bodies from Innovate Change and Core Education sharing the space with us. It’s a pretty harmonious collective, each with different organisational strengths, but with similar values.

We all value people first. We like to learn something new each day.

We believe in growing young people.

And we like to have fun while we change the world.

It was the most humbling moment as the Karanga echoed to call us into our new home. As Core-Education’s Kaumatua walked us through our sun-kissed space, blessing each nook. As we shared a cup of tea and our hopes for our new shared office.

Yes, there were a few tears. Happy little droplets trickled down my cheeks as I reflected on on where we’d been to get to this place - our own studio. Months of Jade and I working from our homes when we first began, to our team bringing in their own equipment at The Kitchen, to us all dossing in an unheated office at Movers & Shakers through the coldest months of winter. We were finally here. In our new spot. With hot water, a dishwasher and our own things. It was pretty special. And I can promise that we won’t be taking our new home for granted. We’ve worked hard to get here. And we’re loving furnishing and filling it with all the comforts, fittings and fixtures that make it us.

And it’s not just new things in our new home. We have a new person too!

We were pretty overwhelmed with the response to the ad that we put out in August, which started our hunt for some awesome person to join the team. For some reason, we had thought that we would know everyone who would apply. But we were flooded with interesting, creative, caring individuals, who found us in lots of different ways.

And after an interview process, which of course involved preparing a meal with our team, we’re thrilled to welcome ‘the other Eddy’ into our little family. One week new, and he’s already fitting right in. Alternate suggestions for what we should call him around the office are appreciated. Jade suggested we just call him ‘Sue’ - but that doesn’t seem to be catching on. So Edward it is for now.

Someone really wise once said that ‘change is the only constant in your life’. A new person, and a new place were our big changes this month. But the change we’re most excited to be part of is taking the Complex Care Group online for the first time.

This group of amazing parents and families of young people with highly complex needs have been supporting one-another without any digital presence, aside from email, for the last 10 years.

So we are thrilled to have worked with them to produce an online resource that will help support, connect and give a voice to this incredible group, who are so selfless and tireless with the energy and love that they give. It was our absolute pleasure to launch the site together, just today, and we hope that it makes their lives just a little bit easier, and helps others understand just how much they do.

They say that change is as good as a holiday. But we think it’s even better. Change is full of energy, invigoration and a revived sense of direction. If things aren’t changing, then you’re just standing still. And we’re not the sort of people who like to stand still for very long.

Jade & Eddy.

P.S - If you’d like to hear from and hang out with some other interesting change-makers, you can register to join us at the Tall Poppy event, which is being hosted by ZEAL on Saturday 19 October 2013.

P.S.S - And, if you love a bit of exercise to start your day, we have a wonderful Yoga teacher that comes into Curative HQ to take a class every Thursday morning, 7:30am ($12 per class) - Tweet @Curative_NZ  if you're keen to join us for #Yoga!

[livefortmw]

In support of #WSPD #LiveForTomorrow

Copy the ‘yellow code’ here: http://bit.ly/yellowcode

Go to your Settings

Click ‘Customize’

Click the ‘Edit HTML’ button

Scroll to the bottom of the HTML

Paste the ‘yellow code’ before the </body> tag (second to last line)

Save, and voilà, your Tumblr is now all yellowy.

Support World Suicide Prevention Day (10 September 2013)

SPREAD THE WORD!

[curativenz]

[curativenz]

Living For Tomorrow...

It's been more than a month now since we settled in at our temporary home, Movers & Shakers in Britomart. Since dropping anchor at these short-term digs, the Curative crew have managed to prove their adaptability by making home with fervour; hot water bottles and blankets, adorning the communal toilets with deluxe lavender-infused toiletries, even setting up home for our resident non-human friends – Jadado, the potato man and Lady Rainicorn, the Gender Neutral Piñata. 

In between, we’ve managed to squeeze in several shared lunches, cooked up by a rotating roster of Curative co-conspirators, the gastronomics emerging from the electric frying pan including fish finger sammies, crepes, an assortment of mexican grub and brimming-full bagel sandwiches. Movie nights in Movers & Shakers giant inflatable brain have been a frequent occurrence here too, the most recent being the 80s childhood classic The Land Before Time, which we enjoyed while snuggled up in bean bags in our finest onesies.

With all the shared lunches, movie nights and bounteous Britomart food options we've been having a ball with the Movers and Shakers crew, and it would be easy for us to get comfortable and decide to settle here forever. But we need to keep looking to the future and what tomorrow will bring. And most immediately for our small team it'll be bringing two things.

We're growing up fast and a big part of growing up is finding a place to call your own, so we’re excited to announce that we have done just that. Our search for a permanent home to house the Curative family is now all but over, and we can’t wait to tell you all about it (and maybe give you an internet tour) next month once we're there. 

Another key part of growing up, surprisingly enough, is "growth" and that covers the second thing  tomorrow will be sending our way. We're  looking for a new awesome person to become a part of the Curative crew. Since being welcomed into the Curative fam-bam, it's been amazing experiencing these past several months, with all of us settling into this wee modern family, complete with siblings teasing and setting up mild pranks on one another. So it'll be very exciting and a little nerve-wracking to welcome someone new into the fold, ushering in a new chapter for Curative in our permanent home. 

Despite popular belief, it's not all sunshine and rainbows here at Curative. All of the lightness we create with our fun and games, is often a stark (and really necessary) contrast to the subject matter that we're dealing with in our day-to-day doing. And we hope to bring some of our hope and light to the work that we do.

One project we’ve had the privilege to be a part of is ZEAL's beautiful and incredibly powerful #LiveForTomorrow campaign. An effort to address the alarming rates of youth suicide, depression self harm and alcohol abuse, the online project is a collaboration with ZEAL, prominent R’n’B singer Pieter T and award-winning director Chris Graham, to provide a voice for youth struggling to find their way through dark times, encouraging them to ask for help, look to the future, and #LiveForTomorrow.

Curative worked alongside Zeal’s Social Marketing Collective, an amazing group of 15-18 year olds, to craft an online platform for the project and create a strong, identifiable brand and visual language for #LiveForTomorrow, something that can easily be taken and adapted by youth across social media to express their take on what it means to #LiveForTomorrow.

Words can’t express how deeply moved we were by the bravery of those featured in Pieter T’s Music video/mini documentary, and we’re super proud to have been a part of this initiative. The video (below), launched last week, is well worth a watch, as are the mini-documentaries that accompany it, taking a more in depth look at the stories of Levi and Richie.

Follow #LiveForTomorrow on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram, share what #LiveForTomorrow means to you and keep an eye out for Phase Two, which will be announced on the 1st of September.

Another exciting piece of work we did this month was a stop-motion video for the Global Citizen Concert to launch this year's Live Below the Line campaign. Crouching on the ground in a small room with Sam while carefully crafting letters out of rice, then blasting it with a blower in between fits of hysterics, definitely made for an entertaining day at work.

The video was projected during the concert, in between incredible Kiwi acts such as Anika Moa, Tiki Taane, Jamie McDell, Seth Haapu, Ahoribuzz and more. There were also several inspiring advocates against extreme poverty speaking in between musical acts. We all got our boogie shoes on that evening, and it was the perfect way to end my birthday weekend too. 

Being able to do meaningful work like this together really makes me feel all warm and gooey inside, knowing that we're doing our bit of good today to make the world a better place tomorrow. I guess that idea is something that motivates and informs all of our decisions at Curative, especially in this period of movement, change and growth. In fact we have a quote sitting on one of our desks, which acts as a handy reminder. 

Every day we’re working towards creating a better tomorrow, and we’re incredibly lucky that we get to do this as our job. That's what Living For Tomorrow means for us. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

Peace out Homies

Meghan (& Kaan)

P.S. Jade and Eddy will be running a few workshops on Social Media and Digital Communications over the next few months with North Shore Community and Social Services. The first will be on 24th September at the Waiheke Adult Learning Centre, the second on the 5th November at the Mary Thomas Centre in Takapuna. Check them out if you have a chance!

[curativenz]

Opportunity:

Account Executive/Account Manager - Full time.

1-3 years creative project management experience required.

Curative is looking for a special individual to join our modern family of talented creatives. The role will involve managing and producing innovative and inspirational social change campaigns that live both online and off.

Working with community, not-for-profit, social enterprise, and social change advocates, this role requires an individual who can really listen to what is needed and navigate the requirements and sensitivities to produce work that will help our clients achieve their goals.  

We’re looking for someone who is highly organised, enjoys working with people, is a clear communicator with strong written language skills, loves a good challenge and is open to learning something new each day.  

Experience in a creative agency or in project management is necessary, but ultimately we’re really looking for someone who fits our team neatly, is prepared to give anything a go, and can keep a project on track from whoa to go!

If you think this sounds like you, please send your C.V with a one page cover letter to Jade Tang and Eddy Helm - [email protected] by Friday 30th August 2013.

[curativenz]

A Month of Disruption

As the new guy on the Curative team of awesomeness and social splendour, one of the things I’ve noticed is that you get given all sorts of interesting tasks and challenges to help prove your salt. Last week included the purchasing of a toaster (we eat a lot of muffin splits); building from scratch eight new office chairs and now I am attempting to deliver the Curative blog to fill everyone in on what’s been going on. But as always, at Curative... there’s a lot to say. 

It’s been a time of change here at Curative. The thing we discovered about growing a team is that quite quickly, surprisingly and alarmingly, you no longer fit the old mould and the office fridge you have been so harmoniously using for the past two years, no longer holds everyone’s lunch box.  Thursday 27th June saw our last day working out of the shared co-op space ‘The Kitchen’, which has been Curative’s home for the past eighteen months.

Embracing the new means releasing the old, and the Kitchen, like any good parent, has been with Curative since day one. On my mission to find good content for ye blog, I asked both Eddy and Jade what their favourite moment in The Kitchen was since they moved in back in January 2012. Jade’s was ‘camping chairs’. Apparently before they had any furniture everyone brought camping equipment in and went rookie on it until the permanent fixtures arrived. It must have been a good memory; as it’s hard not to know when Jade is happy - she’s one of those rare people who seem to smile with their whole body. Eddy’s favourite moment was the opening night party and the many shared lunches. I have known Eddy since we were kids, and she was always the first to scream ‘yes’ to the prospect of a good party – most of which she threw, suggested and catered herself. It makes me feel all warm inside to think that after all that time we’re still just big kids. My favourite memory of The Kitchen was long before I started working with Curative. One night Eddy took me and a couple of old friends up and we sat and played board games late into the night, drank red wine and looked out over the city. It was a nice time and even though I only got to spend a couple of weeks there as a worker, I knew it was a pretty special place.

So where are we now? Well, with six creative-energetics under its belt, Curative has embarked on a journey of self-discovery in its quest for a new and bigger fridge. As a temporary port we are now stationed at Movers & Shakers (down at Britomart). This place is awesome and much like the late Kitchen, is bustling with creative entrepreneurs from all walks of life.  It’s a great place to tide us over. The people are nice and they play good music. There’s also a giant, inflatable brain in the middle of the space which forms the best meeting room ever. 

We love it here, but the quest for Curatives new bomb-diggity digs will continue and I’m sure there will be lots of new exciting updates to follow in the coming months. The only downside to Movers & Shakers is that we sit almost directly atop the best French bakery this side of Toulouse, and if we don’t move soon they will be rolling me down the stairs and out the door. 

So what have we been doing besides carrying our office from one side of town to the other? If you’re reading this blog, I’ll expect you’re not a stranger to social change and the idea of business for good? Well I can tell you right now that I’ve never seen these principles more alive and kicking than in the past month. We have snuggled up with some pretty amazing projects and last week helped Leadership New Zealand organize and celebrate its most successful event to date; Dinner with a Difference. 

The Curative crew had the fabulous opportunity to help craft Dinner with a Difference; and as a fresh design grad, Aria was especially stoked to see her work come to life for the event. To put it simply the team behind this event wanted to shake things up a notch. Out went the formal invitations, orderly conduct and polite conversation of yesterday, and in came a brand new approach to leadership; and it was all about causing disruption.

It was a pretty unique experience, and most significantly the diversity of speakers is what really made the event different for most of us. It was exciting to hear insights from leaders who were just starting out like Barnaby Marshall from I Love Ugly to proven change makers like John Mccarthy from Lifewise. And at the end of the night Sir Bob Harvey reassured us all that you can often be onto a good thing when you're “..terrified and having the most amazing time”. 

So, I guess the word of the month for us was ‘disruption’. A quick move to new digs, and an evening of Disruptive Leadership. We could have felt displaced and and chaotic, but it’s been comforting to prove the strength of our team, and know that no matter where we are, or who we’re working with, we’ll stick together, and create beautiful and meaningful work.      xx 

Sam & Aria 

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Time to eat some humble pie, and introduce you to our growing team 

When we started this little blog, we had some pretty ambitious goals. We were going to update it every week.  

We were going to share all of our learnings along the way.  We were going to be a source of inspiration. 

Sorry if you’ve been eagerly awaiting tips or tricks from us; if you have, they’ve been sorely lacking. (We write this as we read over our most recent post... from January this year!) 

Luckily it’s a big wide web, and there are plenty of others out there who are geared up to share news, views and ideas, so we’re confident we won’t be your only source of encouragement. But, with that said, we do still want to let you in on our journey. We’re big on sharing, and we’ve learnt a lot from others, so we’d like to put our own life lessons out there, in the hopes that they’re even just a little bit useful to someone else. 

So, here goes, we’re setting some new goals. And this place will be a whole lot more active from here on out. We’re not going to shoot for the lofty ‘weekly update’ dream just yet, but we have plans to make sure that there is a little more from us here, from here on out. 

So... Why so silent?   

We’re doing our very best to write this post without including the sentence ‘we’ve been so busy’. We like to be productive, and active, and have a tonne of interesting things to do - but we really don’t want to glorify busy-ness. 

So... we’ve been active. And really productive. The first six months has been full of adventures, and we’re really proud of the work that we’ve been doing.

So with all the exciting things we’ve been doing, we’ve had to learn to let go - all over again, and in a different kind of way this time. 

We’ve had to learn that we can’t do every little thing ourselves, on every project that we work on. We’ve had to learn to share our vision, and trust others in delivering the work that we believe in. 

So, we’ve grown our little Curative crew, into our very own modern family of talented creative thinkers and doers, who share the same values that we do. They all want to put their skills to use for something bigger than themselves, and they all bring their own unique talents and experience to our team to make the projects we deliver even richer. 

So now, as part of learning to let go... again... and, acknowledging that we can’t do everything ourselves, we’re also going to share this little blog space with the whole Curative crew, and have them share all the things they’re learning along the way too. 

So, look out for updates from the lovely Sam & Aria who will be curating our creativity next month. 

Jade & Eddy xx 

[curativenz]

"When I was one, I had just begun” - AA Milne

The playful words of AA Milne that enchanted us all as a children, today make sense. As Curative celebrates our first year of business, it rings true that ‘we have just begun’, and we’re full of optimism and excitement about what lies ahead. The nice thing about entering year two, is that while we’re still fresh and new, we now know that we can ‘do this’. We’re also forearmed with the lessons that our first year has taught us, and we can use this new found knowledge and experience to further shape and mould our business and our lives. We (especially Jade) read a lot of blogs, and get a lot of inspiration from all of the learnings that others share.  Our original intention was to post all of our learnings along the way; but we got so caught up in the doing and the learning, that we ran out of time to share everything. So, our birthday gift to you, is a handful of the most important things that year one has taught us.

Love.

If you’ve been to any of our presentations or workshops (or if you know us at all), you’ll know we always start and finish by saying: "Do what you love, Love what you do." We don’t say this lightly. We know that the lines tend to blur between personal & professional lives, and we’ve given up on the notion of ‘work-life balance’ in favour of ‘work-life integration’. We spend so much time working, so it’s important to us that the environment we’re in, the work we’re doing, and the people we’re doing it with, can all be loved by us. It sounds a bit smooshy, fluffy, hippy-esque even, but the more positive energy and care that we can genuinely give something, the better the outcome, the stronger the relationship, and the more fun we have doing it. It’s simple really, it’s much easier to get out of bed in the morning to do work that we believe in, with people we enjoy spending time with. At our latest CreativeMornings, which followed the global theme of happiness, Friday & Andy from Running with Scissors shared the same sentiments, even going so far as saying that happiness was good for the bottom line. So, our version is that love is good for the triple-bottom line; people, planet and profit.  

Fail.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to produce consistently considered, clever, high-quality pieces of work. We like to push boundaries, to think outside the box, to embrace every creative cliche you can imagine. This pressure has the potential to be crippling; but this year we’ve learnt not to go so hard on ourselves, that we are our own worst critics, and potential failures are just an opportunity to improve. We’ve learnt that it’s okay to get things wrong, in fact nothing will ever be perfect. We’ve learnt that sometimes it’s the things that don’t go quite to plan that teach you the greatest lessons. That it’s better to do something, and then change it, than to do nothing at all. It was Einstein who said something along the lines of ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity’. And we don’t want to be insane. So, we always look at how we could change a process, how we could make the colours brighter, how we could organise the room in a more logical way; anything that will smooth out the kinks for the next time we tackle a similar challenge.

Celebrate.

Whether you win or lose, it’s important to celebrate the effort. A slice of cake, a glass of wine, an indulgent afternoon of pampering, a high-five, a dance-off or simply some tech-free time, we think it’s important to reward hard work, to acknowledge the people in your life, and to share the thrill and relief of completion, achievement or a personal win.   Everyday should include a little celebration, or a little reward. Light the candles today, wear your best dress, use the good china. Every day is special.

Repeat.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far. To new friends and old, to our families, our clients, co-conspirators and collaborators, and especially to Adam and Gareth; don’t underestimate how much strength, courage and energy your belief in us gives us.

PHOTOS: Check out the rest of the Curative's Birthday Party photos »

ARTICLE: Read more about our first year on The Fetch »

[curativenz]

How much change can you make for $2.25?

A lot more when you pool your resources and work together.

How big a part does food play in your life? It’s not something we think about too much, since we have such easy access to it. But last week we came to appreciate how much food is built into our daily schedules. Catch up with a friend? Grab lunch at a local cafe. Client meeting? Coffee and Tea please. Struggling to get through the mid-afternoon doldrums? Sugary snack to jumpstart the brain. Need to wind down after work? Glass of red. Take those away and life start to get a little less fun. Then drastically cut your daily food intake and your ability to function becomes severely impaired. How do we know this? Well we, alongside 1400 other Kiwis, were Living Below the Line for a week, in an effort to raise awareness and funds around the global problem of extreme poverty. Our involvement with the campaign started back in June when we helped Will and Patrick from the Global Poverty Project launch this years New Zealand Live Below the Line challenge; a campaign that has managed to get eight of the major aid organisations within New Zealand to collaborate, no mean feat. After being immersed in the cause at the time of launch, we knew that we had to take the challenge ourselves, and live below the international extreme poverty line, on just $2.25 a day, for 5 days.  

Living on such a small amount is all but inconceivable for those of us lucky enough to be born in the Western world, but for 1.4 Billion people around the world it’s their reality. They have to survive on that tiny budget, using it to pay for not just their food but also clean water, healthcare, education, shelter, everything! The aim of the campaign is to bring an end to this extreme poverty within a generation, to help those most in need to break out of the cycle that they’ve been born into. Now lets be clear, this challenge in no way comes close to replicating the realities of those living below the poverty line, but it did give us valuable insight into some of the day to day struggles.   We knew it was going to be hard; that it was very likely that we would be hungry, grumpy, and sluggish. But we also knew as a team of three we could pool our resources, and lean on each for support (something that proved invaluable as we made our way through the week).

We created a very detailed daily plan for our meals, and tried to make sure that each meal was as filling as possible. We were never in danger of starving, but our struggles would be mental. Eating had to become more about survival, rather than enjoyment. Our meals, while in no way unpleasant, wouldn’t be particularly inspiring, but they would give us what we needed. We would have to deal with the fact we couldn’t just grab a snack when our stomachs rumbled, or sip a cup of tea for refreshment. But we had no idea of the toll it would take on our workloads. The smaller portions paired with lack of sugar, coffee, and tea clouded our thoughts, slowed our responses and gave us splitting headaches.

Food also took up a whole lot more headspace than we expected. With such a strict budget, we couldn’t just grab something as we ran out the door. We had to make time to prepare and eat each of the three meals everyday. And much of the week was occupied just thinking about food too. Despite realising early on, talking about things we couldn’t have was tortuous, we couldn’t seem to help ourselves, and many of our conversations centered around that which we could not have.

As much as we complained last week, we were always brought back to reality by the fact that this is just a small taste of what life is like for a large portion of the worlds population. It’s a sobering perspective. We finished the week with a renewed appreciation for the amount of choice we have when it comes to food, the ease of access to it, and how much we depend on it to help us get through the day. And the challenge has proven to us once again how valuable it is to have a supportive network around you, to push you forward, help you out and bolster your efforts. Last week 1400 New Zealanders came together to let people know extreme poverty is something we can bring to an end, raising over $300,000 while we were at it.

There’s strength in numbers, and by simply working together and sharing resources, seemingly insurmountable challenges can become a lot more manageable, whether it be surviving on a tiny budget, or bringing an end to a global crisis.

The animated video that Curative's lead crafter Kaan, produced to tell the story of Live Below The Line.

[curativenz]

“You create your opportunities by asking for them” - Shakti Gawain As I sit here at Heathrow airport ready to board my 30+ hour journey home to New Zealand, I keep thinking about how important it is to never wonder ‘what if’, but to instead seize every opportunity. And that sometimes, that means you need to create the opportunity for yourself, by asking for them, after all, the worst case is that they’ll say ‘no’. It’s these thoughts that I’ve carried with me through all of my previous travels and upon reflection of the past few weeks in the UK, these thoughts are still incredibly relevant today. My trip to London was initiated by a client of Curative's; British Council NZ (BCNZ). They wanted us to look at an arts, culture and social innovation project; The Edible Garden as part of the Phakama: Velela pop-up festival.

An initiative we look forward to helping implement in New Zealand later in the year. Being over there allowed me to meet amazing young artists from around the world, engage with the local London creative practitioners and even inspired me to explore a bit of storytelling through performance arts workshops. However, my experience with Phakama was just the beginning... I wholeheartedly believe, that even in an age where everyone feels more connected online, nothing can beat real life face-to-face connections. Which was partly why BCNZ sent us over, to connect, engage and learn first hand about the project and the people involved rather than being sent a well-structured strategy document about systems and processes to re-create the concept in NZ. That would’ve been too easy! The challenging part, is really getting involved, getting your hands dirty, and getting amongst it all, clarifying the original intentions of each individual, the objectives of the project, learning about what each person brought to the table; both professionally and personally, and understanding the dynamics of the key-players of the project. Which I felt, I was able to grasp whole-heartedly while living on campus with some of the Artists in Residence. However, it wasn’t just 'campus life' that I threw myself into wholeheartedly. While in that part of the world, I extended the ‘business trip’ and took the opportunity to explore the professional landscape of Design, Social Innovation and Social Design in the UK. With these interests in mind, I connected with a few thought leaders prior to arriving; and managed to set up times to meet with them.

Below is a bit of a re-cap, collection of interesting links, resources and little learnings from some of the people I was fortunate enough to meet with:

Stuart Thomason, Senior Associate at The Young Foundation; took the time to talk me through the landscape of Social Innovation in the UK, what part YF played, the innovation spiral and sent me off with a bunch of resources; this publication comes highly recommended if you haven’t already read it, you can download The Open Book of Social Innovation here. Earlier that week, The Young Foundation was hosting a Social Design talk on Design Ethnography with Catriona Macaulay. Admittedly, earlier that day, I had no idea what Design Ethnography really was, but the end of the presentation, I was looking forward to finding out more and how we could highlight the notion here in NZ.

It was at that talk, where I met the Service Design Lead at Fjords, Noemi Mas. Who was kind enough to have a coffee and take me through their innovation process, methodologies and tools even amongst a big deadline. I also ran into Noemi at the CreativeMornings London event with rAndom International (I guess the creative industries are small no matter where you are in the world!) Where I got the chance to meet CreativeMornings London chapter host, Drew Smith and share our CreativeMornings Auckland ‘Hello LDN’ video. An interesting, articulate, well groomed creative character that was incredibly warm and welcoming. Meeting industry leaders with extensive connections in their cities, is just one of the reasons why the CreativeMornings family is so valuable to be part of, and again reiterates this video »

Peter Holbrook, CEO of Social Enterprise UK; whom I initially met in NZ and gave a captivating presentation at The Kitchen, took the time out of his busy schedule to show me around The Firestation, meet the SEUK team as well as share insights and resources into the beginnings of setting up a similar association in NZ. Once again, I was amazed, not just by his charismatic words of wisdom, but by the physical space. In this one building, they have housed here; School for Social Entrepreneurs, PwC’s Centre for Social Impact, and The Brigade bar & bistro; here they host The Beyond Food foundation, where they are offering people who have been at risk of or have experienced homelessness the opportunity to take part in a 6 month apprenticeship programme called United Kitchen. If you're interested in learning more about Social Enterprise NZ, contact us and we’ll point you in the right direction. Social innovation and research consultancy; A Very Good Company’s co-founder and director, Natalie Campbell, was incredibly welcoming given it was the week following A Good Week. She was even kind enough to gift me a book; which is mandatory for all her staff, contractors and interns to read before working with her; The One Minute Manager, a book by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. 

At that very meeting I also had the opportunity to catch up with; Kate Andrews, a social communications strategist and design consultant who I had been following the work of online for the past few years. We're all pretty busy ladies, but currently exploring the potential of a collaborative project, where we can share our learnings and discourse around Social Innovation and Design. We'll be sure to keep you posted on any developments. And then, there were these next two serendipitous encounters. And the story goes a little like this: A really good friend of mine, Adele Barlow invited me to a launch party of General Assembly where they were setting up a London office and heard there would be some rather interesting characters there... I was right. Despite arriving embarrassingly early, Tom Hulme, Design Director of IDEO and founder of OpenIDEO was there at a similar time too. I recognised him instantly and on my somewhat swift departure, introduced myself, snapped a pic and he was kind enough to invite me around to their studio to meet with him and his team later that week. To learn a bit more about IDEO, the Art of Innovation their widely recognised human-centred processes, and world renowned guide to designing for Social Impact. Haiyan Zhang, interaction lead of OpenIDEO was kind enough to answer a few of my niggling questions about the agency after the team from Thames & Hudson departed. In which we found out we had a mutual Kiwi acquaintance; Meena Kadri (6 Degrees of separation, that, and us Kiwis are everywhere!) At the launch party, was also fortunate enough to meet Dees from Mozilla, where we set up a meeting the following week at their new beautiful co-working space right in the centre of town in London; (which from my understanding, Mozilla Spaces is completely free and open to the public for people to work from.) And after realising that Mozilla does much more than create the amazing web-browser Firefox, we then explored the possibility of hosting a Design Jam in New Zealand in the coming year. Again, we’ll keep you posted on any developments. So, whether it was via phone, email, twitter, launch party or a serendipitous encounter I thought to myself that, "You do indeed, create your opportunities by asking for them.” and fortunately for me it turned out on this trip that no-one said ‘No’. This mini-mantra has served me right not only on my travels, but day-to-day life as well. I must admit, I felt terrible having to leave Curative, just 6 months new, with the workload really starting to take off! However, I’m fortunate to have a business partner and a great friend in Eddy, who was incredibly supportive of the opportunity and saw the long-term benefits of this trip out weighing the short-term work stress. And it was with this support that I was able to throw myself into the experience fully, knock on every door, ask plenty of questions and let the opportunities open up.

So, what unexpected opportunities have you recently created for yourself by just asking for them?

[curativenz]

Make time to reflect. And know when to ask for help.

Phew! Our heads are just peeking back up now after a solid six weeks of busy-ness. The best kind of busy. We’ve been working with so many interesting people, on so many interesting things, we haven’t had time to sit back and reflect on what we’ve achieved, and more importantly, how we achieved it. 

But now that we have a brief moment of silence, before the next hurricane of activity consumes us, we can see just how important it is to make time to stop, to acknowledge what’s been done, what hurdles we’ve overcome, and refocus our attention, energy and learnings into the next set of projects. 

Among the list of things that kept us on our toes were four fairly significant projects. Fair Trade Auckland presented us with an exciting brief, but a very short timeframe to achieve it in. Our friends at Rainbow Youth & Outline needed to launch their WTF campaign shortly after. The Lifewise Big SleepOut needed a video shot and edited. And we needed to help British Council stage a week-long PIYN workshop with a couple of creative legends from the UK, as a side event for design conference Semi-Permanent.

The only way we were going to give all of these projects the creative energy and attention that they needed was to acknowledge energy levels, and to know when to ask for help. 

We could see our ‘to-do’ list getting longer than we could achieve ourselves, and the skill-set needed pushing our own experience, so we called in our favourite hipster and all round talented craftsman, Kaan Hiini to help us with a few things. 

Having extra resource, allowed us to be more creative, and more responsive to some pretty demanding timelines, and complex projects. And through this period, we learnt that anything is possible with the right attitude and enough energy.

And we’re lucky to have this learning under our belt as Jade heads off for a three week stint in the UK to absorb as much as she can for another British Council project. It makes it an easy, logical and exciting step to extend our team to include Kaan as a semi-permanent fixture so that Eddy isn’t left carrying the load alone.  

Together we can divide and conquer, share the load, manage energy levels and achieve anything we put our mind to.

[curativenz]

An open letter re: Charities Amendment Bill. We need to act now.

This is unlike any of our other blog posts, but rather an open letter to those in the community and charity sector. We hope that despite the little time we have to make our voices heard that our letter will help to influence action. 

Dear Friends -

Parliament is about to consider the Crown Entities Reform Bill which among other changes abolishes the Charities Act2005 and disestablishes the New Zealand Charities Commission.

The Charities Commission was established as an autonomous crown entity after years of consultation and discussion with the community and charity sector.

Along with managing the register of charitable entities, the Charities Commission was established to promote public trust and confidence in the charitable sector, encourage and promote the effective use of charitable resources and educate and assist charities in relation to matters of good governance and management.

However, under the proposed reform the functions of the Charities Commission would be moved to the Department of Internal Affairs, who have a lesser capacity for understanding, supporting, educating and growing the sector.

The government intends to disestablish the Charities Commission as an autonomous crown entity in the hopes of cost savings; however cost efficiencies are not guaranteed. To regulate the sector will still require staff, office space and equipment and a Chief Executive, all of which come at a cost.

Despite the argument of cost, ultimately the level of engagement and furtherment of the community sector that the Charities Commission has championed is unlikely to continue under Department of Internal Affairs, and years of interaction and progress within the sector will be un-done.

So, what can we do?

The Crown Entities Reform Bill is due to have its second reading in Parliament and be voted on in the week beginning 21 May. This is the last opportunity to save the independent Commission. This means, that the time to act is now.

To show your support for the continued work of the Charities Commission please call or visit your local MP and voice your concerns. If you’re unable to call or visit, please make the time to send a personalised letter to your MP.

To support your appeal, your conversation or letter could outline your community's need for the Charities Commission, highlight the benefits, education, guidance, events or advocacy that the Commission has provided in the past, and the concerns you have if this support is lessened or removed.

We have one week to make sure that our united voices are heard and that we continue to be supported and furthered as a sector.

Download the Crown Entities Reform Bill here. Part 3 of the Bill covers the disestablishment of the Commission.

Thanks

Eddy & Jade