LIVING THE CHANGE CAST AND CREW

Jordan Osmond

Jordan grew up in Ballarat, Australia. A budding photographer, in his mid-teens he was struck by how documentary films were having an impact on how he saw the world and how he lived his life. Impressed by what an effective medium for change they were, he wanted to get behind the camera and have a positive impact on the lives of others. His first feature film, A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity, co-directed with Samuel Alexander, has received over a million views on YouTube and continues to be shown at community events and festivals around the world. Having teamed up with Antoinette in Happen Films, the pair set out to make a series of short films that ended up becoming a second feature film, Living the Change. He is director, writer and cinematographer, as well as editor of nearly all of the Happen Films productions.

Antoinette Wilson

Born in Tasmania, Australia, raised in Christchurch, New Zealand, Antoinette spent her teens volunteering at her local Environment and Peace Information Centre before entering a career in publishing in her 20s. Not one to be tied to a desk she took her desk job with her to Buenos Aires in 2004, where she spent six years dancing tango and working as a freelance book editor. Her journey of exploration into personal and global health led her to participate in the documentary film A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity. She and Jordan teamed up in Happen Films, and she brought her production skills over from the book industry to research, write, produce and co-direct their films.

Jason Hosking

Jason Hosking is an award-winning New Zealand photographer who has had a lifelong love affair with nature. For the last two decades he’s immersed himself in travel and the environment, attempting to capture all the wonder of the world’s animals, people and places. The journeys, encounters and conversations he’s had along the way have led him to think and care more deeply about the world around him, fundamentally influencing how he lives and eats and motivating him to create work that inspires positive change. Jason shot much of the stunning aerial footage for Living the Change as well as shooting b-roll footage and being second camera whenever he could accompany us on set.

Aled Roberts

Aled Roberts is a multi-instrumentalist film composer who has created original soundtracks for award-winning short and feature films. Aled mixes organic and processed sounds to create unique soundscapes and uses his musical intuition to write evocative, compelling film scores.

Recent work includes film scores for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and International Justice Mission; VR short film The Hidden, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and sci-fi feature Chimera starring Henry Ian Cusick (Lost). Aled has also created film scores for Costa Boutsikaris’s award-winning feature documentary Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective; Louis Gordon’s Girl in the Chair, which was nominated for Best Experimental Film at the 42nd Student Academy Awards and won an Original Score Craft Award at the 2015 First Run Film Festival; and Marie Schlingmann’s short film Canary as part of the 2015 ASCAP/Columbia Film Scoring Workshop, which screened at Montclair Film Festival and made WBUR The ARTery’s list of Ten Must-See Shorts at IFFBoston. ‘Make Ends Meet‘, a song Aled co-wrote with singer-songwriter Kevin Garrett, appears in the feature film Skating to New York. Aled’s first notable film score was for director Patrick Biesemans‘ short film Charles Bukowski’s Nirvana, which is included on Vimeo’s Staff Pick List.

Andrew Martin

Andrew is an independent analyst, writer, and the director of Rethink Consulting. He is author of Rethink…Your World, Your future, which explores why failures in cognitive thinking have been limiting humanity from true progress. Andrew conducts workshops on resilience – what it means to be resilient and how to build resilience. He takes a whole systems approach to exploring how to navigate the challenges ahead and uses evidence-based research to develop strategies and solutions for communities, organisations, and businesses. Prior to establishing Rethink Consulting, Andrew worked with many of the world’s leading investors, analysts and traders in the financial markets throughout Australasia and North America. Over the last five years he has developed a highly diverse and thriving permaculture property in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand that attracts interest and visitors from around the world.

Charles Eisenstein

Charles is a speaker and writer focusing on themes of human culture and identity. He is the author of several books, most recently Sacred Economics and The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible. His background includes a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Yale, a decade in Taiwan as a translator, and stints as a college instructor, a yoga teacher, and a construction worker. He currently writes and speaks full-time. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and four children.   

Frank van Steensel and Josje Neerincx

Originally from the Netherlands, Frank and Josje bought a patchy piece of land in the Wairarapa, New Zealand in 1996 and began developing a farming system targeted at growing healthy nutritional crops, while reversing the trends of genetic erosion, environmental degradation and the externalisation of costs that are common in modern farming practices. Both with academic backgrounds in sustainable agriculture, rural development and extension (helping others to help themselves), they lead by example, walk the talk and teach experiential learning and working. Wairarapa Eco Farm is a pilot scheme for Community Supported Agriculture, providing weekly bags of organic fruit and vegetables and other needs to a community interested in taking back responsibility for their own health and the health of the environment, thus creating a new society based on food quality and inclusive thinking. Frank and Josje are sharing their experiences with like-minded people and communities through their guidance projects in Ecodynamics. They have been the subject of shows for Peta Mathias’ Taste New Zealand and Topp Country.

Greg Hart

Greg grew up on a family farm near Methven, Mid-Canterbury, New Zealand. After gaining a Bachelor of Agriculture from Massey University and working in the agriculture industry, he and his wife Rachel worked in partnership with Greg’s parents to develop Mangarara Station, in the Hawke’s Bay. After the birth of their first child, Greg and Rachel began thinking about the world they would leave their children. As environmental awareness evolves so too does spiritual understanding and the realisation of the interconnectedness of life. Greg is now committed to being part of the positive change taking place in the world to bring us back within the boundaries nature sets for us. He is transitioning the traditional sheep and cattle station to a farm of the future that creates balance by developing diverse, integrated, regenerative farming systems, restoring ecosystems through tree planting, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and building healthy soil using holistic grazing techniques as a solution to climate change, and opening the farm to the public to enable others to reconnect to the earth that sustains us.

Helen Dew

Helen’s awareness of the potential of complementary currencies for environmental, social and economic wellbeing began in 1991 when she joined the Green Dollar Exchange in her region, the Wairarapa, at the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand. In 2002, she became a founding member of Living Economies, an educational network promoting systems of exchange that foster community wellbeing. It aims to strengthen and help sustain regional economies by promoting interest-free means of exchange – currencies based on and respecting the living systems of our planet. Helen has attended international conferences on complementary currencies in Germany and New York, initiating ever-widening contacts with others committed to researching and promoting local and global currency projects. Although she has just turned 80, she continues to be active and committed to making change both in her local community and more widely, and is a huge inspiration to everyone she works with.

Leo Murray

Growing up sailing across oceans and traversing overland, Leo has seen the world through the lens of many cultures. A university degree revealed the multi-dimensional reality of our uncertain future, however this formal education presented few solutions. Fighting the uphill battle of social and political activism, Leo’s frustration with the species paired with a deep appreciation for the natural world revealed a more fulfilling form of advocacy; permaculture. With nature as his teacher, Leo has found himself able to make decisions based on the rational application of permaculture ethics and principles. Seeking to help create a better design to the current system, Leo now works as a sustainability consultant in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand.

Dr Mike Joy

Mike Joy is a senior lecturer in freshwater ecology and environmental science and an environmental science researcher at Massey University, New Zealand. He is an outspoken advocate for environmental protection in New Zealand and has received a number of awards including an Ecology in Action award from the New Zealand ecological Society, the 2013 Charles Fleming Award for environmental action from the Royal Society of New Zealand, in 2015 the Morgan Foundation inaugural River Voice Award and in 2017 the inaugural New Zealand Universities Critic and Conscience award.

Maria Lee

Maria is the Timebank co-ordinator for Diamond Harbour, in Canterbury, New Zealand and at the time of filming was the kitchen specialist at Diamond Harbour School, a job she’d held for many years. She’s now the manager of a local café where the staff are committed to being sustainable, environmentally and socially responsible as well as working towards zero waste.

Phil Stevens

Phil Stevens lives in Ashhurst, New Zealand with his partner and their two children. He is currently chairperson of Living Economies Educational Trust and Treasurer for LEAP, The Society for the Local Economy of Ashhurst and Pohangina. He works as an energy consultant, and he is involved in a wide range of community and not-for-profit ventures, from IT support for alternative economies to orchard care.

Robert and Robyn Guyton

Robert & Robyn perch like happy birds in their Riverton forest-garden at the bottom of New Zealand’s South Island, tending to the needs of their children and grandchildren and the garden in equal measures. Both are busy encouraging others in the community toward a positive, joyous way of living and welcoming visitors from all over to tour the forest-garden with a mind to creating one of their own, wherever home might be. Robert writes for the New Zealand Gardener magazine and is a councillor at Environment Southland. Robyn is the guiding hand and leading light for the SouthCoast Environment Centre and when she’s not there, promoting healthy living, she’s teaching at the local high school. Robert maintains a blog about their forest-garden at http://robertguyton.blogspot.co.nz/

Shane Ward

Shane Ward is an international regenerative design consultant, speaker, teacher, writer and founder of Action Ecology. His work focuses on sustainable food systems, regenerating degraded land, biological soil management and visioning a better way forwards for humanity’s approach to energy, economy and agriculture so we might ensure the sustainability of our future existence on this planet. Shane is based in New Zealand and Australia and works with clients all over the world.

Dr Sharon McIver

With a varied career path including banking, childcare, music journalism, tertiary education, and sustainability, in 2012 Sharon McIver started Our Daily Waste, a social enterprise dedicated to waste prevention and recycling education, based in Canterbury, New Zealand. Since then Sharon and her team have hauled, sorted, and picked up trash at 70 Canterbury events, and have recently branched out into waste audits, where Sharon’s academic background in Cultural Studies provides a unique insight into what is in an organisation’s bins, and how they can improve their waste reduction goals. Outside of ODW, Sharon is currently working on a project aimed at addressing the issues raised by the #MeToo movement.

Sharon Stevens

Sharon Stevens (PhD) lives in Ashhurst, New Zealand with her partner and their two children, where she gardens and does voluntary work in community organising and development. She designed and developed a new local currency for her region, LOAVES, which she is active in promoting and developing. She works as a freelance writer, social researcher, and instructor in sustainability education.

Stephen McLuckie

Stephen is the co-ordinator of Shore to Thrive, a strengths-based and community-led partnership project based in Auckland, New Zealand. The initiative is all about bringing people together, fermenting locally led change and positive outcomes in partnership with local people on Auckland’s North Shore. The role has supported Repair Cafes, Community Dinners, Clothes Shares, Road Safety initiatives, local Environmental Action, Parenting Programmes and a local community wellbeing survey. Prior to this role, he worked in Community Development for Auckland Council and for Lifewise, co-ordinating support services for homeless people in Auckland’s CBD. Stephen is passionate about connected communities, food security, social justice and inclusion and wants to live in an Auckland where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Stephen moved to New Zealand from the UK with his partner, Annie, in 2007. They live in Bayswater with their seven-year-old daughter.

Dr Susan Krumdieck

Susan is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Canterbury University, New Zealand. Her research focuses on developing the engineering methods and innovative technologies and adaptive systems for curtailed fossil fuel consumption, improved environment and society. She is an expert in developing new ideas for dealing with oil supply issues in transportation systems and urban planning. Currently she is working with a group of engineering professionals to establish the Global Association for Transition Engineering (GATE). Transition Engineering is an emerging field that works on energy transition projects for industry, business and the public sector. She was appointed to the RSNZ Energy Panel in 2005, was selected as the IET prestige lecturer in 2010, and won the CU Gold Sustainability Award in 2011 for organizing Signs of Change, the first national no-travel conference, and Silver Sustainability award in 2013 for her work on From the Ground Up, an urban re-development approach. She has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers and two book chapters, supervised 17 PhD student completions, and been awarded over $7M in research grants as principle investigator.

Tom Nicholson and Sarah Nelisiwe Nicholson

Tom and Sarah decided a few years back to find a way of living on less and being more at home, after a journey of learning about self-sufficient and simpler approaches to life. This led them to finding a beautiful organic farm in the Coromandel, New Zealand whose tending they share with a couple of other families. There is still hard work, but it’s outdoor rather than in the office, and is often done in company, with something edible or useful to show for it! Tom also works part-time as a GP, and together they help run a weekly outdoor nature group. Downsizing has been a healthy move for them, and brought them to a great environment in which to raise their daughter, Neesa, as well as welcome their soon-to-arrive twins!

Waveney Warth and Matthew Luxon

Waveney and Matthew first came to national attention a decade ago when they challenged themselves to live for one year without creating any rubbish. Their honest, down to earth blog quickly became one of the most influential environmental blogs in New Zealand at the time, leading to a weekly column in the New Zealand Herald and ongoing media interest. From 2010 to 2017 Waveney was a Senior Community Advisor in Auckland Council’s waste solutions behaviour change team, and she is now a consultant in the same field. Matthew is the director of Envision New Zealand, a company helping local authorities, community organisations and private businesses to transform waste into resources. Today, Waveney and Matthew continue to live “almost” zero waste and their website http://www.rubbishfree.co.nz/, remains a key resource for others on their zero-waste journey.