Guardians of Aotearoa's Echoes

📚 A National Repository

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision is the custodian of three principal collections: the New Zealand Film Archive, the Radio New Zealand (RNZ) Sound Archives, and the Television New Zealand (TVNZ) Archive. In 2014, these three core collections constituted approximately 65% of the archive's total holdings. As of 2025, the archive proudly reports a vast inventory exceeding 800,000 items, encompassing over 600,000 hours of television content and more than 120,000 audio items, reflecting the breadth of New Zealand's recorded history.

🎬 New Zealand Film Archive

Established in 1981, the New Zealand Film Archive operated as an autonomous entity until its integration into Ngā Taonga. By 2012, its collection comprised over 150,000 items, spanning moving images from 1895 to the contemporary era. This includes a significant array of New Zealand feature films and short films, notably featuring extensive Māori content such as recordings of karanga (ceremonial calls), whaikorero (formal speeches), and iwi and hapū whakapapa (tribal genealogies).

📻 RNZ Sound Archive

The RNZ Sound Archive, with origins tracing back to the late 1930s and formally established in Timaru in 1956, houses a diverse range of audio formats. These include early audio cylinders, acetate discs, open reel tapes, cassette tapes, and digital audio tapes. In 1998, it merged with Ngā Taonga Kōrero, a collection initiated in the 1960s by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation to safeguard Māori language content. Pioneering efforts by Leo Fowler and Wiremu Kerekere involved extensive field recordings of significant cultural events, preserving both raw and edited audio. The collection was transferred to Ngā Taonga in 2012, with a valuation of $800,000 in 2014, and received substantial funding for digitization efforts.

📺 TVNZ Archive

The TVNZ Archive collection is a monumental record of New Zealand's public television history, containing over 600,000 hours of content accumulated over nearly 55 years. In 2014, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage designated Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision as the initial Archive Manager for this collection. While a project to make the collection accessible online commenced in 2018, the archive has faced challenges in meeting preservation and access targets outlined in its Memorandum of Understanding with the Crown, drawing public and media scrutiny.

🚶 Onsite & Requests

A significant portion of the archive's content is accessible for in-person viewing at the National Library building in Wellington. Historically, the former Taranaki Street building featured a 107-seat cinema and a gallery space until 2015. For materials not yet available online, researchers and the public can submit requests, with processing times typically ranging from fifteen days to eight weeks, depending on the complexity and format of the content.

Note: The archive's Strategic Plan 2016-2024 identified a historical focus on "art-lovers" and film aficionados, leading to a predominantly white, middle-class, Wellington-based clientele, indicating a need for broader engagement.

💻 Digital Presence

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision has been actively developing its digital access platforms. In 2013, it launched Mediasphere, an educational service centered on film. An online video catalogue became operational in January 2016. While the Statement of Intent for 2015-2018 aimed for 20,000 items to be available online, the Strategic Plan 2016-2024 acknowledged that only a small fraction of the total collection was digitally accessible. By December 2017, 1,914 out of an estimated 800,000 items were online, increasing to 14,336 out of 804,911 catalogue records by August 2025, highlighting ongoing digitization efforts.

🗣️ Community Engagement

Outreach initiatives have proven effective in connecting Ngā Taonga with wider audiences. Radio broadcasts featuring collection material have garnered substantial listenership, with a regular archival audio segment on Jessie Mulligan's afternoon radio programme on RNZ National attracting 924,000 listens annually. Previously, Medianet kiosks were operated across New Zealand, allowing viewers to browse a selection of moving image titles from the archives, though the number of these sites has decreased over time.

🏢 Current Headquarters

The main administrative offices of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision are presently situated within the National Library of New Zealand building on Molesworth Street in Wellington. This relocation occurred in 2019, prompted by structural concerns regarding the previous Taranaki Street building due to earthquake vulnerability. Since 2017, the majority of the archive's physical collection has been housed at the Avalon facility in Lower Hutt, a Crown-owned property managed by the Department of Internal Affairs.

📦 Key Storage Facilities

Ngā Taonga's physical collections are distributed across several specialized storage sites, each with unique characteristics and challenges:

🕰️ Former Sites & Transitions

Over its history, Ngā Taonga has consolidated its physical footprint, moving from nine facilities across three regions to a more centralized model. This involved the closure of several key locations:

➡️ Future Developments

Looking ahead, significant plans are underway for the future accommodation of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision. In December 2020, the Department of Internal Affairs announced a relocation to the Horowhenua Business Park in Levin, alongside Archives New Zealand and the National Library of New Zealand, at an unspecified future date. More recently, in February 2022, the Government unveiled plans for a new NZ$290 million archives building on Wellington's Aitken Street, on the site of the former Defence House. This purpose-built facility is designed to host archives repository and specialist facilities for Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, Archives New Zealand, and the National Library, promising enhanced preservation and access capabilities.

📜 References