The Story of NZ Merino Wool (Remix)

A digital storytelling project by Anne Galloway and Samantha Carew

As part of the Counting Sheep project, we’ve developed two animated videos (below) that present a brief cultural history of New Zealand merino wool. They were made for a general audience and from an industry perspective, and we’re interested in seeing our story retold from different perspectives and in different styles.

Just imagine…

How would these stories look or sound if they were told from the sheep’s perspective? How about a farmer’s?

Or what if the stories were told with historical photographs and poetry instead?

What if they brought in some government data, statistics, parliamentary, conservation or land information?

Or what if you created something new with other NZ digital content to show people what you think the future of merino sheep and wool might be?

To get started, we’re excited to be sharing our content in the Digital Story Creative Remix category of Mix & Mash – The Great NZ Remix and Mashup Competition. Our video and audio files are publically available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 New Zealand license, which gives you a lot of freedom to play. If you’re a teacher and want more information about how all this works, please check out this guide to help you and your students enter the Mix & Mash competition.

The videos (and more)

The Story of NZ Merino Wool, Pt 1 presents a brief history of New Zealand’s wool industry, and merino wool’s transition from a commodity to a brand.

You can download the original video file (750×422 pixel Quicktime movie, 3.12GB) and here’s the audio file (mp3, 7.5MB).

The Story of NZ Merino Wool, Pt 2 tells the story of what makes NZ merino wool an “ethical” product.

You can download the original video file (750×422 pixel Quicktime movie, 5.13GB) and here’s the audio file (mp3, 9.4MB).

Have fun!

The Mix & Mash deadline is 9pm NZDT, Thursday 15 September 2011. Full competition rules can be found here.

[CC image credit: Kara Brugman]