Dec 2023 Email Newsletter December 2023

Tohu Whenua at The Show!

The weather played games with us as we experienced all four seasons over the three days but nonetheless the people came out and the air was festive. Our stall was bright and appealing, featuring a large map with our current and future Tohu Whenua marked, and displays showcasing some examples of the different experiences our programme celebrates and promotes. We gave away about 6kg of jet plane lollies, about 500 ‘Tohu Whenua Explorer’ badges and hundreds of handy maps and other brochures. We also ran a competition to win a family pass to a Tohu Whenua experience of your choice.

These were all great ways to open up conversations with people about what Tohu Whenua is and all the special places we have in the programme.

If you represent one of our sites, we can guarantee you came up in conversation because there were stories and questions about them all and lots of suggestions about which Canterbury places should be included in Tohu Whenua as we roll out there. People loved telling us where they had been or wanted to go and it was great to see competition entrants pondering over the list of rich experiences on offer…a few people really couldn’t decide and ticked them all!

We received about 250 entries into the competition and the winner chose the Dunedin package with family passes to Larnach Castle and Olveston - we can be certain she and her family will have a truly opulent time!

We now have some great event collateral that is ready to go so do shout out if there is a similar event in your patch that we could pop up at. If you are having a stall somewhere, we are also happy to support you by providing brochures, giveaways or displays, or decking out your team in smart Tohu Whenua collateral.

Arrowtown on Seven Sharp

Did you catch the amazing Seven Sharp piece on Matt Schmidt, DOC Senior Heritage Advisor, and his archeology mahi in Arrowtown? You can watch the full story now on TVNZ On Demand.

Watch here 

Survey reflections + results

We held a couple of online hui to discuss the results, what we have learned and how we plan to put that into action in our next steps, in October. Thanks to those who came along - it was really good to talk with you, hear your feedback and ideas, and facilitate some great discussion between site managers. Below is a snapshot of the ‘next steps’ slide from our hui.

We are planning to talk with Regional Tourism Organisations about the results soon too and Jenny is working with DOC’s media team on a plan to share the good news over this coming summer - watch this space. We also have some social media assets coming your way soon, which we encourage you to share on your own channels.

If you have any questions or missed the sessions but would still like to discuss, please contact Caroline anytime.

Connecting teachers with your Tohu Whenua place

We are now also highlighting the education opportunities offered by you at your places, on our website.  As well as putting these resources together into our education hub, we have been working with the Ministry of Education to get the word out to teachers and in September featured in the Education Gazette. The Gazette is circulated to every school in the country in hard copy and every teacher by email so it has a wide and informed audience making this a great opportunity for us to connect educators with your places and programmes.  If you missed it, you can read the story here A hub for learning history where it happened – Education Gazette. Please feel free to share it with your networks or on social media.

We have also now produced a small flyer with an education focus - let us know if you would like some to distribute to teachers or parents coming through your places who might be interested in other heritage opportunities.

Summer Marketing Campaign

Many of our sites have cafes attached or nearby + others are great picnic spots, so we’re leaning into the idea of promoting heritage experiences for the whole whānau with the added bonus of great summer road trip food.

We’ll start sharing the “Feed Your” summer campaign next Friday 15th December; starting with a short video that features faces and places from each of our three regions. We'll also be giving a social media "focus week" to each of our three regions and will send personalised social media tiles to you when your region is in focus. We'd love you to share your tile with your networks to widen the reach of the campaign.

If you have any events or special deals coming up over summer, please be sure to let us know so we can share on our social media. Please direct any campaign questions to our Marketing and Communications Manager, Jenny Mitchell: tohuwhenua@gmail.com

Updated staff resource: Talking Tohu Whenua this summer

As the days get longer and visitor numbers are on the rise, we have some updated tools and tips to help you make the most of being part of the Tohu Whenua network.

Visitor one liner: Tohu Whenua is a free online guide to places around the country with unique Kiwi heritage.

Click here for the updated Talking Tohu Whenua resource

Getting kids hooked on heritage in Ōtepoti

Pecha kucha is a method of telling a story using 20 slides, each only on screen for 20 seconds. It is a great way to give a snapshot of something you feel passionate about and engage an audience using visuals as well as words – in a quick fire kind of way.

Since we have had a big focus on kids and education over the last year, Jill spoke about how to connect tamariki and rangatahi with heritage and really get them interested, with a Tohu Whenua twist of course.

We can’t find a photo of Jill so instead here is a pic of our great DOC friend Senior Heritage Advisor Matt Schmidt giving his own presentation, wearing a Tohu Whenua t shirt!

Ka rawe, Matt!

Join us on TikTok

TikTok is the home of a whole new audience of travel enthusiasts for Tohu Whenua. 

We have been regularly posting TikToks featuring our sites and we’ve seen great viewer numbers, including 2243 views on a feature of the Dunedin Railway Station.

TikTok Account