a really important, government-funded, project to safeguard our unique sound and video recordings that are reminders of who we are and where we have come from,
according to Rachel Esson, Te Pouhuaki National Librarian.
In Budget 2020 Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision was allocated a portion from $40 million funding made available to support the digital preservation of Crown-owned audiovisual heritage content on magnetic media dating from the 1960s into the 2000s. This included video and sound tapes and some magnetic sound on film, all of which is physically deteriorating. Without digital preservation, over 95 percent of at-risk content could be lost in less than a decade. In addition, the playback technology for these formats is on the verge of obsolescence. There is a limited window to ensure that these taonga are preserved for future generations.
Crown-owned at-risk material is cared for by Ngā Taonga, the National Library of New Zealand – Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, and Archives New Zealand – Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, although the majority is in the TVNZ archive collection which Ngā Taonga manages. The TVNZ collection captures the issues and experiences of New Zealanders through the decades, unique cultural events, and defining moments in our nation’s history.
At Ngā Taonga they called their response to this project Utaina. Utaina!, which translates to ‘load the precious freight on board!’, was a catch cry coined by Sir Apirana Ngata when he was arguing for the urgent recording and preservation of Māori language and heritage. As their preservation project is aspiring to ‘load on board’ more than half a century of precious audiovisual heritage so that it can be preserved for future generations, they felt that it was a very appropriate name.
In October 2025 Utaina concluded, with over 400,000 items from the collections held by Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa and Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kawanatanga having been preserved.
Utaina has guaranteed that precious audiovisual taonga will be here for future generations to enjoy. I’m incredibly proud of the mahi our staff contributed to Utaina as well as that of our partners on the project. It would take over 90 years to watch or listen to the 277,000 hours of content digitised by Ngā Taonga alone,
said Honiana Love, Tumu Whakarae Chief Executive of Ngā Taonga.
Key to the success of Utaina has been the collaboration and knowledge sharing between partners. The archivists across the organisations have come away with invaluable experience that can be applied to the continuing mission to preserve our nation’s audiovisual heritage.
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