The PIYN (People In Your Neighbourhood) project involves aspiring artists and performers from Auckland’s ethnic communities, working with the best of contemporary UK talent, to create, celebrate and collaborate. It is a key partnership project for the British Council in New Zealand.

PIYN 2009

PIYN, our flagship project, launched in 2009. It has run continuously and is now in its fifth year. The 2009 PIYN album acted like long strands of a net, reaching out into ethnic communities in NZ then drawing the music back to a central creative hub. The idea was to create 'stars' in each community. You can download the full album for free here. The album project is Creative Commons, so anyone can take album files from our CCMixter site, and remix the tracks.

PIYN 2010

PIYN 2010 involved live shows in Auckland, Taupo and Wellington in May 2010, as well as UK visitors USO and acclaimed street poet and urban creative guru Charlie Dark (Attica Blues, Blacktronica). The event in 2010 focused on participatory media, livestream internet technology and online income generation toolkits for diverse aspiring creatives.

PIYN 2011-12

The 2011 programme focused on online toolkits, capacity building workshops and internet collaborations.

PIYN 2013 onwards

From 2013 onwards we have focused on UK artists coming to New Zealand to work on a number of capacity building arts work, collaborations, policy dialogue in cultural diplomacy and our ongoing society and social enterprise work.

The PIYN project involves aspiring artists and performers from Auckland’s ethnic communities, working with the best of contemporary UK talent, to create an album or other portable multimedia, and perform a live street-style urban show. We aim to explore and celebrate the unreconised artistic and urban talent in all of our neighbourhoods.

Contact us

We are interested to meet and partner with like-minded organisations who are interested in culural leadership projects such as this. We invite you to contact us to learn more.

See also