About
Since its inception in 2017, Koru Green Limited has created a professional and trustworthy space for creative professionals and entrepreneurs to commercialise and monetise their creative content.
Our mission is simple: we exist to ensure that every one of our clients achieve their professional and artistic goals for the duration of their career.
Simply put, we help creative and cultural practitioners to make a living from their craft.
From dancers to visual artists, musicians to screenwriters, we work with a wide diversity of creative professionals from different sectors and different backgrounds.
With our involvement in the Caribbean's creative industry, we have already set ourselves apart from others by having developed a unique service within the creative sector primarily focused on transforming cultural goods and services into sustainable livelihoods.
Why The Name “Koru Green”?
Shortly after moving to Aotearoa (a.k.a New Zealand), I joined a small music group that was asked to perform the national anthem of Aotearoa at a conference. I enthusiastically approached two New Zealanders of European descent for assistance to learn the anthem. They began by saying the words to the first English verse. I remember being taken aback and shocked. I also remember asking if they could teach me the Māori verse and I also remember their response: they indicated firmly and definitively that they were not Māori and that they did not know that verse of the anthem. I was speechless. I could not imagine how someone could live in a territory as a child into adulthood as a citizen of a country, and never take the time to learn its national anthem. It was even more unthinkable to me that I could live in such a place, and not learn a portion of its anthem because it was sung in a language of the indigenous people of that nation.
After this incident, I devoted time and energy to learning more about Māori language and culture for myself, including learning the Māori verse of the national anthem. After returning home, I was inspired to start a company that was devoted to providing assistance for creative professionals to transform their cultural goods and services into a sustainable livelihood. The question of a sustainable transition was very close to the research topic of my PhD thesis. During that period of research, as I was simultaneously reading about Māori language and culture, I realised that the word "koru" aptly represented my view of how development should occur. The word "koru" refers to a loop and is symbolic not merely of growth, but of growth that is harmonious with nature and sustainable.
This is my dream for creative practitioners in the Caribbean: that they find ways to grow their business in a way that is harmonious with the communities from which they come. I therefore named the company "Koru Green", because I found the word and colour "Green" to be very complimentary to my understanding of the way that "Koru" describes growth.
Moreover, after being initially discouraged during my first attempt to learn Māori words (during my attempt to learn the anthem of Aotearoa), I thought that it would be a really great way of sharing something that I learned while in Aotearoa, and telling persons about the amazing people that I met and about Māori culture. I also view the name of the company as a way of not only sharing my personal experiences, but also stimulating curiosity and interest in Māori language, within my home country and the wider Caribbean region.