Julie Gunn at Sustainability Trust’s curtain bank in Wellington. (Photo: Emlou Lattimore).
Julie Gunn at Sustainability Trust’s curtain bank in Wellington. (Photo: Emlou Lattimore).

SocietyJuly 21, 2025

Curtain banks are in hot demand

Julie Gunn at Sustainability Trust’s curtain bank in Wellington. (Photo: Emlou Lattimore).
Julie Gunn at Sustainability Trust’s curtain bank in Wellington. (Photo: Emlou Lattimore).

Around the country, a network of curtain banks make and provide curtains that keep homes warm and electricity bills down. Demand is ever-growing, and they’re sewing frantically to keep up.

If you walk through Habitat for Humanity’s Ōtara superstore, down the external and currently chilly alleyway full of ceramic sinks, toilets and baths, there’s another reclaimed industrial building. On its bright blue painted side, there’s a white sign reading “CURTAIN BANK” over a set of glass doors. Inside, two industrial sewing machines are humming, their operators carefully running pieces of fabric and curtain tape through straight as an arrow. 

The irons are hot. There’s three big pattern-cutting tables and along the walls, shelves with bundles of curtains labelled with order numbers or dimensions. This is Habitat’s curtain bank, where last year the team sent out more curtains than ever before – 11,215 curtains for 732 families. It’s not like a food bank where people are only given what’s already there – almost every curtain is customised.

woman sitting at an industrial sewing machine, guiding a curtain through.
Linda, a sewist at Habitat for Humanity’s curtain bank in Ōtara, customising a preloved curtain. (Photo: Gabi Lardies)

This bank is just one of a network of 22 curtain banks scattered from Auckland all the way down to Invercargill. Most of the curtain banks don’t stand alone – they’re part of the Healthy Homes Initiative, with Health New Zealand saying curtains are the highest identified need – ahead of heaters, bedding, mould cleaning kits, blankets, window squeegees and small repairs. The Healthy Homes Initiative, which aims to help more families live in warm, dry homes, has been successful and cost-effective in reducing child hospitalisations, improving school attendance, reducing energy hardship and a raft of other health and social benefits. 

And yet, there’s not a mention of curtains in the Healthy Homes Standards. That means that landlords are not obliged to provide them, and so many don’t, especially at the lower end of the rental market. Many houses seen by Healthy Homes teams don’t have any curtains at all, or they might be thin or mouldy. Sometimes people have venetian blinds or roller blinds that don’t provide a thermal barrier. Often, people don’t realise how much of a difference curtains can make. 

four people smiling standing in front of a pattern cutting table with budnles of curtains. behind them are shevles full of curtains
Steve Munro (volunteer), Julie Gunn (manager), Pam Green (volunteer) and Juliet Daniel (head machinist) at the Sustainability Trust curtain bank in Wellington. (Photo: Emlou Lattimore).

In Wellington, orders are closed at the city’s only curtain bank, run by Sustainability Trust. The team of two full-time staff and 27 volunteers is still working on curtain orders from last year, and it’s not just sewing. Here, as well as providing curtains, the team aims to divert as much waste as possible from landfill. All the curtains begin with a donation, usually of a pre-loved curtain and occasionally of fabric. Donations need to be unpacked and checked for mold which is either cut, pulled or unpicked away. The rest is measured, laundered and filed in one of two little rooms that serve as the curtain library. Curtain tracks and their brackets are donated too. In another room they’re cleaned and refurbished. There’s also gliders, hooks and tape to sort and store. “I keep on taking up more space,” says Julie Gunn, the curtain bank manager. “There’s just a lot happening. We are getting lots of curtain donations coming in, which is good, but we need to keep up.”

Then comes actually filling orders. Measurements of the windows of a household come through home visits by the trust’s Heathy Homes team or other referral pathways. Best practice guidelines are followed so that the curtains are as effective as possible. The length must be “to the floor and a little bit more,” says Gunn, and the width must allow for plenty of folds and for the curtain to extend past the window frame, “so there’s less chance for that warm air to sneak in behind the curtain”. It’s also important that the curtains are lined to create an insulating layer of air. Gunn compares it to the puff in a puffer jacket. Ideally, the fabric is a tightly woven natural fibre, heavy and thick. Thermal backed curtains aren’t great as the backing deteriorates and can’t easily be washed. 

“There’s so much love and care that goes into each step of the process,” says Gunn. But the curtain bank needs more than that to run. At the end of the year, its major sponsorship is coming to an end. Even that sponsorship doesn’t cover costs – the shortfall is made up for by the Sustainability Trust. “We apply to every funding opportunity that comes along,” says Gunn. “We have noticed that there is more and more demand on the charitable and philanthropic funding that is available. That’s tough, because everyone applying to those funding opportunities is doing really good and really important work.”

Up in Auckland, the Habitat curtain bank services households across the city and in Northland. They can keep their wait times down – about two months in summer and six in winter – because compared to other curtain banks they are well-resourced and staffed. They purchase premade curtains and new curtain fabric, lining, tape and tracks. Still, even the premade curtains are almost always customised in some way to properly fit the window they are heading to. “These are top-end custom curtains,” says Jane, an experienced sewist there. She’s pressing a crisp seam on a chocolate brown curtain with flocked flowers. “For the most part people are really appreciative,” she says. 

woman at a pattern cutting table in a sewing room wearing an apron
Jane, a sewist at Habitat for Humanity’s curtain bank in Ōtara, customising a preloved curtain. (Photo: Gabi Lardies)

A national network of curtain banks tries to meet yearly. A couple of years ago, Curtain Call, a group that advocates adding curtains to the Healthy Homes Standards, sprung from the network. Curtain Call argues that leaving curtains out leaves a gap in the legislation, and in 2023 publicly campaigned, met with politicians and petitioned the government. With the coalition government, they changed their tack. Leana Hunt, operations manager in Habitat’s northern region, says “it’s not their [the government’s] priority right now”. Curtain Call is continuing to raise awareness among communities, without directly petitioning politicians. 

For as long as curtains aren’t in the standards, curtain banks will continue to face more demand than they can keep up with, but not without joy. “It is sad that there is so much need out there,” says Gunn from Wellington, “but it is a wonderful thing to be involved with.” When families open up their boxes of curtains, “I want all of that love to spill out onto them, because we love what we do.”

Keep going!
A collage of images of New Zealand youth choirs throughout the years plus a headshot of the author, Labour MP Rachel Boyack
The New Zealand Youth Choir in 2025 and the early 2000s when the author was a member

OPINIONSocietyJuly 19, 2025

The NZ Youth Choir global award shows there’s soft power in more than just sports

A collage of images of New Zealand youth choirs throughout the years plus a headshot of the author, Labour MP Rachel Boyack
The New Zealand Youth Choir in 2025 and the early 2000s when the author was a member

The New Zealand Youth Choir was recently awarded the title of ‘Choir of the World’ at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in Wales. Labour arts spokesperson Rachel Boyack reflects on her experiences touring with the choir over 20 years ago.

If you didn’t hear the news this week, our beloved New Zealand Youth Choir won the ‘Choir of the World’ title at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in Wales. The Llangollen Eisteddfod is the crème de la crème, the Holy Grail if you like, of choral competitions, and winning the title is an outstanding feat for a national choir from a small country like Aotearoa. 

I woke up to the news last Sunday morning, and after shedding a tear, I watched the choir’s winning set, swelling with pride for these outstanding young singers and how they represent us so admirably on the world stage.

I’ve been lucky to spend time with the choir this year and to see them perform a number of times. This has included watching the choir performing live on Breakfast TV at Waitangi on Waitangi Day, and filling Holy Trinity Cathedral in Auckland in an extraordinary farewell concert.

A group photo of the 2025 youth choir. About 40 young people wearing black and silver uniforms and smiling while holding a trophy and a New Zealand flag
The 2025 NZ Youth Choir celebrate (Photo: Facebook/NZ Youth Choir)

I’ve been struck by the joy the choir has when they perform, and the obvious respect they have for each other, and the choir leadership. It’s hard to pull together a group of fifty 18-25 year-olds from across New Zealand and turn them into a well-oiled team, but that is exactly what music director David Squire, assistant music director Michael Stewart and vocal consultant Morag Atchison have done.

The New Zealand Youth Choir was established in 1979 by Dr Guy Jansen, with professor Peter Godfrey acting as its first conductor. Both giants of the choral music scene in New Zealand. The purpose of the choir is to develop choral excellence among some of the country’s most talented young singers, and contribute to other musical goals, like commissioning new work from New Zealand composers, and training the next generation of global opera singers, conductors and music teachers.

The choir quickly cemented itself on the international choral scene, winning big awards from the very beginning, being invited to sing at significant New Zealand events, and performing with the likes of Dame Kiri te Kanawa at Wembley.

According to my mother, I first heard the choir singing during the summer of 1989-90, while holidaying in St Arnaud as a 10-year-old. While I have many memories of tramping around Lake Rotoiti with my brother and father, and staying overnight in the hut, I don’t recall the concert!

It wasn’t until I was age 13 that I fell in love with the choir listening to their first album, Te Roopu Rangatahi Waiata o Aotearoa (1992), which featured choral works from some of New Zealand’s greatest composers: Jack Body, David Griffiths, Douglas Mews, and prolific choral composer, and alumni, David Hamilton. 

I would listen to that album every day, probably driving my family mad! I was entranced by the youthful but rich voices, the incredible blend of the choir, and the perfection of the intonation and timing. This was a craft I wanted to master.

At that young age, I set myself a goal to be selected for the New Zealand Youth Choir and joined every choir possible throughout my teenage years to achieve it. 

After spending two years as a member of the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir, and beginning music studies at the University of Auckland, I was selected to join the choir as a 19-year-old and was privileged to be a member from 2000-2004, including two international tours, one to the United States, and a later tour of Europe, where we traversed Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Austria and finally a week in St Petersburg and Moscow in Russia.

A choir portrait featuring about 20 young people of different ethnicities wearing black and silver uniforms
Uniforms very much of the era

Among many formative moments from that European tour in 2004, one sticks out.

On our way to Europe we stopped off in Singapore and performed to a packed town hall of high school students – our first concert of the tour.

It wasn’t the European Art Song, or Bach’s motets, or Antonio Lotti’s famous baroque masterpiece ‘Crucifixus’ that led to the audience of high school students giving us a standing ovation.

It was a performance of ‘I te timatanga’, gifted to the Choir by the Wehi Whanau and that tells the story of the separation of Ranginui from Papatūānuku, that led to a hall full of screaming schoolgirls on their feet.

The kind of response usually reserved for a 1990s boyband!

As a choir girl it wasn’t something I had ever experienced before. 

We described ourselves as “the All Blacks of the singing world.” Every time the choir travelled overseas it would return with a trophy haul that required the building of a new cabinet, and accolades from top international choral judges. Pulling on the black and silver uniform and representing our country overseas was a thrill, and one of the privileges of my life.

While the choir receives funding from Creative New Zealand, they have to rely on fundraising and personal contributions from choir members to travel internationally. That has always felt inequitable given the work the choir does to promote New Zealand internationally, especially when compared to some award-winning sporting codes. It also means some singers may miss out on being involved in the choir due to financial constraints.

The current government has continued the work of the previous Labour government and released a draft Arts Strategy: Amplify. One of the 2030 targets listed in the strategy is for New Zealand to rank among the top 25 nations in the world for culture and heritage soft power, resulting in high-value cultural tourism and exports. It is an ambitious target, and I support it.

The New Zealand Youth Choir is an excellent example of that soft power in action. Everyone at Llangollen in Wales was talking about the New Zealand Youth Choir, with reports on the choir broadcast all over the media in the region, and globally. Social media lit up with videos of the choir’s performances, and the incredible haka they performed for their music director David Squire after their win was announced.

It’s the kind of publicity our government should be investing more in.

The New Zealand Youth Choir, and their sister choirs, the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir and Voices New Zealand rely on government funding from Creative NZ. Currently, they receive multi-year funding from the Totara Programme, which CNZ is ending.

While I am confident that the choir’s success on the world stage will ensure their funding continues, having the certainty of multi-year funding means the choirs can operate with confidence, plan international tours and commission new works by New Zealand composers.

And this alumni, and the rest of New Zealand, can continue to be so very, very proud of our world-class New Zealand Youth Choir.