Kara Biggs: Campaign for Wool NZ GM on their new education programmes

Future generations are sure to understand the quality of one of the country’s most important export sectors. 

The Wool in Schools programme is expanding across primary schools this month, highlighting the insulating, thermo-regulating, and moisture wicking properties of natural, locally gown wool. 

Plus, a tertiary pilot programme called Wool Dynamics is encouraging students to bring their own innovative ideas for the industry to the table.  

GM for Campaign for Wool NZ Kara Biggs told Mike Hosking that while wool is in a bit of a tough position at the moment, there is a whole lot of optimism and positivity as well. 

She said that they’re pretty excited about their new education programme, but they’re really putting pressure on themselves to increase the size of it, bringing wool to more schools. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good news for one of our most important export sectors.
The Woolen Schools program is expanding across primary schools this
month to highlight the insulating, et cetera, all the good
things about wool and a tertiary pilot program called Wall
Dynamics is encouraging students to bring their own innovative ideas
to the wall industry. Now the GM four campaign for
wool in New Zealand, cra Biggs is with us on
all of this. Carara, very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Good morning Mike. It's good to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Now. What is the state of play in wolf from
your point of view? How good? How bad? Where are
we at?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well, Wolve's in a bit of a tough position at
the moment, but I think there's a whole lot of
optimism and positivity out there as well. You know, there's
some really good stuff happening. You know, there's a lot
of green shirts going on out there, and particularly you know,
we're pretty excited about our new education program expanding Wolan
Schools out across three new pilot programs, both in primary

(00:50):
schools but also in ECE early childhood education. And the
jewel in the crown is this wall dynamics program, which
is really exciting for us.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
How much of it is in schools city kids who
know about well, where it comes from, what you can
do with the science behind, the economics behind about how
much is out there?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Well, do you mean as far as education goes? Yeah, well, look,
I mean our Woolen Schools program gets to about forty
schools a year at the moment, so you know, we
would love to do more. That's why we've really put
a lot of pressure on ourselves to increase the size
of our education program. So what we're looking to do
with our Woolen Schools program, and if you're not familiar

(01:28):
with it, it's been going for about ten years. It's
two twenty foot containers that circulate the northern South Island.
We're looking to triple our reach to one hundred and
twenty schools every year just with our new Wall Week program.
This is the schools that are too remote or too
small or they can't physically fit a twenty foot container
on their school site. So this is really exciting to

(01:51):
expand the reach there. But tertiary education, if we're really
talking about how much is known out there, that's where
we need to be so You know, here we're talking
about architecture and product designing students, and we've created a
modular course which means that every architecture and every product
designed student are going to be able to be exposed

(02:12):
to wool, and not just wolves a superfiber, but the
performance properties of it. You know, they need to create
a product that has good sound absorption qualities. Okay, let's
use wool because that can solve that problem. So it
really is about solving problems with wool. So this tertiary
education piece that is going to be the bit that
moves the needle.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Fantastic, you speak so eloquently and passionately about it. I
loved Kara Bigs, who's the GM for the campaign for
wool in New Zealand. And I did my bit last
week by buying an a Reno jersey, which is more
fine wool than strong will. But nevertheless, in fact, not
only did I buy a Marino jersey let me in on,
I ordered another one in a different color. Mike, I'm
a farmer, wanted to put carpet and I felt, being

(02:52):
a farmer, I should replace with wall. Synthetic was five
k wooll was fifteen K I get fifty cent return
on every dollar I spend on getting the wool off
the sheep. I provide this and everyone apart from me
makes money. It's a tough story, there's no question about that.
It's a hard row to hoe, as they say.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
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