07 February 2025 - 0 Comments

Celebrated singer and co-writer from iconic NZ band Goldenhorse, Kirsten Morrell, has today announced the release of her music video Avignon for the third single from her forthcoming album Morrellium.

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In a first for the New Zealand music industry, the video is carbon neutral.

Commenting on the launch of the video Kirsten says: “While the heart of the video is about dancing, forgetting the daily grind and having fun, when you do ‘come back down to earth’ you realise that there are some pretty important issues we should be thinking about, and for me, climate is one of them.

“After years of being on the road, playing music and touring you start to realise the impact our footprint has on our planet. In a culture and industry of 'me, me, me' she started to look around at what other musicians and artists were doing and realised that there are only a handful who are really taking this seriously,” reflects Morrell.

“While there are some huge names such as Coldplay, Billie Elish, Pink and Maroon 5 who are doing some amazing mahi in this space, closer to home, I haven’t seen a huge push. So, taking inspiration from some of those big names, I thought ‘why not me?’ and set about working with the team at Project Moonshot to make this a reality,” continues Morrell.

In order to meet the Sustainable Film Policy and British Standard 8909: 2011 the video had to minimise the impact on the environment and adopt sustainable practices throughout the process such as zero waste, recycling, re-using props, keeping track of the carbon footprint of the production, avoiding single use plastics, providing composting bins on site, and reducing the use of non-recyclable materials.

“Everyone on set was encouraged to bring their own keep-cups to set for tea and coffee, I chose to wear clothing from local designers who have their own sustainability practices in place such as Karen Walker who has uses Fairtrade and organic materials, my makeup was organic and used biodegradable products, everyone in the disco scene wore up-cycled clothing, and we used locally sourced props and costumes. We even went as far as encouraging the dancers and actors to car-pool and use of public transportation,” says Morell.

“Additionally, diversity and inclusion were really important to us and so we made sure that the set fostered an inclusive environment and ensured that we provided equal opportunities regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation etc.

“Something else that was important to me was ensuring that we used a intimacy coordinator – something I learned from my NZ Opera days. My choreographer was a qualified intimacy coach, so we worked closely to educate the crew and cast on set before we started filming,” points out Morrell.

“I’m so excited to make this a first for the New Zealand music industry and would love to see other artists following in my steps going forward,” concludes Morrell.

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