Te Mana O Te Vaka

Proud Cook Islands and European Vaine Glenda Tuaine is a mother, creative entrepreneur,filmmaker producer, director, scriptwriter, and occasional actor, Glenda lives in Rarotonga, Kuki Airani - Cook Islands. She holds a Bachelor Arts in Anthropology and Women’s Studies from Victoria
University of Wellington and has had a creative career spanning three decades in New Zealand, the Pacific Region and Europe.
A multidisciplinary artist she has worked on many festivals in various roles. In 2002-04 she was the first festival Artistic Director for the New Zealand Fringe festival after that she led the Te Papa Museum events team to develop the Matariki Festival concepts and Exhibition extension programmes before returning to Rarotonga to head Cook Islands Tourism marketing for 5 years. In 2011 with her husband musician and technical director Maurice Newport they formed Motone
Productions a leading creative company in the Cook Islands.
Glenda has written, produced, directed and acted in a variety of theatre productions and has had an active presenting career working on radio as a DJ and arts reviewer. She has been a keynote speaker at many conferences about the Pacific Creative Economy. In 2019 she delivered the Cook Islands
creative section of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in Sydney Australia and in that year was awarded the Creative New Zealand Arts Pasifika Special Recognition Award. In 2020 she was funded by Pacific Islanders in Communications to make her Award-winning short documentary film on legendary master carver Mike Tavioni, Taonga , An Artist Activist and in 2021 co-directed Atui Akaou - Reconnect a TV feature Film on Cook Islands resilience at the time of Covid for Pasifika TV. She has developed, produced and directed many corporate and community film products. In 2020 Glenda founded the KukiCre8tive Performing Arts Programme for youth in
Rarotonga that works with young people between the ages of 8 – 18 to develop performance confidence and skills. She is an advocate for inclusion and access for our physically and mentally challenged communities and has designed, developed and delivered programmes to build performance, screen skills and cross-cultural story telling in Kuki Airani.
Glenda collaborates with many creatives in the Pacific on a variety of digital and live products.
Taonga An Artist Activist was Glenda's first movement in short documentary making. She wnet ont ot make Ta Mana O Te Vaka a largely self-funded short documentary on the indigenous Vaka Building project held in the Cook Islands in 2022- 23. She is currently working on short film script with Kuki Airani’s deaf community and is a 2024 Leanne K Ferrer Pacific Islanders in Communications Fellow.