In 2024 I moved back to Aotearoa New Zealand after nearly a quarter-century away. I was coming home from Germany, but I was also dismantling nearly everything I'd built in that time.

All those years in Europe working across music, sport, media, communications, and design, had given me a life, a career, an identity. Leaving meant letting go of all of it. Not because it had failed (although there were plenty of failures along the way!), but because it no longer fit. And there's no guidebook for that kind of unmaking.

I made an intentional decision to settle in Wānaka. To slow down, go deep, and for the first time in too long ask what kind of work really mattered to me. The Unmaking grew directly from that process.

I'm John Bache, co-founder of Naked & Curious, a creative venture studio focused on analogue work and regenerative design. My working life has moved through distinct phases: New Zealand corporates in the 90s, an unexpected career in sport, two decades in Europe, and what I'm doing now. Each has required starting from scratch in a different world, but what's remained constant is my respect for and love of pioneers, underdogs, and changemakers - people for whom creative expression is a driving force.

What I bring to these conversations is genuine curiosity about how people navigate uncertainty, a willingness to sit with the uncomfortable, empathy, and lived experience of disruption and transformation.

If you've made it this far, there's a good chance that describes you too.

Welcome.