The Host

In 2024 I moved back to Aotearoa New Zealand after more than twenty years away.

I was coming home, but I was also dismantling nearly everything I'd built.

More than two decades in Germany working across 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.

Being back has brought the kind of clarity that only comes from sitting still long enough to listen. I moved to Wānaka. I slowed down. I rebuilt. For the first time in too long, I questioned what kind of work actually mattered to me. And I realised something: the most meaningful creative work I've encountered, whether in my own life or in others', had its genesis in the gaps. In the doubts, the pivots, the transitions that rarely make it into the polished narratives we share with the world.

The Unmaking grew directly from that realisation.

I'm John Bache, co-founder of Naked & Curious - a fledgling venture studio in Aotearoa focused on analogue creative work and regenerative design. The Unmaking is an essential part of that ecosystem, created to explore the deeper processes that shape how people do work that matters to them, and to create space for the kinds of conversations that don't fit easily into highlight reels.

My own working life has moved through distinct phases: the 90s in New Zealand corporates, an unexpected second career in sport, and those two decades in Germany. Each required starting from scratch in a different world, but what became constant was a commitment to people for whom creative expression is a driving force. Whether that was advocating for snowboarders and mountain bikers, championing graffiti artists, bridging the gap between design and business, or building what Naked & Curious is becoming now.

What I bring to these conversations is lived experience of disruption and transformation, a genuine curiosity about how people navigate change, and a willingness to explore the uncomfortable. I'm less interested in success stories than I am in the messy, unfinished bits in between.

The Unmaking is for anyone who understands that the most important work often happens when nothing visible is being made.