Pivoting points of view
ANNA DEAN
ADVERTISING TO PERMACULTURE
In a wind-whipped paddock east of Golden Bay, Anna Dean is digging seaweed into vege gardens. It’s wet and muddy but the 42-year-old has a huge smile on her face.
Anna is part way through a six-week permaculture course, designed to improve survival skills and prepare her for living off the land. If you’d told her six months ago this is where she’d be now, she would have laughed at you.
Back then, the co-founder of Wellington creative agency Double Denim would have been wearing tailored trousers and heels to the Cuba Street company she started with her friend Ange Meyer five years ago. And they were hugely successful, with clients ranging from film-maker Taika Waititi to the Green Party, and delivering major campaigns such as equal pay for women for the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.
It was a busy role that saw Anna glued to her laptop and phone 24/7. “It was high paced and high pressure and there was little downtime,” she recalls
Anna, who’d been house-sitting for a year to save for the deposit on a house, was in the South Island when lockdown was announced. “I had
