DREAM SMALL    



A Colenso strategy department research study.

In late 2021, we sent a group of planners and a photographer on a roadtrip across Aotearoa. 

The brief was simple: let youth culture express how they see their life – and future – without filter.

No focus groups.
No hype or judgement. 
No fancy hotels or restaurants. 
Just stories, experiences, and opinions straight from the mouths and streets of their world. 

Dream Small is the result of that trip. It’s not a scientific study, and it doesn’t represent the views of an entire generation. But to hear so many young’uns talk of feeling tolerated rather than welcomed is a story rarely told. 

It’s a book that we’ve shown all our clients, in the hopes that our work reflects reality and truly speaks to them, not the ‘dream' youth culture here are so disillusioned with.