Also known as: Music and Audio Institute of New Zealand
Location: 191 High Street, Christchurch CBD (from 2002); later 130 High Street, Christchurch. Live sound annex at King Edward Terrace. Auckland campus at various CBD locations, latterly 15 Canning Crescent, Māngere.
Active: 2002–2026 (Christchurch campus); 1990–2023 (Auckland campus); 1990–1998 (Greymouth, as Tai Poutini Polytechnic programme)
Current status: Closed as an independent entity. MAINZ programmes transferred to Ara Institute of Canterbury on 1 January 2026.
History
MAINZ — the Music and Audio Institute of New Zealand — spent three decades shaping the careers of some of New Zealand’s most celebrated musicians and audio engineers. From its origins on the West Coast to a permanent home on Christchurch’s High Street, it became the country’s best-known specialist music tertiary institution, a place where industry luminaries taught and future stars enrolled.
The story begins in Greymouth in 1990, when the small West Coast polytechnic Tai Poutini Polytechnic (TPP) began offering a Certificate in Contemporary Music and audio engineering training. Seeing the potential in a standalone music institution, TPP expanded north, establishing the first MAINZ Auckland campus in 1994 and growing it rapidly through the late 1990s. By 1998 all West Coast programmes had relocated to Auckland, and in 2001 the Auckland campus moved into purpose-built facilities at Rainger House, 150 Victoria Street West — officially opened by Prime Minister Helen Clark. Paul Streekstra, one of MAINZ’s most dedicated tutors, had been teaching audio engineering since the mid-1990s and recalled the Rainger House era as the moment the institution truly came of age, with purpose-built studios, rehearsal rooms, and a formidable array of recording gear.
The Christchurch chapter opened in 2001, when MAINZ identified a suitable building at 191 High Street in the CBD and outfitted it as a dedicated campus. Teaching began at the start of 2002 with the Certificate in Audio Engineering Level 5, with the Diploma of Audio Engineering Level 6 added in 2003 and the Certificate in Live Sound and Event Production Level 4 following in 2004. The facilities on High Street included purpose-built recording studios, rehearsal rooms, an auditorium, MIDI suites, and a full complement of live sound equipment. A second facility on King Edward Terrace, a 15-minute drive from the city centre, served as a dedicated live sound and event production training complex.
The Christchurch campus weathered the catastrophic 2011 earthquake — which killed 185 people and caused fifteen billion dollars of damage to the city — with remarkable resilience. The 191 High Street building, a former bank, survived largely intact. One of its control rooms occupied what had been a bank vault, and the heavy construction that had once secured money now protected recording equipment. When staff returned some eighteen months after the quake to power up the Audient ASP8024 mixing console for the first time, Programme Leader Ivan Shevchuk described the moment in terms that said something about both the devastation outside and the improbable survival within.
“When we managed to get back and turn it on for the first time, it was almost like finding an ancient, forgotten alien spaceship.”
Ivan Shevchuk, MAINZ Christchurch Programme Leader
The institute’s institutional home changed in 2018, when Invercargill’s Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) took over from Tai Poutini Polytechnic as the managing polytechnic. The arrangement proved operationally difficult — a long-distance management relationship that insiders described as a source of ongoing uncertainty for staff and students alike. Enrolments declined, courses were cut, and the flagship Bachelor of Audio Engineering programme was among the casualties. The Auckland campus, already weakened by a 2020 relocation from the central city to the suburb of Māngere, was dealt a fatal blow by the January 2023 Auckland floods, which damaged the Māngere building beyond use just before semester one was due to begin. With Te Pūkenga — the national polytechnic body overseeing SIT — facing a $63 million deficit and under pressure to cut $35 million from its 2023 budget, the Auckland campus was closed in April 2023. Sixteen staff members submitted a 149-page case for continuation, supported by letters from across the music industry, but management rejected it. Termination notices were sent in late April 2023.
The Christchurch campus was not caught up in the Auckland closure and continued to operate. The final years under SIT saw significant investment in new facilities: a state-of-the-art immersive audio studio, four years in the making, was completed in July 2024. Featuring an Avid S6 console capable of Dolby Atmos mixing and Adam Audio monitoring, the studio put Christchurch MAINZ students at the forefront of an audio format increasingly demanded by streaming platforms and the film and television industry. Programme Manager Ivan Shevchuk — who had been central to the Christchurch campus since the 2000s — described the studio as filling a genuine training need as Atmos became standard in professional production environments.
On 1 January 2026, MAINZ and its Christchurch programmes formally transferred from SIT to Ara Institute of Canterbury, where they are taught alongside Ara’s Bachelor of Music in shared facilities at 130 High Street. The brand survives, the Christchurch address has moved a short distance down the same street, and the qualifications continue — though MAINZ as a standalone national institution is history. Former Auckland staff have since launched a new private training establishment called Let’s Go Music to try to fill the void left in Auckland’s music education landscape.
The Christchurch campus produced a notable cohort of graduates who went on to shape the city’s music scene. Marcus Winstanley — live sound engineer, musician with Barnard’s Star, Minisnap and The Undercurrents — joined MAINZ as a tutor and eventually became Programme Leader for Live Sound and Event Production. He ran the Media Club, the student-operated sound production venue embedded in the campus, and in 2015 took over Darkroom, one of Christchurch’s most significant independent music venues. Jamie Stratton — production engineer and programme director at RDU 98.5FM, host of the long-running blues show The Observatory, guitarist with psych-shoegaze act Kool Aid, and curator of the ZORZA festival — is another graduate from the Christchurch programme.